Ted Meinhover Tedericco

10Jan/120

King Fish in Port Antonio

The rainy season makes it a little harder to enjoy the beaches of Portland, on the North Coast of Jamaica. But that can't stop us from indulging in the bounties of the sea!

Saturday had us at a nice place on the outskirts of Port Antonio, in the Parish of Portland, called Anna Banana. The king fish steak, steamed, was excellent.

4Sep/110

Snacking Through a Sunday

Sunday afternoon stirfrying, Jamaican veggies

 

 

Finally arrived in Kingston - FroYo!

Finally arrived in Kingston - FroYo!

Finally arrived in Kingston - FroYo!

My favorite Orange Seller, on Olivier Road

 

14Aug/110

Country Driving

23Jul/110

Another North Coast Jaunt

James Bond Beach

 

13Apr/110

Permaculture and Rastas in the Jamaican hills

The EITS Cafe (pronounced Eats) is the latest addition to the venture that already included the Mount Edge Guesthouse and the Food Basket Jamaica. The organic farm apparently grew out of the original guesthouse, and is becoming a bit of a mecca in the mountains overlooking Kingston for travelers, foodies, and environmentalists attracted by the organic lifestyle and the idea of a sustainable existence. It doesn't hurt that it is on a tropical Caribbean island, where a seen thrown in a hole has a good chance of quickly bearing fruit with very little encouragement.
The Cafe has, so far, only been open on the weekends, offering a custom menu each week based on whatever is available from the crops that week.
26Nov/100

Leftover Turkey?

Ah yes, the leftovers. Thanksgiving itself is always wonderful - the gathering of family and friends, a bit of leisure, and of course, the food. It is the latter that keeps on giving days after the actual celebration - there is always more food prepared than can be consumed at one time.

The turkey was not exactly easy to come by here in Jamaica, and it wasn't quite the same without my family around. But it was still good, and was especially tasty in today's stirfry with a bunch of Jamaican vegetables.

Happy Thanksgiving.

16Nov/100

More about fish

One of the local staff at work takes orders for fish from a local fisherman. Today he brought in parrot fish for me - always a bit of a gamble, trying a fish you've never seen that is named after something with feathers - but this time it paid off. Grilled with garlic and some liquid aminos, the meat is firm and a little bit tangy. (Note: it looked even better AFTER it was cooked...)

Jamaican Parrot fish, fresh from the sea

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14Nov/100

Morant Bay

The aesthetics of my noon time meal were memorable,

Steamed fish at Lyssons Beach, outside Morant Bay

Lyssons Beach

unfortunately, it was apparent the fish was not the freshest, and the meal was about a B. But that wasn't really the point. The point was that I was sitting outside eating a steamed fish on a rural beach on the south coast of Jamaica, tired and a bit gritty from the motorbike ride through the mountains and gullies of highway A4, which fallows the coast line.

30Sep/100

Kimchi in Jamaica, Kimchi Around the World!

Kimchi! It's really so easy that you don't really need a recipe. The bulk of it is normally cabbage, the chinese kind (but I've done it with regular green, and once with red, cabbage), but I also sometimes chop up and throw in cucumber, carrots, radishes, I've tried beets, apples, any other veggie or fruit that is relatively firm or fibrous that you want to try, for the most part. It's also common to put in green onion.

Kimchi in Kingston

Kimchi in Kingston, with cabbage, callaloo, lots of ginger

The other part is the flavoring, I use tons of ginger, chili flakes, some garlic. You want this stuff to coat as much of the other ingredients as possible, so I like to mix the spices together w/ a little liquid, sometimes the juice from a lemon, sometimes a little apple cider vinegar, sometimes even a little sesame oil, and pound it into a sort of paste.

The most important part of the whole process is the salt water solution. When you soak everything in a saline solution, it undergoes anaerobic fermentation - there is no oxygen. So it doesn't rot, like it would if there were oxygen, instead it sort of partly digests. That's why you want to pack the kimchi down when you're letting it sit and brew, to push out the air bubbles and prevent pockets of rotting.

OK, so chop up your cabbage into whatever sized chunks you want, put it all in a big ol' bowl, sprinkle the whole thing with sea salt, mix it all up to get the salt around, and let it sit for a while. In a little bit, mix up a salt solution. About 2 Tbls per 6 oz Cup of water is a decent ratio, but once you do it a couple times you can just taste it as you go. Cover the cabbage with the salt water, weighing it down with a plate so that it is all submerged. Let the cabbage soak for 3-6 hours, or even overnight.

After the cabbage is good and soaked, drain off all the water into another container, but save it. Mix all your other chopped ingredients together with the salty cabbage (it should taste salty). Put in your spice paste and mix it all together really well so that everything thing is coated with the chili/garlic/ginger/etc paste. I think the traditional kimchi will use the fermented chili paste in the spice paste, that is where the red color often comes from in kimchi. I don't have any here in Jamaica, however.

Now it's time to pack the whole mixture into the container you're going to use to brew. A big cylindrical ceramic pot is best, but I usually use a plastic one. Just don't use a metal one. Pack the mixture nice and tight into the container, pour the salt water over it until it is all submerged, and weight it down so that it all stays under water. You can use a plate, if it fits in the container, or you can also fill a zip lock bag with left over salt water and put that on top. You don't have to seal the container.

Let it sit for a day or two, give it a taste, and just let it brew until it's as tangy as you want it. There is a line to be crossed, however - you can let it sit for too long and it ferments too much. When it's where you want it, just stick it in the fridge to stop fermentation. You can pack into smaller jars if you want.

29Aug/101

Tropical Storms, Island Life

The fact that I am on a Caribbean island, easy to forget sometimes when you've been inside all day, was driven home this morning, the first hours of a hot, sunny Sunday that found me wandering down to the small shopping center to read the Sunday paper, when the air suddenly cracked with a violent thunder that set off hundreds of car alarms across the city and the sky opened to a torrent of rain and wind.

After standing outside of the market for half an hour, grocery bag in hand, I decided to break down and buy an umbrella from the scruffy fellow selling them - he had been watching me, tempting me, patiently waiting as my capacity to wait out the storm gave way to my boredom. In any case, by the time I made it back home I was soaked anyway, and, due to the inadequate drainage in Kingston that sees the streets turn to rivers at the slightest precipitation, my shoes gushed with water.

It was a good morning none the less, though. I found, to my great pleasure, a nearby cafe that not only had wifi, allowing me to read the Sunday NY Times, but served up the fabulous Blue Mountain coffee.

Filed under: Jamaica, Makanan 1 Comment