Chicken saag

So how am I going to start this entry off, given that the recipe is a spinach curry, and many of my blog entry intros have focused on childhood TV memories? If only there was a connection between spinach and some children's TV character...

Hello sailor!
Source: https://popeye.fandom.com/wiki/Popeye

So, I mentioned Captain Haddock from Tintin in a recent recipe as being the ultimate in matelot cliche, but really, in terms of sailor-based cartoon characters, there can be only one: Popeye. He is a dying breed, the salty seadog with his one good eye, his over-developed forearms and his very idiosyncratic way of talking (is it an accent or is it a speech impediment? I need to know!). Don't get me wrong, someone who can achieve what he achieves as a disabled man is an inspiration, but those forearms are a bit odd. I mean, you only get muscles that big if you're training them. To get to that unnatural size, you need some serious external stimulus, like steroids or lots of exercise, or a combination of the two. It's obvious he's been doing lots of work on his grip strength. Now, if you're familiar with this blog, you'll have some idea where you think I'm going with this, but you'd be wrong. I'm obviously talking about weight training, where he's clearly working on this aspect of his musculature. Saying that, and looking at his physique, it's clear he regularly skips leg day, probably because he's too occupied with the monumental amount of wanking he was doing to continue to develop his forearms to that extent on the days it's not arm-day. OK, I did go there, but at least I didn't do a pun on the word "seamen".

He's not the only character that appears in his adventures, though. Olive Oyl, his on/off girlfriend was actually created first (in 1919, so she's looking pretty good for a centenarian) and managed 10 years before Popeye popped onto the scene and promptly took over her strip to make it his own. Fuck the patriarchy. The poor girl looks like she needs a good meal inside her, which is ironic for someone who's name is a form of cooking fat. Then there's his arch nemesis, Bluto. Bluto is clearly a troubled man. Troubled mainly by morbid obesity and 'roid rage it seems. I'm sure he's the role model for many blokes, as he is the epitome of toxic masculinity. However, you just know that behind closed doors he bawls his eyes out whilst furiously masturbating because his Mum didn't hug him enough, rendering him unable to share his feelings. There's probably also some closet homosexuality in there somewhere, given his bear-like characteristics.

Beauty and the Beast
Olive Oyl and Bluto
Sources of images: https://heroes-and-villians.fandom.com/wiki/Olive_Oyl and https://comicvine.gamespot.com/bluto/4005-12754/

Obviously, as anyone knows, Popeye himself doesn't indulge in steroids. No, he follows a more natural, holistic approach to performance enhancing substances.You know what I'm talking about. He's addicted to the "superfood", spinach, long before some hipster twat with a beard and an ironic pair of plus-fours invented the term . I mean, it has a reputation for being a superfood in modern parlance, because of its trace nutrients, particularly iron. There is some mythology behind this. Modern folklore states that there was an error in reporting the iron content in spinach when the German chemist responsible, Emil von Wolff, purportedly put a decimal place in the wrong place, suggesting spinach contained 10x more iron than it actually had. More recently this myth has itself been debunked, and, rather than a transcription error related to the decimal point, the amount of iron was over-estimated because of poor science and contamination from the experimental aparatus used. This widely-held belief in the erroneously high iron content at the time was supposedly the reason spinach was favoured by our hero, though a little thumbnail calculation would have suggested this to be bollocks. To put it another way, the amount of iron reported to be present in a 100g portion of spinach was 35mg when the actual amount is 3.5mg/100g. 35mg of iron amounts to about about 1% of the total amount in an adult human or 3.5mm of a standard paperclip.

A paperclip
Tastes better than a tin of spinach. Eat this and you too could be Iron Man
Source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/paperclip

From a personal point of view, and because of the apparent potency of spinach in Popeye cartoons, as a child I mithered my parents to buy a tin of spinach for years. Finally they relented and we had it. It was disgusting. The paperclip is actually a more appetisng prospect.

Anyway, coming back to the recipe in hand, saag is yet another one of the standard curries you get from your local Indian takeaway. Because of my early traumatic exposure to spinach mentioned above, I was hesitant about trying it. However, the fresh leaves work really well in a curry, the vague bitterness enhancing the spiciness of the dish. It's a fairly easy to make dish and makes a satisfying, quick midweek dinner.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 45 minutes

INGREDIENTS
300g chicken fillet cut into bite-sized pieces
2tsp tandoori spice
3tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, sliced
4 garlic cloves, crushed
A piece of ginger, finely grated (about the size of your thumb)
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½tsp fenugreek seeds
½tsp fennel seeds
½tsp ground black pepper
½tsp ground turmeric
½tsp salt
3 cloves
2 whole green cardamom
4cm piece of cinnamon
1 bayleaf
2 green chillies, finely chopped
250g fresh tomatoes, blended to a puree
125g bag of fresh spinach

The main ingredients
Clockwise from bottom left: spinach, tomatoes, onion, garlic, ginger, chilli

I do love a nice spice picture
Clockwise from 9 o;clock: fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds, coriander, cumin, turmeric, salt, black pepper then i nthe centre from 6 o'clock: bay leaf, cinnamon, cardamom. cloves

RECIPE
Pour 1 tbsp of the oil into a pan and heat.

Add the tandoori powder and allow to sizzle for a few seconds before adding the chicken. 

Stir-fry the chicken in the spice until cooked through (about 10 minutes).

Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon then add the remaining oil to the pan before adding the ginger and garlic

Fry these for a minute or two before adding the onion.

Turn down the heat slightly and slowly cook the onion until soft, about 15 minutes.

Pour in the pureed tomatoes plus 150 ml water and the chillies.

Bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes.

Return the cooked chicken to the pan then add the spinach and stir in.

Allow the spinach to wilt into the sauce over about 10 minutes

In the pan

Serve up with rice and/or naan bread

NOTES
As with most recipes I've done for curries, you could use lamb instead of chicken, or substitute potatoes to give a filling, satisfying vegan dinner

I recently dabbled with using standard curry powder (actually a Madras blend) to streamline the cooking of dish and make it that much quicker to knock up. It won't make a huge time difference, but selecting the various spices and measuring them out can take a bit of effort. It turned out OK, though without the depth of flavour you get with individual spices. It's also less faff and expense than getting the various individual spices.

You could alter the dish, replace spinach with, for example tomato, to give a rogan josh (technically, as rogan josh is lamb with tomato, it would really be a rogan murgh).

I used fresh baby spinach leaves in this recipe, but frozen or tinned would also work. Frozen spinach is a useful stand-by to have at a pinch.

Even if the amount of iron in spinach was as high as initially thought, it would have been rendered useless as it would most likely combine with the relatively large amount of oxalic acid in the leaves to make insoluble ferric oxalate and be lost next time you went for a poo. Because of this, spinach is actually, quite literally, a crap source of iron.

Spinach is, however, a very good source of vitamin A and other carotenes, so Popeye wasn't too far from the mark as a fan and he could see really well in the dark from his one good eye.

Back in the olden days, when colour TV was something of a luxury item, and a lot of people had black and white sets (because they used to be called "television sets"), I remember getting our first colour telly (rental, because many people didn't buy a TV, but rented one by the month). I came home from school for lunch and walked into the living room where the new telly was and there, in glorious technicolour, was a Popeye cartoon.

Speaking of iron...

As much as a Marvel fan as I am, there's only one true Iron Man
Iron Man by Black Sabbath
Ozzy, Tony, Geezer and Bill in their pomp

Murgh Methi (chicken curry with fenugreek leaf)

Paddington: One Bear to rule them all
You're a bear! Lay off the marmalade sandwich and just eat the fucking chicken!
Source: https://www.britishclassiccomedy.co.uk/paddington

Thanks to one of my Aunties who bought me a box-set of his books, Paddington Bear was a prominent figure in my earlier life. Let's face it, out of all the celebrity bears of the time, Paddington was the king. I mean, there weren't THAT many in the public eye, to be fair. Teddy Edward was OK, but pretty dull. Issi Noho was a panda, so only scrapes in on a technicality, and was shite anyway. Rupert the Bear was the worst though. Not only was he the most boring, self-righteous cunt ever portrayed on children's telly, but he was originally from a cartoon in the Daily Express, for fuck's sake, which is basically the Sun with delusions of fucking grandeur. I mean his programmes were so fucking long, and he has a history of casual racism (it's the Express, so he's hardly going to be feel out of place there). So, yes, Paddington was the man... bear (not to be confused with ManBearPig, see notes), despite being (or possibly because he was) an illegal immigrant. 

Don't have nightmares
Bears of my TV childhood (Teddy Edward, Issi Noho and Rupert. The stupid twat can't even do the actions to YMCA properly)
Sources: https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/teddy-edward
https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/issi-noho/
http://www.jedisparadise.com/3/Rupert_Bear.htm

As great as Paddington was, however, he was crap from a culinary point of view. All he ate were marmalade sandwiches. I tried marmalade sandwiches when I was under the thrall of the Peruvian ursinoid, and they were fucking awful, so it's a definite no-no. So, what has Paddington got to do with this recipe?

Parsley the Lion
 Source: https://alchetron.com/Parsley-the-Lion

The author of Paddington, Michael Bond, I discovered, also wrote the kids' programme that was the first exposure children of a certain generation got to any sort of cooking reference, The Herbs. The Herbs was a puppet show whose characters were the personification of actual herbs. There was Parsley the Lion (a lion with a green mane, who looks like the outcome of the Jolly Green Giant fucking a cat, see picture above), Dill the Dog (who looked like Su Pollard) and others who are a bit more foggy in my middle-aged mind. I remember some older lady character called Rosemary and something about a character called Bayleaf. So, in this age of instant access to pretty much all the accumulated knowledge of the human race (and yet people are still thick as pig shit. Go figure), I looked it up on Wikipedia, and this confirmed that there was indeed an aristocratic Lady Rosemary, along with her husband, Sir Basil, and Bayleaf was their gardener. There's nothing like reinforcing the British class system to kids at the earliest possible age so they know their place in society. They also had an Indian character who appeared once or twice, so you might wonder which herb they were named after. Well, it transpires that he was called pashana bedhi which, apparently, is another name for coleus amboinicus. This cooking blog has approaching 60 recipes, many of which being some sort of curry, but I've not heard of this particular herb (not that the name exactly rolls off the tongue). It's apparently some sort of fragrant plant otherwise known as Mexican mint, Indian mint and Cuban oregano. It's certainly not a common ingredient in anything I've come across, though I'm quite limited in exposure to exotic herbs, being a resident of grim and grey Northern England. So, why wasn't he called coriander, for example? That's the herb we usually find scattered on Indian food in the UK. Now, I love the flavour coriander it adds to Indian (and other cuisine, like Mexican for example), but it's an unusual ingredient in that it contains a certain substance that is tasteless to most people but tastes bad to a small minority. Mrs Sweary is one of those people, so I can't use it in dinner I cook for both of us. There's some really interesting science behind this and I could go off on another biochemical tangent on the physiology and genetics of taste, but don't worry, I'll leave that for another post.

Dill the Dog                              Su Pollard
How can you tell them apart?
Sources: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/fame-fortune/su-pollard-last-hi-de-hi-royalty-cheque-1120/
https://parody.fandom.com/wiki/Dill_the_Dog

The other major herb you might find in British High Street Indian cuisine is fenugreek, otherwise known as methi. Like coriander, it's the leafy part of the same plant as the spice seed of the same name used in curries. It's got an earthy flavour, not that dissimilar to its seeds (which in my opinion are THE component of curry spice that makes it taste of "curry"), but fresher and works so well in this recipe. Also, there's enough of the herb used that it almost becomes a vegetable in its own right. Not quite as much as, say, the spinach in a saag, but certainly a significant amount. It's a great, slightly different twist on the usual suspects from British Indian restaurants, though it is on the menu of a lot of curry houses.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes plus marination
Cooking: 1 hour

INGREDIENTS
Marinade paste:
3-4 garlic cloves (medium), coarsely chopped
1 thumb-sized chunk of ginger, roughly chopped
1 shallot, roughly chopped
½ tsp salt
2 green chillies, roughly chopped

400g chicken meat (breast fillet or boneless thighs), cut into bite-sized chunks
2tbsp vegetable oil (a neutrally flavoured oil, like rapeseed)
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground turmeric
3 whole green cardamom pods
3 whole cloves
small piece of cinnamon bark (about 5cm)
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground black pepper
2 small onions, 1 sliced and the other roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 small piece of ginger (about 2cm cubed)
2 medium to large fresh tomatoes (about 200g in total weight). peeled and roughly chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 green pepper, cored and cut into 2cm pieces
50g bunch fresh methi leaf, coarsely chopped

The ingredients
Clockwise from top left: methi leaf, ginger, garlic, spices, green pepper, tomatoes, onions, topped by one of my favourite knives

RECIPE
Pound the marinade ingredients into a paste using a pestle and mortar, or using a food processor.

Put into a dish with the chicken and mix well so that the chicken is well covered.

Cover the dish and put in the fridge to marinate for a couple of hours or so.

Heat 1tbsp oil in a pan and fry the spices for about a minute.

Add the ginger, the chopped onion and garlic, and fry until the onion is soft (add a splash of water if the spices start to catch on the pan, just enough to keep the mixture moist).

Add the tomatoes and the tomato puree plus 100ml water.

Bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the tomatoes breakdown.

Allow this to cool and blend up into a smooth sauce.

In a clean pan, heat another tablespoon of oil and fry the chicken until cooked, adding any excess marinade. This should take about 15 minutes.

Remove the cooked chicken with a slotted spoon.

To the oil add the sliced onion and fry until soft.

Add the green pepper and continue to fry for another 10 minutes.

Throw in the methi leaves and allow them to wilt for about a minute.

Return the chicken to the pan, add the sauce and gently warm up.

Allow to the chicken to heat through and serve with rice and/or naan bread. Feeds two easily.

In the pan

Served up with plain rice and an aloo gobi

NOTES
Fresh methi or fenugreek leaf should be available from Asian grocers in big bunches. It freezes quite well, so use as much as you need for this then wrap the excess in foil (ideally in portions ready weighed out for recipes like this) and put in a freezer bag for use at later date.

This is another recipe where you marinate chicken in a paste made of onion, garlic and ginger (like this one). It does impart a deep, rich flavour to the dish, You could cut down the time in making this by coating the chicken with the marinade and cooking straight away.

Green pepper is a great addition to most curries as it's not too sweet and the taste is perfect for spicy food. Red pepper might work OK too, as would potato or something like aubergine or squash.

ManBearPig made a few appearances in South Park as a monster pursued by former Vice President Al Gore

I'm totally cereal
ManBearPig in action

Again, I think I've broken yet more new ground as the first cooking blog to drop the "c" bomb in the context of a well-loved childhood character. Now I've beaten that path, I look forward to hearing regular guest star, Rick Stein, calling Scooby Doo "a twat", Tom Kerridge naming Big Bird "a tosser" or Nadiya Hussain of accusing Peter Pan of being "a massive fucking nonce".

Chicken garlic chilli stir-fry

Bacofoil is the new black
What the conspiracy nutter is wearing this year (and any other year for that matter)
Source: https://www.perpetualkid.com/tin-foil-hat/

Conspiracy theories really piss me off. Actually, that's not true. They crack me up because they are ridiculously hilarious. No, people who fiercely believe conspiracy theories, and cling to them in the face of overwhelming evidence against them, are what really, really piss me off. "Lizards run the world" (as espoused by a famous British conspiracy fuckwit who I'm not going to give the oxygen of publicity by naming). No they fucking don't. I've been to countries where lizards literally run all over the walls, and they are ace. However, there is no way they could collude with the Rothchilds and comandeer the global finance market. What, human-sized and shaped lizards you mean? I've seen some fucking huge monitor lizards, but they aren't very smart. What, masquerading as world leaders? I've never seen Bill Clinton regenerate a limb, Bill Gates catch a fly with his tongue or anyone with the name Rothschild lay an egg. Actually, to be fair, I don't know what any of the Rothschilds look like, but given that I've not seen any person lay an egg, I can safely say I've not seen a Rothschild lay an egg. It's almost as if the word "lizard" is a cypher for "Jew" and it's all a form of twisted antisemitism.

That moment you're at an illuminati meeting and you see one of your buddies who is also a member of the British Royal Family and you've not seen one another since you took control of the IMF
Source: https://www.storytrender.com/77851/fighting-lizards-hug-it-out-after-playful-tussle/

The lizard thing is on the fringes of conspiracies, it has to be said, but there are less immediately outlandish myths. The Rothschilds (who aren't lizards in this iteration, but are still Jewish. Do you start to see a pattern?) run the world, and are planning the New World Order via the Illuminati or the Freemasons or, I don't know, the WI, which flaunt their symbolism everywhere, from buildings to actual currency to appearances by prominent popstars. I mean, they don't, but nice try. Again, no real evidence, apart from some badly spelt meme written by some racist 35 year old virgin who still lives with his mother and isn't allowed out on his own after 6pm following his prosecution for the contents of his hard drive in 2012. The theories claim that pop stars like Beyonce and Jay-Z (who aren't Jewish, but are black. Or are they? Of course they fucking are, see link below) promote the New World Order through the way they hold their hands in videos. No they don't.

Freemasons you say?
A  corking dance track by the act of the same name, a cover of an Alanis Morrisette song, The Uninvited

At the time of writing, under the spectre of Covid 19, it's like every conspiracy theorist's wank fantasy has come true all at once. Claims include it's man-made (it's not), it's got some connection to 5G (utter bollocks) and that Bill Gates is paying for a virus that contains nanobots to control people (oh, for fuck's sake). You can argue the point of the imperialistic and paternalistic implications of Gates' approach to philanthropy, and that, far from throwing money at their own pet interests, billionaires like him should contribute to countries by paying their full commitment of tax, so their wealth can be distributed more equitably, but this doesn't change the fact that he (via his Foundation) is putting large amounts of real money into things that do save people, like vaccinations and measures to prevent the spread of malaria. It's funny that many of the people criticising Gates as a do-gooder are the sort of people who say "charity begins at home" yet don't actually donate anything to charities at home either.

SARS-CoV2 the virus
The resemblance between this and a 5G mast is... non-existent as this is a computerised model of what the virus is supposed to look like. It is too small to actually have any colour
Source: https://www.crick.ac.uk/news/2020-03-16_tackling-covid-19-at-the-francis-crick-institute

The thing with conspiracy theories are the ridiculous assumptions that have to be made to believe in them. They fall down with any sort of close scrutiny, but the thing over-ruling all these leaps of faith that ultimately indicates they are, in fact, bullshit is that they need to have been organised by the people in charge. Can you really believe someone who has been impeached, bankrupt 6 times and divorced twice, having had numerous affairs, could manage to hold together some huge global plot to subjugate the human race? Or that the same someone, who has bragged about pretty much every aspect of their lives (usually without anything to be proud of), could possible keep their part in such a massive global operation quiet, even during those long, dark toilet trips of the soul at 4am (a common ourcome of a diet based on fast food, showing they are as devoid in dietary fibre as they are in the moral variety) with nothing to keep you company apart from a Wi-fi-connected smartphone and a Twitter account? Or could a different someone, who lacks the foresight to plan contraception in numerous affairs, resulting in an untold number of children (apparently at least 6) by any number of women could play any part in something so meticulous to enslave the population? Really, could someone who has lost several jobs because they have been caught lying and have several abandoned pie-in-the-sky projects that have held their name, be trusted by the overlords to be a part of something of such scale? Honestly, if you do fall for these sorts of fables, would you be interested in buying some magic beans? They came as a topping on a pizza sold from the Pizzagate restaurant. Of course, I could be part of the conspiracy, writing a sweary cooking blog in the privacy of my own home that conspiracy theories are bollocks. Just follow the money, bearing in mind I get fuck all for writing this stuff. Wake up sheeple!

So where is all this going? Trust me, I'm dragging it back to the recipe in hand. The science suggests that Sars-Cov2 originates in a bat, but may also be found in pangolins which possibly act as a reservoir for the virus, though we're not sure (given that we only became aware of this virus about 9 months ago at the time of writing, this is hardly surprising). Both animals are sold as food in wet markets across China, including Wuhan, where the disease was first reported. so people are in close proximity to this and other viruses. While wet markets obviously present a possible route for transmission of animal diseases from animals to humans (zoonoses), they are in no way the only one (BSE anyone? Possibly HIV/aids, maybe? And how about looking up the derivation of the word "vaccine") All this adds to the myths surrounding the eating habits of people in other cultures, which further contribute to the "othering" of people from different cultures, giving ammunition to the sort of people who sit in their dimly lit bedrooms making up racist conspiracy theories, when they're not wanking over child sexual abuse images. 

Oriental food in general, and Chinese in particular, gets a bad rap ("rap", not "rat", but I'll be covering this in a soon to be published edition of this blog, once I've got some pictures), largely because of stories like this. However, to be so dismissive of the entire cuisine of over a billion people, incorporating numerous regional varieties, covering tropical coastline to inland tundra and all in between, is a culinary crime. One of the fundamental techniques involved in Chinese cookery is stir-frying, which is a very quick way to cook and uses relatively little oil. The technique orginates, apparently, because when you make fires using bamboo, they burn very hot, very fast, so you have to do quick cooking at high tempreature. The important thing to remember about stir-frying is that all the ingredients need to be prepared to be a similar shape and size, so they cook evenly, and though the actual act of cooking by stir-fry is actually pretty rapid, the preparation takes longer.

This recipe is something similar to what you might find in any Chinese takeaway, and chilli and garlic work very well together with chicken. You can of course buy ready-made sauces with similar ingredients, and they make a really quick dinner mid-week, but any homemade sauce has a much better flavour.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 20 minutes

INGREDIENTS
Sauce
1½ tbsp light soy sauce
2tbsp dry sherry
2tsp white wine vinegar
2tsp sugar
1tsp cornflour
½tbsp sriracha chilli sauce

A thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
2tbsp vegetable oil
5 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1 small-medium sized carrot, cut into julienne strips
2 green chillies, finely sliced
3 spring onions, trimmmed and cut diagonally into 3cm batons
1 green pepper, seeded, cored and cut into thin strips
200g chicken fillet, cut into strips

RECIPE
Combine the sauce ingredients and mix well, ensuring there aren't any lumps of cornflour, and set aside.

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or frying pan until it's really hot, almost smoking.

Add the chicken and stir fry until cooked (about 7-10 minutes).

Remove with a slotted spoon, reserving the remaining oil.

Add the ginger and garlic and stir-fry for a minute before adding the spring onion, chilli and green pepper for a further 5 minutes.

Mix up the sauce mixture and pour it into the wok, stirring contantly while it thickens.

 A wok full of joy

Serve it up with rice (ideally egg-fried). Feeds two easily.

NOTES
The basis of this recipe can be modified to make other Chinese style stir-fries. The meat can be changed to beef, pork or prawn. You can even make it vegetarian by just adding lots of different vegetables, or tofu. You can flavour it differently by omitting the chilli sauce, chilli and most of the garlic (it always need some garlic). the important factors are the soy sauce, wine/sherry and the cornflour. That by itself has a great flavour, but mess about with it, adding black pepper, lemon, or whatever is in your favourite Chinese takeaway.

Cornflour acts to thicken the sauce, and if you use too much it can become a bit too thick, so try not to overdo it. It gives the sauce a lovely, clear, gloss that you wouldn't get from regular flour.

Like most of these Chinese sauces, dry sherry is used in place of the more authhentic rice wine. I've never used rice wine in one of these dishes asit seems a bit overkill. Do use decent dry sherry, however, like a fino and not oversweetened shite like Harvey's Bristol Cream which tastes like alcoholic syrup.

Sriracha is the archetypal hot sauce of Asia, particulary in Thailand. It's rich and warm, but there are similar sauces that could be used. Thai sweet chilli sauce would work. In a lot of countries, (notably Malaysia and Singapore) there is a bottle of Maggi Chilli Sauce on tables in food centres everywhere, and this would also be a good alternative.

You generally don't have to scratch too deep below the surface of most conspiracy theories to find the true motive of the myth. More often than not there's a racist trope (very often in the form of antisemtisim) just sitting at the bottom, like that awkward turd in the toilet bowl that won't flush away. Many of these stories have their roots in Nazism or hate propaganda from even earlier.

The problem with most people who believe in conspiracy theories is that they add two and two and get a dirty weekend for two in Skegness. The X-Files and The Matrix have shit-loads to answer for. At least the first Matrix film ended on a banging anthem against the murder of black people in the USA by the police. There was a great cover of it made by New York protest collective, Brass Against, below.

Brass Against: Wake up
Cover of Rage Against the Machine's polemic railing against murder of black people in the US. This version is every bit as angry as the original and the song is more relevant now than when the original was released 28 years ago.

Black Lives Matter

Jerk stewed chicken

Capsaicin
For what it's worth
Source: https://me-pedia.org/wiki/File:Capsaicin_peppers.png

Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a big fan of the chilli. Probably more than half the recipes I've published in this blog contain chilli in some form or other. The substance in chillies that makes them hot is called capsaicin. There's some interesting biochemistry involved in how it works (to me, at any rate) which I won't go into. One thing I will say, however, is that capsaicin affects a receptor called TRPV1 in mammals, but not in birds. Mammals have great teeth at the back of their mouths to grind things like seeds, whereas birds swallow them whole, So, if you're a chilli plant, you want your seeds to pass through an animal unharmed so they can be deposited elsewhere, and not crushed up in the jaws of some milk-weaned twat. Therefore having some substance in your fruit that give mammals a burning sensation after eating them keeps them well away This means birds eat the chillies, poo the seeds and spread the plant far and wide. On the other hand it means that birds will never know the sweet pain of a really good, hot curry. They'll never experience that life-affirming feeling of a really searing chilli, and its accompanying endorphin high. Imagine that, you're a bird and can't get a really good, ring-stinging curry, which is truly one of the great pleasures in life. Saying that, most of the ring-stinging curries I've had contain birds, in the way of chicken, so that would be kind of cannibalism. Family Guy did address this in one of their episodes (see below). On the other hand, having seen the mess bird poo already makes on a car, it's probably not a bad thing that they aren't affected by chilli.

Taking a tern for the worse
The problems of eating chicken if you're a seagull, though, seagulls are probably as far removed , in evolutionary terms, from chickens as humans are from cows

Of course, there's a major flaw in the chilli plant's strategy to avoid being eaten by mammals, in that it didn't reckon on the masochistic tendencies of a certain great ape to derive pleasure from pain via endorphins. Hell, getting pleasure from pain is such a big thing in humans that some people actually part with large sums of money to prostitutes to sandpaper their testicles... apparently. There's even some suggestion that people who eat lots of spicy chilli may live longer, which means I might actually now be immortal. The effect of capsaicin, however, isn't restricted to the mouth. Anyone who's ever chopped a chilli then touched their eye will know what I'm talking about, or worse, if you've ever needed a wee after preparing chillies. The weirdest thing is having a wee after eating a lot of hot chilli gives a good simulation of a UTI as the capsaicin burns on the way out.

So, anyway, the amount of capsaicin and related compounds in a pepper determine how hot they are and there is a scale to determine that. the Scoville Scale. It was conceived by Wilbur Scoville, an American pharmacist, diluting extract of chilli until it couldn't be tasted any more. Nowadays, of course, we do it by measuring actual capsaicin itself and adding a fiddle factor to give a Scoville heat unit, or SHU. The range in SHU is huge. A sweet pepper has a value up to 100, the jalapeño and chipotle 2.5-10K, the Thai bird's eye 50-100K, the Habanero (as used to make the famous Tabasco sauce) and Scotch bonnet (I'll come onto that in a bit) at 100-350K to the stupidly hot Bhut Jolokia (aka ghost pepper) and Trinidad Scorpion at 750K-1.5M or Carolina Reaper and sinisterly named Pepper X (the current world record holder as the hottest pepper) at 1.5 to 3M or greater, on a par with law enforcement pepper spray.

Chilli Peppers
They're not all red hot
Green pepper, Jalapeno, Chipotle, Birds eye, Habanero, Scotch bonnet, Bhut Jolokia, Trinidad scorpion, Carolina Reaper, Pepper X. They get more deformed, ugly and evil they look, the hotter they get
Sources: https://www.foodcity.com/product/0000000004065/, https://www.veritable-garden.co.uk/small-fruits-vegetables/140-jalapeno-hot-chili-lingot-3760262511665.html, https://www.spicesinc.com/p-84-chipotle-morita-chiles.aspx, https://www.nutrivaso.com/2016/05/, https://blog.sonoranspice.com/the-habanero-breaking-down-the-popular-pepper-with-extreme-heat/, https://www.shutterstock.com/search/scotch%2Bbonnet%2Bpeppers?page=2&section=1, https://www.friedas.com/products/ghost-chile/, https://mychilligarden.com/moruga-scorpion-red/, https://www.lazada.com.my/products/10-seeds-carolina-reaper-the-worlds-hottest-chilli-pepper-no-1-in-guinness-worlds-records-2013-2017-benih-cili-terpedas-i191107705.html , https://twitter.com/buypepperxseeds/status/929442732132716545

The Scotch bonnet is one of the hottest regular peppers you can get hold of fairly easily and cheaply in the UK, especially if you are privileged to live in an area with a large Afro-Caribbean population. It's got a wonderful fruity falvour besides the chilli heat and is a common ingredient in Carribean cuisine, especially that of Jamaica, which I've covered before. It's a major component of jerk seasoning, which is the basis of this dish. Jerk, in food terms, usually refers to marinated grilled meat of some sort, and is a great way to add some pep to your BBQ. However, we found this recipe years ago in an otherwise shit magazine (I think it was actually Take a Break, believe it or not) and have been making it ever since. It uses jerk seasoning, or paste, in a stew with pineapple, peppers and tomatoes. It's probably the hottest regular dish we cook, without adding any extra chilli, but it is really delicious.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 30 minutes

 INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 peppers, cored, seeded and cut into strips (any colour, though at least one of them should be red)
200-250g chicken fillet, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tin of tomatoes
1 small tin (230g) pineapple chunks in pineapple juice
1 tsp jerk paste
½ tsp ground allspice
½ tsp ground ginger
Pinch dried thyme
Salt and pepper

Ingredients
From top left, clocwise: tomatoes, pineapple, red and yellow peppers, onion, garlic and spices in the dish: ginger, allspice, thyme jerk paste.

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion for 5 minutes

Add the garlice and fry for another couple of minutes

Throw in the peppers and fry for 5 more minutes

Add the chicken and the whole tin of tomatoes and the pineapple, including the juice

Throw in the jerk paste, ginger, allspice and thyme, plus a good grind of black pepper and a bit of salt.

Pour in 100ml water, stir, bring to the boil

In da pan

Turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for 30-60 minutes. Remove the lid for a bit if it's a bit wet

Serve up with something traditionally Caribbean like rice and peas or, as we usually do in our house, with oven-roasted diced potatoes. Roasted sweet potatoes work even better. 

Served up and ready to eat

NOTES
This would work well with pork or beef. Chicken on the bone, in the way of thighs or drumsticks, is also a good alternative, and a little cheaper.

A couple of different colours of pepper make it look really great, but you could swap in some sweet potato instead.

Adding the pineapple juice adds a nice sweetness to this dish which goes well with the chilli heat.

Jerk paste is available from supermarkets and is made from spring onions, Scotch bonnet chillies, thyme and allspice which give it a really distinctive Caribbean flavour. It's incredibly potent, so you really need to use it sparingly. It lasts ages in the fridge. The stuff we're using at the moment is from Dunn's River. It's great to marinate meat before barbecueing as well. I add a little extra allspice, thyme plus add ginger to pep up the spice flavour a little.

Jerk spice

Wilbur Scoville is not to be confused with Philip Schofield, though he is also responsible for more than his fair share of eyes watering after he broke the hearts of housewives across the nation when he came out as gay live on national TV recently. Of course, coming out as gay at his age is actually a tragedy, as he should have been able to expresshis sexuality throughout his life without fear of it affecting his career. He also announced he was a Tory at some point recently, so he does have something in his closet that he should have been ashamed about.

Now, I know what you're thinking "So, Iain, I suppose, given the discussion of chillies, you're going to sign this off with a video from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, aren't you?" and the ansewer is no. They're shite and also alleged sleazy sex pests, so, in appreciation of the Scotch Bonnet chilli, there's something way more in keeping with the nature of this blog. This is a song about the joys of the Highland wind whistling round your meat and two veg whilst wearing a kilt, something that would be a good thing to experience to ease the aforementioned ring-sting after an infernally hot dish such as this recipe. Never mind trying to find what's hiding Under the Bridge. What you need to ask is "Donald, Where's Your Troosers?"

Andy Stewart's biggest hit

Donald, where's your troosers?
I took them off because it makes dogging easier.

Laksa (Leftover Symphonies 5)

The US sitcom from the late 70s/early 80s, Taxi, was a launchpad for several actors including Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd and Marilu Henner. It also starred established comedian, the late Andy Kaufman, who is widely regarded, amongst the comednicenti (ie those that know comedy), as a true genius. He played an immigrant from an unmentioned Eastern European country called Latka in the show. Otherwise, latkas are potato pancakes made as part of Hannukah celebrations in the Jewish community and are not to be confused with the subject of this recipe, laksa.

Latka
T'ank you veddy much
Image from https://in.bookmyshow.com/entertainment/5-comedians-left-us-soon/48357

It's difficult to categorise laksa. Is it a soup? Is it noodles? Is it a curry? Fuck knows, but it's bloody lovely. It's southeast Asia in a bowl.

Comfort food varies around the world. As I mentioned in a previous post, in the UK it's usually soup (very often out of a can) or hearty stews. Laksa ticks many of the boxes necessary to qualify as the comfort food of the Malay Peninsula: noodles; rich, thick gravy; lots of vegetables; and a good bit of spice. It couldn't provide any more comfort if it was down-quilted and gave you a shot of muscle relaxant. Like this recipe for vindaloo I posted previously, the dish is another bit of natural fusion as the dish derives from ethnic Chinese people settling in the Straits towns of the peninsula and incorporating local ingredients. It's a staple of Peranakan food which is a particularly eclectic cuisine combining influences from China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the European colonisers (Dutch, British and Portuguese).

This is yet another way of using up some leftovers, this time the remains of a roast chicken but you could do it with fresh chicken or seafood, particularly some big, juicy, shell-on prawns.

TIMING
Preparation:20 mins
Cooking: 1 hour 45 mins

INGREDIENTS
3 cakes of dried egg noodles
1 tbsp oil (neutrally flavoured like rapeseed or sunflower)
1 leftover carcass of a roast chicken (with plenty of meat, a good 150g or more)
4 small shallots, peeled and sliced
1 carrot, roughly diced
1 stick of celery, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 stalk of lemon grass, chopped
1 thumb-sized piece fresh tumeric root, chopped (or 1 tsp dried)
2 thumb-sized piece ginger, chopped
4 red chillies, whole
1 whole star anise
5 cloves
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
1 stick of cinnamon (approx 5cm)
2 chicken stock cubes
200ml tinned coconut milk
1 lime,juiced and husks retained
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce
10 cherry tomatoes
100g okra, topped and tailed and cut into 2cm chunks
3 large mushrooms, sliced

RECIPE
Cook the noodles according to the instructions.

Drain and set aside

Pick the chicken meat off the carcass and set both the meat and the bones aside.

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large pan and add the shallots, carrot and celery and fry until soft (around 10 minutes).

Add the garlic, lemon grass, tumeric, ginger, chillies and dry spices and continue to gently fry for another 5 minutes.

Place the stock cubes and chicken bones into the pan, add 1.5l water, heat to boiling, cover and simmer for 45 minutes

Remove the chicken bones and blend the broth until smooth

Return to the hob and add the coconut milk, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and lime husks.

Throw in the remaining vegetables and stir

Boil and simmer for another 30 minutes.

Refresh the noodles by running them under cold water

Add the noodles to the soup and stir to warm through

Makes enough for a good working week's worth of lunches or would make a decent dinner for four people.

NOTES
Fresh tumeric is another wanky, foodie ingredient that is not usually that easy to come by in the UK. I used it in this dish as I had some left over, having bought some for another dish I had planned. Use dried as a replacement. The fresh root looks like the picture below.

Fresh tumeric root
Looks like ginger or maggots
image from http://foodfacts.mercola.com/turmeric.html

Tumeric is currently touted as a miracle food that can cure all sorts of shit, including cancer, heart disease and, aptly enough, diarrhoea. Though there is some evidence it contains some potentially active compounds, a recent scientific review suggests these claims are largely bollocks. Besides which, if it does to your insides what it does to a cotton T-shirt, it's actually going to fuck you up. The number of tops I've had to discard because of yellow stains from curry is nobody's business. Of course, feel free to take a good dose when you've got a cold and you'll feel much better, as long as you back it up with a Lemsip.

I used tomatoes, mushrooms and okra in this recipe, but these vegetables could be substituted for others like aubergine, green beans or peppers. You can also substitute light soy for the fish sauce.

Having mentioned Andy Kaufman, I really need to link to this song by REM:

Man in the Moon by REM

Leftover symphonies 4: Goose Goan Vindaloo (which also works with chicken)

A bucket of vindaloo
Somehow it seem appropriate to include this shouty football song

Misappropriation was one of the buzzwords of 2016. It usually referred to things like white people wearing dreadlocks, white people wearing a bindi or white people doing yoga, apparently. I agree to a certain degree. Why do you need to wear a bindi? It's a mark of religious significance in the Hindu faith. You wear one as a fashion statement, you're a twat. Yoga is a great way to improve flexibility and can lead to a generally improved sense of well-being, but if you subscribe to the pseudo-mystical bullshit that accompanies it, you're a twat and you can stick your chakra up your kundalini . If you have ginger hair and wear dreadlocks, not only do you look like a twat, you probably act like a twat (go on, off you fuck. Those gaudily coloured fucking balls won't juggle themselves, you fucking waster) and almost certainly smell like an unhygienic twat.

The question, though, is when does the sharing and enjoying of other cultures become misappropriation? I've mentioned the fusion and adaption (or bastardisation if you prefer) of certain cuisines in previous posts (notably this one) and if it tastes good, do it. I mean it's not like you're taking something of deep cultural significance and shitting on it. You're not dropping off the kids at the pool in a font for example, it's only food. Besides, a lot of the time you can't make a truly authentic meal according to the recipe because the ingredients have never been seen within 100 miles of your town. You know, like that Yottam Ottolenghi recipe for veal that he insists only tastes authentic if you use the pickled foreskins of virgin aardvarks in the sauce. Thing is, whilst using lime juice instead of tamarind paste might not give the same authentic flavour you get from a street vendor in Kuala Lumpur, it will still taste great, so do it!, Fuck authenticity, it's dinner. Even more importantly, where would the cuisines of the old world be without integrating the things brought over from the newly discovered Americas - things like chilli, tomato, potato - 500 years ago?

This dish is more of a double-reverse cultural assimilation/misappropriation though. In the UK, vindaloo curries are generally renowned as the hottest of the dishes in your regular curry house (apart from the notoriously legendary phaal). There is a potato element (the "aloo") in a lot of versions. In my experience, however, they tend to have sacrificed all the delicate flavour you expect in a curry to produce something that is merely "hot", mainly so that pissed dickheads can show their mates how tough they are at 4am after a skinful. A UK curry house vindaloo is not usually a great option for a curry. But, is this a culturally accurate version of vindaloo? Is it bollocks! It shares its name with the original vindaloo, but little else. This is the second occasion of cultural (mis)appropriation for the vindaloo.

Your typical UK restaurant vindaloo
 (apparently, anyway. These curries all look the same)
Image taken from http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/vindaloo.htm

The dish in this entry is a more authentic version of vindaloo, a curry originating from Goa during the time it was under Portuguese control. Its name does not come from the Hindi or Urdu word for potato, "aloo", but from the Portuguese for wine and garlic, carne de vinha d'alhos (literally "meat in garlic and wine") as this was a way of helping preserve meat, mainly pork, for long trips at sea. This Portuguese dish evolved further in the colony to use locally produced vinegar and spices to make this dish and the name became "vindaloo". So here's the first cultural appropriation of vindaloo and it's an example of a western idea being assimilated into eastern cuisine.

Anyway, onto the recipe in hand. Christmas has been and gone. In the sweary household we alternate year-on-year between turkey and goose for Christmas dinner. This year it was goose, but what the fuck to do with the leftovers? It had to be yet another curry.The problem with reheating roast meat still exists, but this is overcome by using vinegar to cut through the vaguely wet doggy smell and the inherent fattiness of the meat.

As I noted in the title, this also works for other birds, so is a great way to use leftover roast chicken

TIMING
Preparation: 30 minutes
Cooking: 1 hour 15 minutes

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil (eg rapeseed)
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp ground tumeric
½ tsp fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
2 cloves
3 green cardamom
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp chilli flakes
½ tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
4 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
4-500g cold roast goose (or chicken!) meat, no skin, chopped into 2cm chunks
200 ml white wine vinegar
400 ml water
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp garam masala

 More spices than you can shake a stick at!
(From top left, 11 o'clock: fennel seeds, cloves, paprika, cardmom, onion seeds, tumeric, fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds, cumin, chilli flakes, coriander, salt, pepper and a bay leaf in the middle)

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a heavy pan, add the onion and fry gently for a good 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and ginger and fry for another 5 minutes

Throw in the spices (except the garam masala) and fry gently for another 5 minutes to allow the flavour to develop.

Add the green pepper and tomatoes, mix and allow to stew for 10 minutes to soften the peppers.

Throw in the goose meat, gently stir then pour in the tomato puree, vinegar and water.

Stir well and leave to stew for 30 minutes, stirring in the garam masala at around the 25 minute mark.

A panful of joy

Fill yer boots!
I don't actually know why you'd want to fill your boots with anything other than your feet, so it's a ridiculous phrase

Serve with rice or an Indian-style bread like naan.

NOTES
Only pretentious foodie wankers like me end up with leftover roast goose. This is why I need to stress that this dish works just as well with chicken but you could also use roast duck if you have any, as unlikely as that may be. I think I have also tried something similar to this with leftover roast pork so that would also work

I have tried a phaal curry on a couple of occasions. Once was an attempt at a prank, the other time was as a bet. The prank failed as I ate the curry without any problem and I also won the bet because I ate the curry without any problem. I did find, however, that on at least one of theses times I did need to spend most of the next day within close reach of a flushing toilet.

The use of vinegar means it's kind of a pickled curry. This is not the same as pickling your knees, and you're using vinegar rather than cheese. What the fuck am I on about? I refer you to the wonderful song below from the late Ivor Cutler on the subject:

This has some similarities to the recipe I posted for Hyderbadi chicken, which also uses vinegar.

Double Ska Jamaican Chicken burgers with pineapple salsa

While looking for ideas for recipes to try, I chanced upon one for Reggae Reggae burgers. The Reggae Reggae brand originated on Dragon's Den in the UK when Levi Roots strummed a guitar in his pitch and got some rich fucker to buy his sauce (ooer, sounds a bit rude). The brand is now a corporate behemoth incorporating not just the original sauce, but various other table sauces, spice mixes and other products up to and including pasties and even soft drinks. I'm sure Levi Roots did start off with family recipes, but sold out faster than a Tory MP with a... Actually, no need to qualify that, he sold out faster than a Tory MP because that's what they fucking do. Then again, Dragon's Den is, by its very nature, all about selling out, so good on him.

He used the unique selling point, or USP, of his Jamaican culinary heritage and home-cooked, family recipes to create his brand. It's not as if he's an American who's voice is the auditory equivalent of having your head pushed into a bucket of wallpaper paste, nor is he some wanky, angry TV chef who's face is plastered across a range ready-made sauces which they wouldn't actually touch with a barge-pole topped with a Michelin star. Of course, not all USPs are created equal. Take mine for example. I'd probably go on Dragon's Den, force-feed the dragons a bowlful of chilli that would have them shitting napalm for the next week and I'd probably end up going home empty handed having subsequently called them a bunch of twats.

I've done a recipe for burgers previously, of the beef variety, which is the origin of the hamburger. You can get chicken burgers at your local corporate fastfood joint, but they do tend to be breadcrumbed and deep-fried so, in my humble but profane fucking opinion, aren't actually "burgers". Burgers, for me, should be made of minced or ground meat. Flavour them how you like, but they need to be, for all intents and purposes, a reconstituted steak 

So, I wanted to do something that had a Caribbean feel, I love burgers (as I've made clear before) and thought chicken burgers just don't get enough coverage. Now, chicken is basically pretty bland on its own so you need to give it lots of flavour. A bit of ginger, lime juice and chilli add just enough tropical character to justify me ripping off Levi Roots' Reggae Reggae brand to call mine Double Ska. And because of that, why not have a bit of ska before we start (like you need a reason to play a great bit of Prince Buster)?

One step beyond.
RIP Prince Buster

TIMING
Preparation: 60 minutes (including roasting the pepper and leaving it to cool)
Cooking time: 15 minutes

INGREDIENTS
Pineapple salsa
1 small yellow pepper
Half a small, fresh pineapple, cored, peeled and the flesh diced
3 or 4 spring onions, trimmed, cleaned and finely sliced
Juice of  ½ a lime
1 tbsp rum
½ tsp ground allspice

Burgers
Half a medium red onion, finely chopped
1 medium to large garlic clove, crushed
1 tbsp vegetable oil
500g skinless chicken thighs, boned (or bought boneless)
half a thumb's size of fresh root ginger, finely chopped
Juice of ½ a lime
Pinch of dried thyme
1 chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 egg
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve
Basic green salad or a few washed lettuce leaves, shredded.
Bread buns

RECIPE
For the salsa
Wash the pepper and place in an oven at 200°C for 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and place in a plastic bag and seal until cool.

Remove the pepper and peel off the skin.

Core and dice the pepper.

Mix the chopped pepper with the pineapple and spring onion in a bowl.

Add the allspice, rum, and lime juice.

Mix well and chill until you need it.

Pineapple salsa

For the burgers
Heat the oil in a pan and gently sauté the onion and garlic for 5-10 minutes, until the onion is soft and near-transparent.

Add the ginger and carry on gently frying for another 5 minutes.

Allow to cool.

Trim any stringy, white bits from the chicken and cut it into smallish chunks.

Throw the chicken, the cooled onion, garlic and ginger, plus the other ingredients into a food processor and blend for a minute or so, occasionally stopping to scrape any larger pieces of the mixture back into the bowl.

Form the chicken mix into patties. This amount of mixture will make around 4 and (as I stated in my post for hamburgers earlier) I use a burger press to make evenly sized patties, but I'm one of those people.

Cook in a little oil in a frying pan of griddle pan. They take around 5-7 minutes per side. Ensure they are cooked through.

 Urban griller
Chicken burgers. They are difficult to keep in shape

Serve in a toasted bun with salad and a dollop of the salsa and a side order of chips/wedges (sweet potato wedges work especially well).

NOTES
I do call these Double Ska burgers and I realise that I've only posted one ska track, so here's the second one, a little more recent. Listen to this as you read the rest of this post.

Skank while you cook
Prince Buster and Suggs on Jools Holland doing Madness and Enjoy Yourself

The burgers can be quite soft and break up easily so it's worth putting them between sheets of clingfilm or grease-proof paper and leaving them in the fridge for an hour or more to help them keep their shape when cooking.

I de-seeded the chilli in the burgers because you want the burgers to have only a mild kick. On the other hand, you could completely leave the chilli out if you're effetely inclined.

I didn't put chilli in the salsa, but you could if you wanted a bit more heat. I appreciate that this salsa is similar to the pineapple sambal I posted previously, but the flavours are very different in character and really encapsulate the respective cuisines they come from.

Like in a lot of Caribbean food, the best chillies to use are Scotch bonnets which have a fantastic and distinctive fruity flavour.

Scotch bonnet
No, I don't see the resemblance either

Finally, given the ska theme, it would be remiss of me not to give a plug to a band called Skaface, a 10 piece ska band from the coastal English town of Blackpool. My pal Colin is their drummer and they are ace, so, if you get a chance, go and see them.