Jamaican Brown Stew chicken

Fowl 

Finally posting this recipe to the blog, can’t believe it took me this long considering we cook this pretty often. Brown stew chicken is a Jamaican staple. You can find it in every cook shop and restaurant that serves traditional Jamaican cuisine. Everyone has their signature way of preparing it, here is mine.

Jamaican Brown Stew Fish

Something Smells Fishy...
 
Another Jamaican favorite is brown stew fish, a close cousin to steamed fish and my father’s favorite way to have a fresh snapper. With stew fish you get the best of both worlds, it basically combines fried fish and steamed fish into one lovely pot.

Jamaican Chicken Pumpkin Soup

“Pumpkin Everythang”

Pumpkin is such a widely used vegetable here in Jamaica; I’ve had pumpkin dumplings, fritters, rice, curry pumpkin, in steamed fish and foil roasted fish. You name it and pumpkin has been there. Now when it comes to soup, there is no way one can make any soup here, without the addition of pumpkin. It’s almost unheard of, an unwritten Jamaican rule. So much so that to make the task of having a pumpkin soup quicker a number of companies most notably Grace, makes a pumpkin soup sachet. The other day I saw a pumpkin and beef and a pumpkin and chicken flavor too; I chuckled.

Meatless Stew peas

M...eat...less

Have you ever been to your favorite Jamaican lunch spot to order a stew peas lunch and heard “di meat finish” But you order it anyway because the stew peas is so good? A meatless Jamaican stew pea’s, with no pig tails is such a travesty. However as much as we love our meat recipes, they have to be revamped to accommodate the palates of the “non-meater’s” in our lives. There is really not much to say about this one. I won’t sit here and pretend that this version is better than one filled with pig tails, oxtails and beef. However it does pack a huge amount of flavor considering its lacking in the salted meat department.

They call it Steamed fish

Something smells fishy...


As you can ascertain from the title I don’t consider this dish to be steamed fish at all. By ‘they’ I mean my Jamaican parents, grandparents, ancestors and every seafood restaurant in the country. While this is CLEARLY a fish stew and in no way a steamed fish, I have come to accept it for what it is and not question decades of Jamaican food history. Never the less this is one of my favorite ways to prepare fish second only to escovitch.

Oxtail stew

"Christmas is coming"

 What’s more delicious than the tail of a cow seasoned, browned and stewed?  Its truly a staple in Jamaica, not seasonal like sorrel and fruit cake, but consumed all year round, especially for Sunday and Christmas dinner.  Any good Jamaican restaurant (US or local) will serve oxtail as a lunch item, and if the restaurant cooks it especially well, please believe any lunch breaks falling after 1:30pm have a slim chance of getting any.  If you missed it during the week, and you have a loving cook at home, you can surely keep your hopes up for Sunday dinner. If your Sunday dinners consist of cereal or KFC then I’m sorry but you will have to wait till Christmas dinner to feast on the succulent bones.