Caribbean recipes 158

My favorite is Red Snapper with a Caribbean or Yucatan style Sour Orange, Cumin and Chile sauce poured over a lightly fried fillet of snapper. I say Caribbean or Yucatan style because it depends on how I feel like making it that day. The Caribe style has more spices like Allspice, Cinnamon and Clove in it. Yucatan style I made with Anchoite paste or an Annatto seed oil. Both use the Serrano or Habanero/ Scotch Bonnet chile for the heat (sparingly for me) . Red beans and Rice with a Sweet Potato (Yam ) fritter are favorite sides. Second favorite is Jerk, either pork or chicken. and my second, second favorite is Cuban pork followed by mojo isleno (fried fish with Puerto Rican sauce). The sauce is usually made with olives and olive oil, onions, pimientos, capers, tomato sauce, vinegar, garlic and bay leaves, then served with a side of pl‡tanos. There are so many good dishes from each of the Islands culture but they all tend to share ideas and flavors.

www.epicurious.com has one of the better basic collections I have found to start on a Caribbean cooking adventure

You sure it was SE Asian (Thai and Vietnamese) flavors? After the Slave trade was abolished in the late 1700s, Indentured servants from India and Indonesia were brought to the Caribbean to work the sugar cane fields bringing a lot of new spices and flavors to the rapidly growing Creole culture. You might consider it splitting hairs but it was probably a Creole influence not Cajun. there is a difference between Cajun and Creole. more so when talking food:

are the country cooking of Louisiana, highlighted by dirty rice, gumbos, jambalaya, andouille (pronounced ahnd-wee or ahn-do-wee, it's a spicy smoked sausage) and simple foods such as fried catfish. Cajun cooking traditionally uses pork fat and simpler ingredients.

Creole is the food of the city, a more refined cuisine represented by Oysters Rockefeller, Shrimp Remoulade and Bananas Foster. It traditionally used the butter available to the wealthy Creoles, and more expensive ingredients.

Some people will tell you that if a dish has tomatoes, it's Creole, not Cajun. That isn't always true. Tomatoes have been known to turn up in jambalaya or gumbo, which are both Cajun. Both Cajun and Creole use the "Holy Trinity" of New Orleans cooking: green peppers, onions and celery. They both also rely on the roux (pronounced 'Roo) as the base of the dish. A Roux is simply flour cooked in fat, either pork fat or butter, until it browns. This adds flavor and thickness to the dish". Blackened is a tourist thing make up by a drunk overweight chef pbutting off a burnt fish in NOLA in the 70s! Since then some still buy into the myth .