D'Yer Mak'Er Chicken

I'd been off the radar or totally off the grid you might say. I'd been there in that place for most of a working week give or take a few extra days. Phone signal was limited, Wi-Fi was partial but scenic walks, fresh Apples, fresh Damsons, locally produced cider and bitter as well as quality pubs were plentiful. There was no question that it was a positive break for me, and my dog, and it gave me some much needed thinking time.

It's always good to come home though, especially when it's your home. Having been inspired by tasting a Venison Pie laced with Scotch Bonnet Chillies while I was on my travels I decided to make a spicy dish that is essentially a vegetarian version of the famous Jamaican recipe Jerk Chicken.

On my return home a mail order delivery of Blur's 1995 effort The Great Escape, which I had last heard as a sophomore politics student thirteen years earlier, awaited me on my welcome mat in a Jiffy Bag. The album was stuck on the player immediately. It boosts many excellent singles such as "Charmless Man", "Stereotypes", "The Universal" and "Country House" which was the record that won the famous Britpop battle with Oasis for the coveted number one spot in the charts all those years ago. There are some great album tracks as well like "Top Man" which, like many tracks seems to be written about suburban characters and the minutiae of their lives living in new build houses in the suburbs of Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire or any other similar area of Middle or Southern England you might care to think of.

The first thing to do after initial preparation of the vegetables and herbs listed below was to mix them with all the spices a fruit shown below into a paste in my Le Cresceut dish. The paste consisted of the following:

3 finely diced Garlic Cloves.
1 sliced up White Onion.
Tablespoon of Nutmeg.
Tablespoon of Cinnamon.
3 diced Scotch Bonnet Chillies with all the seeds removed.
Juice of 3 Limes.
1 Lime halved.
2 ounces of Raw Root Ginger peeled and diced up.
2 Sprigs of Thyme.

I then fried the paste in the Le Cresceut on the hob on a medium heat for thirty minutes stirring the paste regularly to stop it sticking to the bottom of the dish. I at the same time put two Quorn Chicken Fillets on top of the paste. In order to make sure the recipe was properly cooked and the various spicy flavours were locked into the dish I kept the Le Cresceut lid on for most of the time the food was cooking.

When the "Mock Jerk" was ready I served it with a side of White Rice that had red Kidney Beans mixed into it. The Rice and the Beans were crucial for giving plenty of protein and also some stodge to the dish which helped balance the extreme spice of the ingredients that came out of the Le Cresceut. I find that any dish which contains fresh Ginger to have a really strong flavour and this meal was no exception and the flavour was enhanced by the powerful Scotch Bonnet Chillies which lived up to their reputation as being some of the strongest chillies available for legal consumption.

A good contrast in the mixture was the more neutral taste of the Quorn Chicken Fillets while the Lime, Cinnamon and Nutmeg added an exotic flavour to the dish without making them seem like they should be just confined to being in a sweet dish.

This is certainly a dish for those who like their food strong and flavoursome and that means that if, like me, you like your food prepared in this way then you'll love this twist on a traditional dish.

Plenty of spice, Rice, Beans and a complimentary lime.