Sizzling Chicken Fajita Salad

I am doing all kinds of happy dances today over this recipe.  As much as I love looking at pretty pictures of food, when it comes time to roll up my sleeves and get down to cooking dinner, I want stuff that's REAL. That means I shouldn't have to make a run to the store for specialty ingredients, nor should I have to enroll in cooking school to learn a complicated cooking technique. Flights of cooking fancy are all well and good but sometimes despite the drool worthy photo, the recipe itself may not be practical. 

Exhibit A: How many of you thought I was crazy to make this?

Or what about this?

Oh my word, I can't even believe myself on that last one!

I am amazed that no one left a comment that said, "Lady you are CRAZY!"

Bless your hearts. I am grateful that you are such kind readers

In my defense I only take leave of my senses like that when I am on vacation and have oodles of time on my hands. The rest of the time, I am pretty much like any other working mom looking for food that I can bring to the table quick step.

As soon as I saw this chicken fajita recipe over at realmomkitchen I knew it would be crazy not to try it.

All you do is season chicken, cut up vegetables, toss everything in the oven and done.

In an effort to eat a little healthier I am trying to turn some of my favourite meals into salads.

Pizza salad anyone? See how that works?

This chicken fajita recipe easily adapts and becomes a salad.

Tried it. Liked it. Now go do it!

Chicken Fajita Salad
Servings 4

1 pound boneless chicken thighs, cut into strips
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 or 2 tsp chili powder (optional)
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp dried oregano
3/4 tsp salt
I large yellow or purple onion
1 large green bell pepper (seeded and sliced)
2 large red bell peppers(seeded and sliced)
4 tortillas
4 ounces such as shredded pepper jack cheese
4 ounces sour cream
5 cups lettuce (shredded)

METHOD
Season chicken with oil, chili, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, salt and garlic. Place in a greased 13' X 19' casserole dish and let marinate in the fridge for 30 mins.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F

Chop the peppers and onions. Add this to the chicken just before it is ready for the oven. Stir and turn over the vegetables with the chicken to coat with spice mixture.

Place the casserole dish in oven and. Bake uncovered for 30 - 35 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. During the last few minutes of cooking warm tortillas and cut into triangles to serve alongside the salad. Serve on a bed of lettuce with a dollop of sour cream.

COOKS TIP: My children don't like the heat of the chili powder so I omit it and sprinkle pepper flakes over my own serving.

Tropical Eton Mess

It is ridiculous how much I love curd.

I love meringues too but really it's all about curd.

I go crazy for passion fruit, lemon, tangerine...... any kind of curd so long as there is a egg rich, creamy, buttery,  conglomeration of sweet and sour.

I can't seem to stop of dreaming up recipes that use curd.

Yes, my life is in fact THAT boring. You may take a moment to roll your eyes and appreciate the fact that I need therapy.

However while you contemplate the superior lameness that is my life, might I interest you in a dessert recipe that takes just 2 mins to throw together?

Uhmm...oh yeah, it uses curd.

Tropical Eton Mess
Servings: 4 messes:-)

Ingredients
1 cup cream chilled
4 large meringue nests
3/4 cup passion fruit curd ( or whatever flavour you prefer)
pomegranate molasses (optional)

METHOD
Beat the cream in a chilled stainless steel bowl until thick.
Layer some crushed meringue, 2 tablespoons curd and 3 tablespoons cream in serving glasses. Drizzle pomegranate molasses over the top. Serve immediately.

COOKS TIP:
If you are wondering where in Trinidad you can get meringue nests follow this link to my amazing baker friend Simply Edible. She'll hook you up no problem.

3 Tips to Get your Kids to Eat Everything

Around here we have a spirit of adventure about food. Quite a few times my friends will express disbelief that my children actually eat everything that I prepare and post here. They absolutely do - sometimes with a little more urging than at other times but I can assure you that we all eat the same meal. I am not saying that I never have meal time battles, I am just saying that we are progressing towards where they happen less often. Enough people have asked me how I get my children to eat the food that I prepare so I thought I might share a few things that work for me.

First off, this did not happen by accident. When my children were babies I had a very clear philosophy about food that I wanted them to embrace. You see, as a child I was a picky eater.  However I grew into an adult that loves and appreciates a wide variety of food and I wanted the same for my children. I grew up thinking that I did not like a lot of things until I realized that I needed to train my palette to appreciate certain foods. Upon reflection, I realized that most of the what that I hated were foods with a bitter taste such as watercress, melongene, bhaji (amaranth) and caralli (bitter gourd). The other category of foods on my hate list were those with an earthy flavour, such as beets and liver. I recently had the displeasure of tasting arugula. Arugula definitely falls into the earthy category, ugh. Could someone not have warned me that the thing tastes like manure?!!! Peppery manure but still, gah!

Start early. Train children's taste buds to appreciate sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami tastes. My mother-in-law thought I was crazy when I led with pureed spinach and not mashed bananas. My thinking was that babies are a blank palette without any preconceived notions about food. They take their cues from the adults in their lives and can be taught from a very young age to love a wide variety of things.

I chose to start with what I considered to be the more difficult tastes to acquire. After all no one really needs to learn to like sweet. It seems to me that we all have an innate tendency to like sweet and salty things, don't we? Thus, I introduced those tastes last and in moderate amounts. When considering new foods you should also offer a variety of textures. I didn't do as well on that. As a result my children are more likely to balk at a strange texture more than a foreign taste. Can I tell you that peanut butter is a difficult sell around here because of that.

Expose your children to a wide variety of food. More importantly let them see that you are excited to try new foods. Of course we couldn't afford to eat like this everyday but once I see something new, you can be sure I get excited to bring it to the table at least once. I have never had asparagus before. It doesn't grow here and I have only ever seen canned asparagus in the supermarket. Naturally when I saw fresh asparagus for the first time, I immediately brought some home to try it.

  

Introduce new foods alongside something on their plate that they like. Our table rule is that you don't have to like it but you DO have to TASTE it. You must take at least 3 bites before you will be allowed to push it aside. I  point out to my children that there are foods that I do not like but in order to be healthy and have a balanced diet I still have to eat them.

Having stuff on the plate that you know they will like, ensures that they don't leave the table hungry and the entire meal is not a huge battle. Don't make a big deal of the uneaten portion. In the early stages my husband and I let them see us eating their leftovers. When they were toddlers we would ham it up a bit and say things like. "You don't like carilli. No problem, that just means more for me. Yum!'

Nutritionists will tell you that it takes 10 to 15 tries - possibly more for a child to start eating and eventually like a new food. The key here is not to stress and have lots of patience. In the mean time I suggest you dish out a smaller serving for yourself so that you can be prepared to consume the leftovers and not have it go to waste.

As the months went by, my children became less resistant to new foods and we encouraged more bites. I have read that the French attitude when someone doesn't like a particular food is to say, "You just haven't tried it enough times." I don't know about that. I grew up not liking liver and I am of the opinion that it was offered to me too often. Groan, I still don't like liver - let's not tell the kids! However I do now enjoy all the bitter foods that I once hated.
 
What is your personal philosophy about food? Are you yourself a picky eater? Are there foods you avoid?

Karbanátky ( Czech Meat Patties)

It's a little late in the year to be talking to you about a meal that I had nine months ago, isn't it? Yet these simple fried meat patties made such an impression on me that they have now been added to my regular meal rotation.  Way back in January my friend's dad made us these Karbanátky which he served with a potato salad ,home-made pickles and a dollop of sour cream. It's not a flashy meal, nor is it the least bit gourmet but that is exactly why it appeals. It is uncomplicated and easy enough to throw together. Vlad shared his recipe with me in the manner that is typical of experienced home cooks.....a little of this, a lot of that, and a pinch and a dash of some other stuff. I did not write down the recipe but I did remember that it was a basic hamburger patty which was rolled in breadcrumbs and fried. 

Most online sources for this recipe list marjoram as one of the ingredients. Unfortunately this herb is not readily available in Trinidad, so I substituted with our local green seasoning. A Czech acquaintance has assured me that each home does them a little bit differently so substituting with the green seasoning is just fine. I don't measure the ingredients when I am making this but I am aware that less experienced cooks might want a more specific guide so I have attempted to provide you with amounts.  

Karbanátky
Servings: 6-8

1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork

or you can use just one kind of meat if you prefer

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 medium onion finely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced

* 1 tsp each salt free onion and garlic powder can be substituted for the minced garlic and onion.

1 tsp majoram (or green seasoning)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 cup of breadcrumbs or cassava farine
extra bread crumbs to coat the karbanátky before frying
oil for frying

In a bowl combine the meat, worcestershire sauce, onion, garlic, marjoram (or green seasoning) salt, mustard, pepper. Cover and set aside overnight or 1/2 hour in the fridge.

When ready to fry the patties remove the meat from the fridge. Mix in the bread crumbs and egg.  Form into hamburger patties, pressing a slight depression into the center of each to ensure even cooking. Roll each patty in bread crumbs.

Heat oil in a non stick medium skillet. Use medium high heat. Fry the patties about 4 minutes on each side until brown and cooked all the way through.

Fat Pork Jam

It has been a fruitful holiday. We have been stuffing our faces with mangoes, West Indian cherries, yellow plums, and guavas. Wars are being fought over the few remaining sugar apples. 

One  uncommon fruit which we found on a drive through the country side was fat pork.  Bite into it and the unusual texture of it's interior, white pulp will clue you in as to the name. The taste is insipid and to be honest it doesn't inspire a second bite. It looks it but doesn't taste like pork fat. The weird, floury texture is only very mildly sweet with a flavour that is barely detectable. The rest of the Caribbean calls these fruit cocoplums. It is something that I remember foraging as a child, although now I cannot for the life of me remember why! 

Foraging, apparently it's a thing. Back when I was a child. It didn't have a name. It was just something we did. Mom and Dad you might want to look away for this part. Sampling little bits of wild, edible, plants and their fruits was a childhood game which was meant to gross out friends. 

Does anyone remember eating the transparent seed coat of the Pride of Barbados seeds? We called it Dead Man's flesh. Yum. There is that 'ick' factor that's so gosh darn appealing to kids~ especially boys.  Reportedly, all parts of the Pride of Barbados plant are toxic but we didn't know that as children. It's a wonder any of us survived childhood! How about sucking the nectar out of the Ixora flowers or eating 'cheese' (pollen) from the stamen of hibiscus flowers? So tell me are there any strange things which you ate as a child that have you questioning your sanity today?

Back to present day and the point of me buying a large quantity of a fruit that my son says tastes like mashed potatoes. 

He is not wrong.

I don't much care for it myself but I had heard that one could use this fruit to make jam. 

How was it? Well, we all liked it. While not likely to replace our all time favourite strawberry or guava jams, it was pretty decent jam.  I would describe it as having a mild rose flavour with slightly woodsy notes.  Part of me wants to call this by its other name and say cocoplum jelly. That sounds a lot more sophisticated and grown up, doesn't it? However the kid in me...

I can't help myself - the shock factor of offering someone a spoonful of Fat Pork Jam is proving to be just too irresistible. 

Fat Pork Jam

(yield about 1 cup)

*No actual pigs were harmed in the making of this jam.

Ingredients

75 fat pork (cocoplums)

2 tsp lemon juice

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 cup sugar

Method

Put the fat pork into into a deep pot filled with water ~ just enough to cover the plums. Boil for about 3 mins. . After allowing it to cool, use clean hands  to smash the fruit and remove the seeds. Pass the remaining pulp through a sieve removing the larger bits of pulp and skin. To this fruit sludge, add 2 tsp lemon juice, 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon and 1 cup of sugar. Cook until jam is set. Click here for useful tips for knowing when your jam is ready