how corn you're bean such a jerk, chicken?

(originally from may 26th 2011.)

caribbean jerk chicken, black bean rice and corn. 

you know that whole OMG-I-CAN’T-WAIT feeling that normal people get about birthdays, christmas and vacations? well, that’s how i feel when i buy a new cookbook. i usually spend the entire car ride home from the book store flipping through it’s pages and salivating. usually while i’m not driving. usually. 

this week, after meandering through the selection of books at chapters for several hours, i bought jamie oliver’s latest book. i then spent the night curled up in bed with it and got to know it better ;) of course, by that i mean: i read through it thoroughly, added some notes in pencil and sticky-noted the crap out of it. 

it has a million and six recipes in it and i’ve decided to cook my way through it in one year. just kidding, julia child. but i did cook out of it last night. 

we have a jerk chicken sauce at pizza pizza for our chicken bites and i have fallen in love with it. we’re thinking a fall wedding in a forest among the autumn leaves. jamie oliver must have found out about this and that’s why he put a recipe for jerk chicken in his book. what? it’s possible. anyways, i love the sauce and wanted to try making it on my own. 

the recipe starts with the jerk sauce which has more ingredients than the average grocery store aisle: 4 scallions, fresh thyme, 3 bay leaves, a teaspoon of ground cloves, nutmeg, allspice, 1/ 3 cup of white wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon of honey, 4 cloves of garlic, a seeded scotch bonnet chile and 1/3 cup of golden rum. as i do with every recipe, i have to add something to make it my own - this time it was cinnamon and brown sugar. 

please note: i take no responsibility for any bankruptcy that may result from having to buy all of these ingredients.

now, when i read this i thought “awesome, rum in my sauce - gon’ git crunk” okay, no i didn’t. but i thought it sounded like a nice little sauce. the sauce had other plans. poor naive theresa. 

so you take all of those ingredients and you blend them. 

i included a before picture for two reasons: 1) the after looked a little like vomit and 2) when i opened the blender with my camera in hand, i was nearly knocked on my ass. 

this sauce is HOT. and i don’t mean oh-dear-i-need-a-wee-sip-of-water hot, i mean keep-a-hose-handy and burn-holes-in-your-nasal-passage hot. it could be used to revive the unconscious. or the dead.

so after lurching backwards like a spooked horse, i approached the blender again with caution. i decided to taste it to make sure that it wasn’t just the smell that was strong. mistake. as should have been clear from the smell, the taste was eight kinds of excruciatingly hot. i really need to be clear here, this is a kind of hot i have never experienced before. if i had any military secrets, i would have talked.

after guzzling some milk, i assessed my options: i could throw it out and try again or i could risk my family’s lives and use it anyway. i chose the latter. HEY! THERE WAS RUM IN THERE! GOOD RUM! chef or not, i’m still a student - alcohol is of great value to me. 

so i took the risk and poured that sauce into a baking pan and put some chicken on top of it. yeah, i might have been crazy enough to use it anyway, but there was no way i was pouring this hellish sauce ON the chicken or heaven forbid marinating the chicken IN it. i prayed to the divine powers (god, buddha, tom cruise) that resting the chicken on top of the sauce and brushing a bit of it on top might allow us to survive the meal. 

i topped it with some rosemary and cooked it for about 30 minutes at 425, turning it about halfway through while trying to stir up as little of the sauce as possible. 

next, the rice. start by chopping up a couple scallions or 1/4 of an onion and throwing it in a pan at medium high with some olive oil. invite sally and pepperann to join the party.

after that starts to bubble, add a whole cinnamon stick and stir this until the onions/scallions brown. then add 1 1/2 cups of rice and 2 1/2 cups of chicken broth and turn down the heat to just under medium. then add a can of drained black beans. you can use any beans you like, really. but i’m not a racist.

let this simmer. it should take about 20 minutes for the rice to plump up. add more broth or water if it dries out. you don’t want skinny, hard rice. my name is theresa and i support rice obesity. oh yeah, and i added a bit of clove, thyme and 1/4 cup of coconut milk at the end. cooking is the only time that i excel at addition. poor mathematically handicapped me. 

NEXT, while you’re waiting on your rice and chicken, start on the corn. you can leave it in the husk or peel it so it’s huskless. (i have decided that this is in fact a word) boil it in a pot of water with a few tablespoons of sugar. when it’s done, take it out and throw it on the barbecue for a bit of added flava flav.

just leave it on long enough to brown the kernels a bit. but be careful, because apparently corn pops. i know this must be as shocking a revelation to you as it was to me. also, if you have luck like me, it may pop directly down your shirt and burn you. feel free to dance around like a maniac to free yourself from this torture. i have found this to be effective and the wildlife in my backyard have found this to be disturbing. once the corn is done, or you’re ready to get inside and ice your charred chest, the chicken and the rice should be ready.

plate and serve like so:

the reviews:

rather than living up to my saintly name and telling my family about their possible impending demise akin to being burned at the stake, i decided it was best to let them try the chicken first :)

crisis averted. it turns out the sauce was only hot by itself and not on the chicken. this is lucky for me, since i have not yet mastered the art of laundry or car repair and thus have further use for my parents.

while at first i was just grateful that the spice wasn’t going to kill us (thank you, tom cruise) the chicken turned out not only to be edible and survivable but delicious. having 37283047382 spices in it gave the sauce different layers. it was hot from the pepper, but at the same time it was sour from the vinegar and sweet from the honey and sugar. so many fantastic layers - like a parfait, donkey. 

the only criticism i have is that the chicken was a little dry because i had done everything in my power to keep it far from the jerk sauce. my resolution: only use half or a 1/4 of the scotch bonnet chile. then you can use as much as you want and have moist chicken without fearing for your life :) 

my mama liked the chicken. she said the spice was just right, goldilocks. to my dismay didn’t care for the rice, but she’s a wierdo. any time she doesn’t watch me cook something, she becomes convinced that i have added coriander and cumin (her two most despised spices) to it. while i am skilled at deception and despise picky eaters, 007 theresa did not add these things to the rice. thus, liz remains a lunatic. since she financially backed this dinner, she will live to tell this tale. 

my dad liked the chicken as well. he had all the legs and said that they were better than the chicken breasts. i scribbled this into my harriet the spy notebook for future reference. in other news, he loved the rice. so much so that he rationed our portions so he could eat it for lunch today. we’re stuck in the great depression at the cesareo home. he then proceeded to forget his lunch at home today and i had to bring it to him because he was so looking forward to it. 

finally, the corn was corn. i sprayed mine with a bit of pam (yes, pam) and added some smoked paprika to make it a little more exciting. 

for dessert, i served some tropical fruits to keep things island-themed and irie. google it. 

all in all, a pretty spectacular island inspired meal based on a recipe by an englishman. and prepared by an italian. i wasn’t aware i have become such an advocate for racial diversity. hmm. i’m a good person. 

well, that’s what was cooking at home last night!

thanks for reading :)