Chana and Potatoes

This is one of my favorite, go-to recipes!  It's super easy and tasty - especially if you have some fresh roti skins to go with it!  I decided to make some white rice to go with it so it would be easier for my 2 year old and my husband to go with for lunch tomorrow!

I use the recipe found in the Naparima's Cookbook (if you like West Indian food - you need to get this cookbook!!!).  I tweaked the recipe a little because I didn't have enough chana (chickpeas) or potatoes so I needed to add a little more to it to make it hearty.  I decided to cut up a sweet potato and some carrots to supplement the one can of chickpeas and the 2 potatoes I had.  I also added about a quarter tin of coconut milk to the pot when adding the water.  I think the coconut milk gives it a richness that's always missing when I don't add it.

My husband also steamed a piece of breadfruit and made an easy eggplant and tomato dish to go along with it!

Here's how the Chana and Potatoes came out!

Complete plate of food: chana and potatoes, white rice and green peas, eggplant and tomatoes, and steamed breadfruit!

Adding the chickpeas at the end and stirring

Adding the potatoes and carrots to the curry mixture

Cooking the curry with some oil, onions, and garlic

Saturday is soup day!

One of the differences between how I was raised and how my husband was raised was the association with a certain type of food on a certain day of the week.  I've posted in the past that I believe my mom cooked whatever, whenever we needed it, and my cooking style somehow follows that pattern.  I don't buy groceries based on a certain menu that I want for the week, but instead, buy a bunch of fresh veggies and meats and then cook whatever I'm sort of in the mood for each day.  My husband does NOT do things this way and was accustomed to planning out meals and having certain meals on certain days.  One of those certain days is Saturday and to be more specific, SOUP on a Saturday!

I make a GREAT corn soup recipe directly out of my Trinidadian Naparima Girl's High School cook book (I've posted info about this cook book before!!!), but it is not like those corn soups you get on the side of the road after an AMAZING soca/reggae party.  I've always wanted to learn to make it that way, but have never found a recipe that quite matches the taste of those ones on the street!  The other day on Facebook, friends of our started posting a corn soup recipe from Tasty and we both decided we wanted to try it!  After watching the video, my husband decided that he already knew how to make it and then did his own thing without following that exact recipe.  His soup turned out to be REALLY, REALLY good, but still not the corn soup we were looking for.  It turned out to be more of a split pea soup, but again, it was incredibly tasty and filling and so I've decided to post his recipe here today!

Here is the recipe we saw on Facebook, if you're interested in trying it:

http://www.foodienationtt.com/carnivalcornsoup

But here is a loose recipe to follow if you'd like to replicate what my husband made today:

First he sauteed some onion and garlic in vegetable oil for a few minutes.  He then added dried split peas and continued to sautee them together for another 5 minutes.  He then added a few pieces of pieces of pumpkin (butternut squash), added a little bit of water, and brought it to a boil so that the peas and pumpkin became tender.  He added some chopped chives, salt, and pepper.  He then took it off the stove and put it in the blender for a few seconds until pureed.  He put the puree back over the stove in the pot and added about a cup of coconut milk (he made his own coconut milk for this recipe, but you can use the kind in the tin).  He also added pieces of salt fish that he had already boiled the salt out of and added corn kernels that he had cut directly off the cob.  He then added a sprig of thyme and some more chives, chopped carrots, the chunks of corn on the cob, and a cup of chicken broth.  He let it simmer for another 10 minutes.  In that time he made the dumpling and just dropped the pieces right into the soup.  He let it simmer on low for another 5-10 minutes.

Here's how the soup turned out today:

Mmmmmmmmmm!

The soup on low heat after mostly cooking and adding freshly made dumpling

My husband is a good dumpling maker! PS - this kind of dumpling is really just flour, water, and salt....this is NOT an Asian dumpling!

Pelau!!!!

If you're looking for a VERY tasty one-pot wonder, then you should try to make Pelau!  This authentic Caribbean rice dish is made lots of different ways throughout the Caribbean, but this is the method that I've adopted for our family and it's one of our favorites!

I like to use my deep dish Calphalon pan to make my Pelau in.  Nothing sticks to it and it's the perfect size for us to have dinner and leftovers in for the next day!  If you've never "browned" chicken, then you should definitely look up how to do it (burning brown sugar in some vegetable oil and then throwing the chicken in over it to get that deep "brown" coloring) or you can even buy "browning" in a jar at a local West Indian shop!  Even Publix here in Jacksonville now has an "International Foods" aisle that has West Indian products in it.  After browning my chicken (drummettes that were previously seasoned with homemade green seasoning and frozen), I throw in chopped onion and garlic, a couple sprigs of thyme and some green onions from my garden, and a whole can of pigeon peas.  I then add a ton of rice over it and mix it all together to get everything nice and brown for a few minutes.  Then I add half a tin of coconut milk, some chicken broth, and some boiled water, salt, and pepper and turn the stove down to slow cook the rice!  I also add about half a bag of frozen mixed vegetables to the mix!  This pot is the BEST when you add some pepper sauce to it directly, but since I always feed my two year old out of what we eat, we've started putting the pepper sauce over our own plates of food instead.  This recipe is super quick and easy and FILLING for the whole family!

Here's how the Pelau turned out!!!!

Completed plat of Pelau with some tomatoes and cucumbers!

Browned chicken, rice, pigeon peas, and mixed vegetable before adding the liquid

Browned chicken and seasoning with the rice

"Browning" or burning of the brown sugar

Here are the products I use!  Gotta love GOYA!

Chopped onions, garlic, thyme, and green onions

I also made a fresh garden salad to go with the meal and some homemade vinaigrette!  I posted the recipe for the salad dressing in a previous post!  It's really good, you should try it!

Weekend cross-cultural inspiration

The hubby has been craving some saltfish and cabbage and decided to make it this weekend.  It was AMAZING, but we still had leftovers the next day and decided to make it into a sandwich.  We had some great, fresh buns from Publix, and just put two great things together :)

My dad was also visiting for a few days and cut up the turnip and beets to make what we call in Egypt "lift", which is basically pickled turnips and beets.  He also cut up a meditteranean salad and I found this great Greek salad dressing recipe on pinterest and put that over the salad with a side of lift.

My husband also gets a craving for fresh lime juice on occasion, so we also made some of that.  We topped the sandwich off with some special hot sauce brought straight from Barbados for us from his Uncle!

It all made for a great meal!  My 2 year old also ate the saltfish and cabbage and loved it!  I made some white rice on the side and just mixed the saltfish right into it :)

Here's the pinterest recipe I used for the salad dressing:
http://www.littlebroken.com/2015/02/28/greek-vinaigrette/

The meal after it all came together!