Chef Tee's Caribbean Kitchen E-Book

Chef Tee

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 181

Beschreibung

Bring the joy of Caribbean cooking to your kitchen and discover 80 varied and exciting recipes, from street food grills to one-pot stews, salads and rum-based cocktails.Caribbean cuisine offers a world of flavour from Jamaica to Trinidad and Tobago and everything in between, all the islands have their own unique dishes and cooking styles. In this sunshine filled book you'll find recipes for mouth-watering hot sauces, spice rubs, fragrant marinades and cool chutneys as well as vibrant salads, BBQ wood grills and slowly simmered braises. Food is often eaten on the go from beach shacks or street vendors, who cook up fresh bites every day. Satisfying curries are always on the menu and are traditionally served with rice or Indian-style roti breads for wiping your plate clean, and vegetable sides. Meat is a big feature, often marinated, and fresh fish is readily available, particularly on the smaller islands, but there are plenty of vegetarian and vegan dishes to enjoy too. And let's not forget the rum-based cocktails! Celebrate the fresh and vibrant colours and tastes of the Caribbean in your own kitchen with delicious and easy recipes, filled with lip-smacking flavour and guaranteed to transport you to paradise.

Leseprobe

chef tee’s

caribbean

kitchen

chef tee’s

caribbean

kitchen

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CLARE WINFIELD

Designer Megan Smith

Editor Abi Waters

Head of Production Patricia Harrington

Creative Director Leslie Harrington

Editorial Director Julia Charles

Food Stylist Rosie Reynolds

Prop Stylist Max Robinson

Indexer Vanessa Bird

First published in 2023 by Ryland Peters & Small 20–21 Jockey’s Fields London WC1R 4BW and Ryland Peters & Small, Inc. 341 East 116th Street New York NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

Text © Chef Tee 2023

Design and commissioned photographs © Ryland Peters & Small 2023

ISBN: 978-1-78879-510-4

E-ISBN: 978-1-78879-536-4

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The authors’ moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Printed and bound in China

CIP data from the Library of Congress has been applied for. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

NOTES

* Both British (metric) and American (imperial plus US cups) are included; however, ts important not to alternate between the two within a recipe.

* All spoon measurements are level unless specified otherwise.

* All eggs are medium (UK) or large (US), unless specified as large, in which case US extra large should be used. Uncooked or partially cooked eggs should not be served to the very old, frail, young children, pregnant women or those with compromised immune systems.

* Ovens should be preheated to the specified temperatures. If using a fan-assisted oven, adjust according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

* When a recipe calls for the grated zest of citrus fruit, buy unwaxed fruit and wash well before using. If you can only find treated fruit, scrub well in warm soapy water before using.

* Rinsing raw meat or fish/seafood in a solution made with water and white vinegar is considered key in Caribbean culture, however this step is entirely optional and depends on the produce you have.

DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in this book are those of the author but they are general views only. Ryland Peters & Small hereby exclude all liability to the extent permitted by law for any errors or omissions in this book and for any loss, damage or expense (whether direct or indirect) suffered by a third party relying on any information in this book.

contents

MY STORY

MY RESTAURANT JOURNEY

MARINADES, RUBS & SAUCES

BITS & BITES

FISH & SEAFOOD DISHES

PLANT-BASED ITAL DISHES

CARIBBEAN CLASSICS & MAINS

SIDE DISHES

CAKES & DESSERTS

PUNCHES, COCKTAILS & JUICES

GLOSSARY OF CARIBBEAN FOODS

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

my story

I’ve spent days trying to write the perfect introduction but the sincere truth is, I can’t! So instead, let me be honest and tell you ‘why’ I cook and ‘what’ it does for me, which I’m sure will be something that we can all relate to.

Standing on a stool by my late mother’s hip, cooking tuna and pasta, is perhaps the first thing I truly remember cooking and eating. I know, it might not be the most Caribbean dish you’d think of, but I promise you, we made it ‘Caribbean’ with the lashings of Encona hot pepper sauce that came later. Yes, you know the one, made with Jamaican Scotch bonnet peppers! Cooking that dish, and eating with her, is perhaps the happiest memory in my life… I chuckle, feeling warm and happy just remembering. The joyful smile spread across my face and feeling of safety never fails to return when I remember that autumnal dish. And that, there, is exactly why I cook.

For me, every cake I make reminds me of baking with my aunty ‘P’ in Streatham – making the trip to the shops on the weekends and paying 99p for the boxed baking kit of ‘Greens’ cupcakes, pure heaven! Every batch of marinade I produce reminds me of when I got my first food processor at the age of 17, and well… I just thought that I was Battersea’s ‘hottest chef around’! Even every batch of curried goat that I cook reminds me of the eureka moment when I managed to cook it on a large scale for the first time. Within 30 seconds, I was speed-dialling all my friends to tell them the good news. You see, cooking food reminds me of key moments and nostalgic traditions in my life. But I guess, most importantly, it simply reminds me of the people who I have loved most in my life. Cooking makes me happy.

People automatically presume I am a natural chef. The truth is I am far from it! I am a ‘creative’ more than a chef. I have dabbled in many industries: I love to sew, to play piano, to knit, to paint, to teach and to bake. And each skill has had its turn at shaping my life, but for now it seems that cooking has won. Although, don’t be surprised to find me knitting from time to time! So, ‘a Jack of all trades’ you might think… well, actually not so much. Being lucky enough to have this platform means I can share openly that I suffer from forms of anxiety and depression. In fact, funnily enough, I don’t even have the healthiest relationship with food. But when I express myself through any of my creative abilities or better yet, when I cook, my mind shakes off the worries of the world and gives me peace. Cooking is a creative form of meditation for me. I forget about the bills troubling me, I forget about deadlines stressing me, the weight of the world on my shoulders. I am in a realm where negativity can’t penetrate the protective bubble of happiness that I have created. Instead of worrying, I am creating new memories and exploring the world I live in. I am expressing myself creatively. And that is why I cook.

Caribbean cuisine is a niche field of cooking but not necessarily a hard one to master. It does vary slightly from island to island and from household to household, but one of the key essences of cooking the Caribbean way is to simply enjoy it! Listen to music as you cook, judge a measurement a little bit with your eye perhaps, and just make the recipe your own. For example, the recipe calls for dried chilli flakes/hot pepper flakes but you might only have fresh chillies/chilis – so adapt and make do. Right there, that’s what it’s about! The big key to Caribbean food and creating those happy memories is often the informality. This is as well as developing recipes from our mistakes or improvizations. Also, to have a few key signature ingredients to hand – pimento berries, turmeric, allspice, rum and sugar cane are the distinctive flavours of the Caribbean, so must be included. With these elements you can’t go wrong. I can’t stress enough, there is no right or wrong way, but there is, most importantly, a style.

Many think cooking professionally or, indeed, cooking Caribbean food is hard, but the unvarnished truth is, you just need the heart of a keen home cook. When I began teaching myself how to cook, I avoided learning how to make fancy foams, crusts or using water baths because I don’t recall any of that when I was younger. During my childhood, food was just about tasting good flavours and giving that comforting warm feeling inside. So, as a result, you will find simplicity in my recipes and in the methods used, as I find that this yields the best results. This book aims to teach and inspire anybody of any heritage to be able to cook the classic staples of Caribbean food in an unfussy and easy way.

A lot has happened in the past 2 years and it’s gone by so quickly! Every positive has been a positive and every negative has turned into a positive lesson. I have grown as a person along the way, and as a chef. I will finish by saying that I have always called my journey a ‘story’, and I am so grateful to be able to share this chapter with you.

my restaurant journey

I guess the light-bulb moment happened when I was about 18 and working in a restaurant in Brixton. I was working on the bar, and I suddenly realized that three plantain could be bought for just £1 in Brixton Market, but then this could be more than tripled when sold in local restaurants. It dawned on me that ‘there are hardly any Caribbean restaurants in London’. I knew there and then, that I wanted one…

I began soaking up the knowledge of every restaurant I worked in, and started teaching myself recipes for the restaurant I would open one day. One restaurant wouldn’t teach me everything, so I moved on to other restaurants, and from each restaurant, I would take a little nugget of knowledge. In one establishment, I would learn about bookings, while another would teach me about wine. Eventually, after some hard graft, I was 20 and in a Michelin-starred restaurant possessed with the skills of a chef, sommelier, bookkeeper and receptionist and I was ready. But how would I get the money for a restaurant?

At this point, everyone who knew me knew that ‘Viexfort’ (Paradise Cove’s original name) was my dream, but no one was prepared for what happened next. One busy summer breakfast shift, as I cleared one of my customer’s plates who happened to run a government-backed business funding scheme, I began to tell her my dream and she gave me her details to apply for the funding. It wasn’t enough for a restaurant, but if I could just prove that I could make a pop-up restaurant work, then I could crowd-fund for the rest. I quit my job, ploughing all my energy into my dream, vowing that ‘the next restaurant I worked in would be my own’. I wrote an 80-page business plan and applied, and within just 2 weeks, I received a business loan to give it a go.

Being creative, I converted the front room of my flat into a massive, commercial kitchen! I signed up to several food delivery partners and, by August 2014, I was running my business from home. Suddenly, I had a real taste of running a food business. I had 10 members of staff, including care leavers – it was important to me to give care leavers this opportunity because of my time spent in care as a child. I ended up closing after just 5 months, but I knew my story wasn’t finished. If I could make it work from home, then surely I could anywhere!

By chance, I told my story to one of my regular customers who happened to be a business investor. After closing down, I bravely reached out to him and convinced him to invest in me, in my story, and he believed I could do it as he knew my food was good. With a new budget of £50K, we searched high and low and attempted to secure a location for Paradise Cove, but were unsuccessful each time… so I gave up. I paused my dream. I became a primary school teacher instead, turning my skill of helping, into nurturing children.

By the time the pandemic hit several years later, I had become deeply depressed. And made the life-changing decision to quit my career. I had four degrees, but I just felt like a failure. It was June 2020, I was 26 and I decided I was going to follow my dream and reopen again from my home, just like before. So on 1st July, I made the website, re-designed flyers, set up my social media… I was going to crowd-fund. I was excited and every day my mind zoomed with new ideas. To help manage this, I would go for a mindfulness walk every day. I was supposed to be meditating but actually, I was secretly visualizing where my restaurant would be. Then somehow, there it was… 517 Wandsworth road, with a sign, as clear as day, saying ‘shop lease for sale!’ Without hesitation, I called my friend Michael begging for his help. We spoke at length and he agreed to loan me some money, not enough but I could make it work. And with some clever negotiations, I got the keys to the shop the following evening on 19th July.

That same day, I ran to the nearest hardware store to pick up paints and began painting my restaurant. I searched online for all the secondhand cooking equipment I could find. I made my signs by hand, put up a new ceiling and used every creative trick I could to bring my restaurant to life. I was going for it with all that I had. It was single-handedly painted, floored and decorated by me. But I also contacted all my old suppliers from 6 years ago, and by some miracle, they all remembered me. ‘You’re the guy who cooked from home,’ they would all say and all agreed to help me start with a small life-line of credit. Apart from the plumbing and electricity, I did it all alone. Somehow, I was ready to open on 5th August. My overdraft was overdrawn and I had nothing to my name. No money to pay my staff. No reputation. Nothing but determination and my dream.

The beginning was sensational. Locals flying in and the tail-end of summer caused an influx of customers and somehow, week after week, I never ran at a loss. Sometimes I had to sleep in the restaurant to make it work, but we slowly got busier and busier and made it work. Sadly the pandemic struck and we were forced to close, relying on takeaways to keep us going. Weirdly enough, I felt like I had done this bit before.

Seeing how well we were doing gave me ambition to expand. I hadn’t even been at it 6 months and I wanted another restaurant. I found another shop and went for it. Slowly throughout the lockdowns, I ran one restaurant while preparing another for opening.

Fast-forward a year, we were still facing lockdowns and the second branch of the restaurant had closed. In hindsight, I had stretched myself too thin. I became unwell frequently. One of my landlords had passed away during the pandemic and the final blow was when someone decided to break into my restaurant and smash it to pieces. I gave up. I just couldn’t cope with the repeated setbacks. But then, almost as if an act from God, ‘it’ happened… my community stepped in to save my restaurant. They raised over £10k to help it get new shutters, created a massive publicity campaign enabling us to feature on national TV, all resulting in a restaurant review by one of the country’s most revered food critics, Jay Rayner. I was offered a TV show and a deal to write my own cookbook. Everyone believed in me and saw my ethical lickle restaurant striving to help the community. Within a very intense 2 weeks, we were saved… but I think I’ll save the rest of that story for my next cookbook…

‘Tropical blessings always, Tee’

Marinades,

rubs & Sauces

THE BASE OF ALL CARIBBEAN FOOD

When thinking of Caribbean food, it really is just too easy for us to ‘only’ consider the main dish. But the more I cook, the more I notice that most of our flavours actually come from the sauces and marinades that we start with first. You see, believe it or not, these versatile marinades are the key bases to all good Caribbean food – they create the depths of flavour that so many of us love. So, with that in mind, it is really important to get the balance of seasoning right, as the skill of building a ‘good base’ creates the perfect Caribbean meal.

Within the Black British community, Caribbean food can typically be associated with heavy pre-made dry seasonings. Since I started cooking, I have always found that using fresh, organic vegetables and better quality products really does yield the best results. I have also grown to make my recipes accessible to those with allergies and intolerances. So, in this section I have included a range of simple marinades, rubs and sauces, which reflect the best of that.

A fruit stall on the roads of the Dominican Republic.

A tropical blue wall with bright pink window on a typical West Indian shack.

Chef Tee’s Simple Jerk Marinade

For those who don’t know, jerk is a wet or dry marinade used to season dishes. Traditionally, it has been used for the flavouring and preserving of meats such as chicken and pork, as well as fish. However, it has now evolved with the new-age Caribbean cuisine movement and allowed for an array of plant-based jerk delicacies to be included, too. Jerk is synonymous with the Caribbean islands, but the real secret that makes jerk so distinctively unique is the use of pimento wood, or the now more commonly used, pimento berries. This is what gives jerk its special taste. Here is my take on this recipe for you to make your own.

1 lime, cut into quarters

15 g/½ oz. fresh thyme

100 g/3½ oz. Scotch bonnet pepper

150 g/5 oz. onion, topped and tailed

125 g/4½ oz. spring onions/scallions, topped and tailed

40 g/1½ oz. garlic cloves, peeled, topped and tailed

30 g/1 oz. pimento berries

15 g/½ oz. black peppercorns

2 tablespoons table salt

60 g/2 oz. granulated sugar

10 g/⅓ oz. ground cinnamon

5 g/1 teaspoon cloves

10 ml/2 teaspoons soy sauce

10 ml/2 teaspoons brown malt vinegar

MAKES ABOUT 500 G/1 LB. 2 OZ.

Place all the ingredients in a food processor or blender and pulse together to a smooth consistency.

Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place for up to 6 months.

noteIf the blade sticks while you are blending, try adding water, a tablespoon at a time, and pulse until mixed.

chef tee’s jerk marinade party mix

Now you have mastered the classic jerk marinade (see opposite), I am sure you will want to host your own Caribbean barbecue (grill) party, so try this upscaled version instead. The method is slightly different but important to master for any chef wanting to turn their hand to cooking for a larger crowd.

90 g/3 oz. fresh thyme

80 g/3 oz. pimento berries

40 g/1½ oz. cloves

40 g/1½ oz. black peppercorns

450–600 g/16–21 oz. Scotch bonnet peppers, to taste

3.6 kg/8 lb. red and white onions, topped, tailed and quartered

100 g/3½ oz. spring onions/scallions, topped and tailed

350 g/12½ oz. garlic cloves (this is roughly 7–8 bulbs of garlic), peeled

5 large lemons, quartered

80 g/3 oz. table salt

600 g/3 cups granulated sugar

80 ml/⅓ cup soy sauce

80 ml/⅓ cup brown malt vinegar

60 g/2 oz. ground cinnamon

A clean bucket or very large container with a lid

MAKES ABOUT 5 LITRES/1.3 GALLONS

Chop the thyme sprigs in half, then pulse in a food processor or blender until finely blended. The processor will get hot when doing this from the moisture and friction, so make sure you hold onto it carefully. Transfer to a clean bucket or very large container when done.

Blend the pimento berries and cloves in the food processor or blender until semi-crushed, then add to the bucket.

Blitz the peppercorns in the food processor or blender until semi-crushed, then add to the bucket.

Add the Scotch bonnet peppers to the food processor and blitz until semi-crushed, then add to the bucket.

Blitz the onions and spring onions in the food processor until mashed, then add to the bucket when done.

Blitz the garlic cloves in the food processor until mashed, then add to the bucket.

Blitz the lemons in the food processor until mashed, then add to he other ingredients in the bucket.

Finally, add the salt, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar and cinnamon to the bucket. Mix everything together until blended into one delicious marinade.

Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place for up to 6 months.

notes

Check for any unblended lumps of ingredients as you transfer each one to the bucket and re-blend in smaller batches if necessary.

This recipe creates enough marinade for large parties or barbecues – it would roughly marinade enough meat for around 50 people, so save it for when you are entertaining a crowd!

Simple Oxtail or Lamb Rub

Before I start, it is important to acknowledge that a large proportion of the Caribbean’s ‘documented’ history was interrupted by the transatlantic slave trade. The impact of this means that the cooking we now know as distinctly Caribbean is actually a blend of many other cultures. Our famous dishes and ingredients are really bits of Portuguese, African and Indian heritage to say the least. But they all commonly include the theme of working with cheaper cuts of meat, which often need long braising. This explains why some of our delicious delicacies are often snubbed and why I didn’t actually eat them until I was in my late teens! It's no secret that oxtail falls under this remit, but when it is done right, it’s simply sensational.

As it is often a fatty cut of meat, I would suggest following the instructions on page 113 if you want to use this rub with oxtail. However, the rub also works wonders on any more commonly used red meat, so feel free to pair it with your favourite lamb or beef recipe accordingly.

1 bulb of garlic, cloves separated and peeled

1 large onion, chopped