For a "staycation" in the Caribbean on your dining room table or deck, January 11, 2010
With the majority of my cookbooks, I seek out books that have
ingredients that are easy to find, insructions that are uninvolved, and
comfort foods. However, there are a few standout cookbooks that might
throw in some ingredients I need to make a special trip to find, and
are worth it.
This is one and it is worth it. But don't get me wrong, you'll have
many of the ingredients in your pantry and fridge now. But you'll also
discover dishes that might require a jaunt to the Asian food market or
the internet and are worth the work to "make it happen" such as the
ingredients "Annona Puree" or "Cherimoya" for the goat cheese spread.
But these are recipes that bring the taste of fine dining to your home
in my opinion. The book notes that the author is a chef and that
shows...the dishes burst with many flavors and sauces and that is the
reason I gave the book 5 stars. This is a unique cookbook but it stands
true to the flavors of the Caribbean.
We recently got a "Big Green Egg" for our deck which is an odd
cross between a grill, clay cookery, and a smoker. In spite of it being
freezing outside, we've been keeping it busy a couple nights a week
ever since. This cookbook made me happy with great choices of island
style sauces and rubs and seasonings such as the Jack Daniels basting
glaze, jerk seasoning, mojo marinade, sun coast seafood spice rub, etc.
which was my goal for this island cookbook addition to my already
massive cookbook collection.
But don't think it's a sauce or seasoning cookbook. That is just
one of the many components. Granted, many of the recipes call for
sauces that are made from other recipes in the book, but that's the
beauty of it. You can make a sauce to baste on chicken one night and
then utilize the sauce another night as the base of an entire recipe.
As one would expect in a Caribbean inspired cookbook, there are several
combos of fish with the sweetness of island sauces or fruit, such as
the pineapple coconut salmon, which is nothing short of gorgeous and a
wealth of flavors that fuse perfectly. There are also meat and chicken
dishes that pop with the heat of chiles which is always welcome in this
Austin home.
There are recipes for grill basting, oven recipes, and stovetop
dishes. There is everything from salads to kabobs to towering
sculptural main dishes and some of the most unique side dishes packed
with flavor I've seen.
There are photos interspersed throughout the book on some of the
dishes that give ideas of serving them truly "5 star restaurant style".
Though there is no nutritional info in the book, as a weight loss
coach I can say that one of the good things about the book is that
flavor is infused in dishes without needing to smother proteins in
anything artificial or unhealthy in most cases.
Bottom line: yeah, I had to buy some ingredients like "Caribbean
oil" or "pickled ginger" but once in a blue moon I consider recipe
collections worth a few special trips or internet searches to get the
right flavors and this one, in my opinion, is. These are original
recipes but they concentrate on solid bursts of flavor combos that make
dinner time truly a Caribbean "staycation".
The book is almost 200 pages long
