Thursday, 29 May 2008

Tried & Tasted: Tastes Like Home Caribbean Sunday Lunch

Tried and Tasted is a brand new monthly event hosted by Zlamushka of Zlamushka's Spicy Kitchen. Every month Zlamushka nominates one blog - and the entrants recreate and blog recipes from the chosen blog. For the first month the chosen blog is Tastes Like Home. This was a perfect choice for me - I have never cooked Caribbean food before - though have long had it on my list; I had never visited Cynthia's blog before - and now I have another addition to my google reader; and I could indulge my love of hot food... excellent!

It's a great idea - and I've had a great time playing around with these recipes. The hot pepper sauce was something I made outside of the event - though I have decided to include it in my little round up as it was so good it deserved a second mention!

In fact - I ended up using it even more than expected. On Sunday morning I realised I was out of chillies. Seriously - to me that is like running out of salt or something - I always have some in the fridge! So instead, I turned to the hot sauce and walloped a teaspoon into the fried salt fish and half a teaspoon into the buljol. Wow - was it ever good!! The scotch bonnets gave it had an altogether different heat from my usual Thai chillies - and it had a beautiful fruity flavour to back up the burn!

So I present you with....

My Carribean Sunday Lunch!

What a spread!





Fried Salt Fish
This was my favourite of the lot - deeply spicy, lovely chunks of salt cod simmered in tomatoes and onions. And a spoonful of scotch bonnet pepper sauce of course ;) It went absolutely perfectly with the bakes - I will be making this again. And once the fish is desalted, it's super quick to make!

Buljol
This is a cold salad of boiled and flaked salt fish, with peppers, spring onions, onions and tomatoes. (And hot sauce ;) I think I needed to flake the fish more - but I did enjoy the flavours a lot!
Oiled Paratha Roti

I was so impressed with how well these turned out! - I didn't get a picture, but they were beautifully flakey inside, and tasted gorgeous. Not too oily - which I was a little concerned about. In fact not oily at all, just a really nice texture!

Guyanese Bakes

Why are they called bakes when they are deep fried?

Don't care - they're lovely!

Cythia's original!

Thank you Zlamushka for thinking up and hosting this amazing event - I look forward to more!

And many many thanks to Cynthia for her recipes and also for her help when I was making them!