Ackee & Saltfish(less)
What is the vegan substitute for Saltfish…?
All posts filed under: Recipes Index
Iâm Back!
My fellow foodies I have to apologize for my absence from this site. I want to say it was down to technical problems, however no worker should blame their tools…especially a tool like wordpress support who are absolute geniuses! I have been away but very, very busy: several supperclubs, food articles and catering opportunities later I have soo much to share with you. 2019 has already kicked off to be a fantastic year with me being featured in Thomas Cook Holiday Magazine reviewing the growing trend of craft beers and wine vineyards in the Caribbean - Yes hot humid Caribbean now has its first winery! check out the link for details. I have so much planned for this site this year combining my love of Caribbean history with food and culture - I have regular updates from now on. In fact I should ask you - what would you like to see? Please leave your comments below đ Ciao for now! xx
Lorettaâs Kitchen turns Supper Club
I finally succumbed to the pressure. Lorettaâs Kitchen is making the transition to become a supper club. Itâs been just over 2 years since I launched the food blog - hosting a supper club hadnât even entered my mind, I was hoping at the most to maybe get a few recipes published and write a cook book, but I wasnât in a hurry! I enjoyed writing and soon began to develop a taste for food photography. Most of all I loved receiving the numerous messages and e-mails from people as far as Australia asking me where to purchase casareep from? LOL it has been a lot of fun. This is not the end of the food blog. No. Like with most things I need to be challenged. For example I changed gyms last week and besides feeling pain in a totally different way, my body is responding really way to the and I am seeing the benefits already! The food blog as interesting as it is - needs some energy injected into …
The New Black: Smoothie Bowl
Iâve been making smoothies and juices on and off for a while now. Most of us have. Weâve bought into the fad that juices were the way forward to a ‘healthier youâ. And in many ways they are: I wouldnât consume the variety of vegetables and fruits as often as I do were it not for my blender. It really is a helpful way of getting all your nutrients in throughout the day. I think some time last week I left the house with 3 different bottles filled with either fruit or vegetables juiced down to a pulp: breakfast, lunch and a ‘protein power smoothieâ for after the gym. Yes Iâm on it! If there is any set back with this, itâs with the opaque bottles. After my hard work colour co-ordinating and blending turmeric, orange and carrot, it looked more like ‘sundownâ than sunrise yellow through the dim lens of the bottle. Then it becomes a tad boring sipping kale juice through a straw everyday, which is sad really because most of us eat with our eyes first. …
Suya Popcorn Chicken
What to do with suya spice? That was the question. After all the sweat and grind trying to find the ingredients, I wasnât really feeling a ‘suya kebabâ, as I decided to call them. Iâm also trying to stave off red meat. Except lamb, she says in her head. Clearly still a big struggle for me. So I hunted around the internet and found this fun recipe by Ajoke - Suya Popcorn Chicken. I have adapted Ajokeâs recipe a bit to bring out more of the crispy light texture we love from popcorn chicken. As Iâve mentioned in a previous post, the key to crispy chicken pieces, is not flour, or even the batter, its cornstarch. A little goes a long way (for more on the science of good fried chicken see here). So let me waste no more time, ladies and gentleman I present to you: Suya Popcorn Chicken!
Swedish Cardamom Buns
If your first thoughts were: “this looks complicated”, then think again. Because once you read through the step by step guide below, you will be tying knots (albeit the dough kind) like a sailor. They are so much fun to make! This recipe reminds me of the brioche loaves I made last year because of the light buttery texture of the bread. These buns take less than half the time it takes to make brioche and has a lot more flavour: I brought them into the office the next day and before I got back to my seat they were all gone! Not all recipes use egg but I find adding it here helps give the dough a soft, cakey like texture that you expect from a cinnamon roll. I love the generous use of cardamom, one of my favourite spices. It was back breaking having to grind it by hand in a mortar and pestle; very few places sell the seeds grounded. Be generous with the spice measurements, about 1/4 of it will melt away in the baking process anyway. …
Ethiopian Lentil Stew (Misir Wot)
If you canât stand the heat, then you better stay out the Ethiopian Kitchen! Itâs not that Ethiopian food doesnât have a range of mild flavoured dishes, they do, but pepper is so essential to the cuisine that to avoid it is to essentially ban yourself from the whole experience! Ethiopian Cuisine: I havenât tasted anything so lip-smackingly delicious in a good long time! Iâm gonna be stuck on this for a while! Ok admittedly the last time I tasted authentic Ethiopian cuisine was about a year ago where I just happened to walk by a small take away 5 minutes walk down Kingsland High Street in Dalston, London. They offer a selection of stews or ‘wotsâ with a combination or rice or the infamous Injera bread, all for just ÂŁ4!! Many Ethiopianâs are Orthodox Christians who traditionally eat vegan on Wednesdays and Fridays, as well as other special days, hence why there is such a wide selection of vegan/vegetarian Ethiopian dishes. This recipe is adapted from the more classic Misir Wot, which literally means ‘lentil stewâ; I have added …
Berbere Spice: a blend of Ethiopia
Berbere, which means “hot” in Amharic, is an Ethiopian spice blend very common to Ethiopian cooking. Most of the heat comes from the fiery long red finger of dried chillies buried under heaps of other amazing spices. Berbere is treated very much like an ‘all purposeâ seasoning, so it can be added to stews, vegetables, meat, fish and probably even rice as well. As I carried out my research to find the most authentic blend, I soon realised, whichever combination I found, it would pretty much empty out my whole kitchen cupboard! I think I turned over every jar, bottle and cup that had spices in them. It actually felt good to use them again, some like fenugreek had barely been touched; and I was getting tired of the same old 1-2-3 combinations Iâve been falling back on for yonks (havenât used that word in ages?!). Doesnât it look amazing! And it tastes absolutely delicious! Youâve basically cut your seasoning time down to less than a minute! Ok letâs take a closer look: Salt Cinnamon Cloves Cardamom Smoked Paprika Coriander …
Juicy Salmon Burgers
I havenât had salmon in a long while, but I had a craving for it this week. It may have something to do with me trying to introduce more vegetable juices into my diet; I have a massive sugar craving (I literally had a moment with a triple chocolate cookie…or two this weekend) and so to counter that Iâm pressing, juicing and blending my taste buds out of it to a more balanced diet. Salmon is packed with all kinds of nutrition and doesnât need a lot of prep or cooking time, so itâs the perfect partner on my road to healthy eating. I hope it lasts! But in my usual, ‘letâs make this more complicatedâ way…I thought I would make cooking salmon a little more challenging for me. I literally tossed and turned in my bed thinking of the ways I could prep it. Oh! I forgot to mention, another goal of mine, is to be more efficient. When you do a lot of cooking as I do, you need recipes you can freeze for …
Korean Pancakes (Pajun)
Happy Pancake Day! A food bloggers dream: a public holiday dedicated to food! Pancakes were probably the first recipe I learnt to make as a child at school and the only one you didnât have to take home and share, very little food I made at school made it home to be fair, but thatâs another story for another time. We all wanted to mimic the TV chefs we grew up watching flip pancakes single handily. So easy to make and yet so easy to spoil: one too eager shake of the wrist and it was disaster all on the floor. In our home economics class, flipping pancakes almost out did eating one with our limited choice of toppings: chocolate spread, sugar and lemon or honey. I can still remember biting a cigar shaped eggy pancake through to itâs gritty centre of sugar and lemon. All the work of my sticky 11 year old hands. Nothingâs really changed how many years later, only now my taste buds have grown to understand that pancakes speak many languages, none more so than Korean. Korean …
Aubergine Pesto Galette
Tomatoes and Aubergine, on top of melty homemade Aubergine Pesto and Parmesan cheese, all wrapped up in a light and flaky crust. Simple and delicious!
Chargrilled Aubergine Pesto
“The flame-roasted aubergine imparts a deep, smoky flavour while the sun-dried tomato lifts the whole with its sweet, sharp zing. Excellent as it is on pasta, or as a dip with vegetal dippers, or as a base for a tomato and aubergine galetteâ â Dale Berning Sawa - Chargrilled Aubergine Pesto: Guardian Recipe Swap February 2016 Bajan Choka meets Basil Pesto. Thatâs the best way to describe the combination of these two classic dishes from Trinidad and Italy. Bajan Choka is a Trinidadian side dish . The intense flavour comes from being roasted on an open flame which rapidly cooks and flavours the flesh in its skin. The smokey soft pulp is then fried with onions, hot pepper and usually served with Paratha Roti. Most of us are familiar with basil pesto; I am especially from my years as a student. This was my go to jar to lift my pasta dishes out of the tuna mayo and sweetcorn era I found myself locked into. Nowadays I make my own from time to time, I love the fresh robust taste of the basil and raw …
Vegan Crab Cakes
Can I get excited about this recipe for one second? Ok make it three. This recipe rips open the door of creativity and taste. I have never been a follower of the fake meat parade: mock duck, prawn, bacon etc…I used to joke and say if yourâe going to go through all that trouble re-creating something which you said you wonât eat for whatever reason, you might as well eat it the real thing. Can there be any benefit in eating a soya chunk which has been artificially manufactured and manipulated, dyed and fried to look like a squiggly prawn? Itâs not for me. Having said all of that, slowly crawling off my milk crate here, these ‘crabâ cakes are pretty convincing. Of course no comparison to the real thing, but what I like about this recipe is that it has retained the classic seasoning used in crab cakes and simply substituted the meat for artichokes which when pulled apart resembles the flakiness of white fish or in this case crab. Most vegan versions of this …
Greens with Roasted Lemon
I think the picture says it all: a simple way to dress up your vegetables and bring out their natural flavour. I simply sliced the lemon into two halves and placed them face down into a hot grill pan with a little oil, just to help it not to stick to the pan. I left it on one side for about a 1-2 minutes, then removed them from the pan. I simply blanched the broccoli in a bowl of boiling water for 2 minutes (maximum) or until the tender stems turned a bright green. I then transferred the vegetables to an ‘ice bathâ of very cold water; This is to stop the cooking process and to help retain the bright green colour. I then tossed the greens into a skillet with a little olive oil. I then squeezed the grilled lemon over the greens. Roasting the lemon helps extract more of the juice and slightly caramelises the taste of the lemon. A great side dish for any occasion.
Baked Peppadew Mac ‘nâ Cheese
I always grew up calling this mixture of pasta, milk and cheese âMacaroni Pieâ rather than âmac n cheeseâ as itâs more commonly known. I still think that the distinction between the two is important: mac cheeses tend to be a gooey, non-conforming, loose pasta dish, whereas macaroni pie due to the egg content is firmer and can be sliced in some cases. The tradition of macaroni pie is more than present in the Deep South of the USA, itâs almost a joke to refer to mac ‘n cheese in the same breath as collard greens and candied yams. As one of four we would fight for the crunchy corners of the pie as it rested in the glass pirex dish. I loved watching the oil and air race there way through the golden honey-comb-tunnels to the top. My mum would make several macaroni pies every week, not just for us but for friends and neighbours. As its popularity grew, she would experiment with different ingredients to enhance the flavour and texture: mayonnaise or cream was added for creaminess, breadcrumbs …
Breadfruit Curry
Happy New Year! I had an enjoyable Christmas and New Years with friends and family, for the first time, I didnât do much of the cooking, I was determined this year that I wanted to have a break from the kitchen and have some quality time with people I love, which I did. Nevertheless my brain was still ticking away with recipes and new projects for the coming year and so having made it through the first week back at work, I am ready to kick things off again with Lorettaâs Kitchen! Many of us have started the new year with resolutions: lose weight, start a new course, learn a language etc…,maybe all three. Well how about adding to your list, ‘try out new cuisines, fruits and vegetablesâ? If you canât afford to travel this year, you can bring theâexoticâ to your kitchen ;-). To help you out, I thought I would introduce some of you to an interesting fruit. Known as ‘Breadfuitâ. Breadfruit found mainly in the Caribbean (although native to Tahiti), is a large …
Red Hummus Stuffed Chicken w/ Veg Spaghetti
Originally posted on Loretta's Kitchen:
Sometimes leftovers make the best meals: after making a batch of hummus, I wasnât sure what else to use it for besides dipping tortilla chips into it. Then there were the left over carrots, aubergine and courgette from a quick vegetable roast I made a few days before. I hunted around for ideas and recipes but couldnât find anything that really appealed to me: I found many recipes for chicken smothered in hummus, but I felt like that was a bit of a waste and wasnât convinced the hummus would stick to the chicken while cooking. So in an effort to preserve all the great flavours of the paste and not to lose the vibrant colours and textures from the left over vegetables, I devised what was actually a very tasty dish. It really is less complicated then it looks. Enjoy!
Cheesy Courgette Chips
Yummy on their own or as a side dish, these courgette chips are easy, fun and healthy to make. Enjoy!
Rasta (Homemade) Pasta
Follow the step by step guide to the perfect fusion of crispy jerk chicken with a creamy pasta sauce, this time YOU make the pasta! (see step by step pictures to making the pasta)
Food at 52 Cookery School: The Italian Job
One of my ultimate dreams is to own a house with a very large, fully equipped, sociable kitchen. Kitchenâs for me have always been a place where you ‘whistle while you workâ: you talk about your day, current events even laugh at yourself.There are many reasons for this: cooking can be a pretty daunting experience, even for me. Finding new recipes online and trying to duplicate them at home can been hit and miss: the measurements can be off or the author fails to explain some of the techniques clearly. Unless you have the privilege of having an experienced Chef next to you probing your sorry attempt at pasta dough, the temptation to slip away to the local takeaway quickly emerges. However after spending an evening with John and friends at Food at 52 Cookery School, I am relived to say that there is no better place to get your culinary experience on the right track. Add ‘Passionateâ and ‘Welcomingâ to the title ‘experienced Chefâ and you would have John Benbow, the founder and resident Chef of Food at 52 based in …
Rice ‘nâ Peas Risotto w/ Crispy Okra
We sat in our regular cafe spot not far from Highbury and Islington Station; me mulling over an overly sweet Chai Latte, him a large, mug of Americano, our opposing tastes in beverages mirroring our personalities… Him: “Have you made it yet?” Me: “Made what? The Roti Wrap? The De-constructed Ackee and Saltfish? He had thrown so many weird and wonderful recipes ideas at me over the last few months I couldnât keep track, and I wasnât sure if he really wanted me to take him seriously. Him: “The Rice and Peas Risotto (blank stare). I think if you make it with coconut milk, itâll be a great fusion you know…?” Me: “Oook…?” I tried to picture it in my head. I was stepping onto sacred ground here: NO ONE messes with rice and peas…a famous chef was publicly humiliated for his version of rice and peas which insulted the whole of the global black population. How would I pass such a test??? Why was my boyfriend setting me a challenge that could go disastrously …
