Jamaican Entree
PEPPER POT
INGREDIENTS
1 chicken breast
2 garlic cloves
1 medium yellow onion
1 tablespoon olive oil (1/2 tablespoon more later)
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1 large fresh red tomato
1 small sweet potato
2 ounces kale (about 2/3 of a bunch at my supermarket)
2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon scotch bonnet sauce
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 bay leave
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cilantro
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/2 tablespoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1 8 ounce can kidney beans, drained
UTENSIL
Dutch oven
PREPARATION
Chop chicken into 1/2-inch cubes. Mince garlic cloves and onions. Dice tomatoes. Peel and dice sweet potato. Remove leaves from kale’s stem and cut them into small pieces. (Sorry, your food processor does a poor job on kale leaves.)
Put 1 tablespoon olive oil in Dutch oven. Cook chicken cubes, garlic, and onion at medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until chicken begins to brown and has changed color on the inside. Remove chicken/garlic/onion and set aside.
Put 1/2 tablespoon olive oil in Dutch oven. Add tomatoes, potato, and kale. Cook on medium-high for about 5 minutes. Add chicken broth, scotch bonnet sauce, coconut milk, allspice, bay leaves, black pepper, brown sugar, celery seed, chili powder, cilantro, coriander, ginger, sea salt, thyme, and kidney beans.
Add chicken/garlic/onion to Dutch oven. Bring to boil at high heat, stirring frequently. Lower temperature to low-warm and simmer for 30 minutes. Cover and stir occasionally. (You will need to, of course, remove the lid to stir the contents of the Dutch oven. If you don’t need to take off the lid to stir, please let me know. A Nobel Prize in Physics would look very nice on my mantlepiece.)
TIDBITS
1) Scotch bonnet peppers are about 40 times hotter than the esteemed jalapeño pepper.
2) That’s important information to know if you’ve been dared to eat the scotch bonnet pepper at a party. You’ve got to ask your taste buds, “Do you feel lucky today?”
3) And if you eat the fiery pepper without the aid of milk to coat the pain receptors in your mouth, the knowledge that these peppers possess a deeply inverted rounded apex won’t help you at all.
4) However, as you stagger around the party, sweat streaming down your burning face, other parts of your body are benefitting from the helpful fruit. You see, the mighty scotch bonnet pumps goodly amounts of vitamins B and C, iron, niacin, thiamine, magnesium, and riboflavin.
5) These vitamins help bobsledding athletes excel.
6) Jamaican athletes eat scotch bonnet peppers while British athletes never eat them. Jamaica has a better bobsledding team.
7) So eat your scotch bonnets if you wish to enter the Winter Olympics.
8) You might want to eat the fiery peppers as part of a meal such as this one.
9) If you do enter the Winter Olympics because you ate this recipe, please let me know. I’ll be sure to watch and cheer for you.
10) My wife recently won the challenge at Orochon Ramen Restaurant in Los Angeles by eating a huge bowl of their spiciest ramen in 30 minutes; a feat accomplished by only fifty-four others. I am proud to say her picture now hangs on the restaurant’s Wall of Bravery. You can find out more about this dish by watching an episode from the show, Man v. Food.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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