Jamaican Spiced Chicken and Black Beans

There is a Jamaican restaurant I really like in downtown San Jose called the Back-A-Yard.    Since I have been cooking at home more in order to manage my diet, I don't go out to eat very often and have not enjoyed Caribbean food for quite some time... until tonight!  

I found a Cooking Light recipe for Jamaican Spiced Chicken which looked promising.   The recipe had almost 40 positive reviews, so I decided to give it a shot.   Its a pretty simple recipe.   Toss the raw chicken in a mixture of red onion, sugar, jalapeno, vinegar, soy sauce, allspice, thyme, black pepper, and red pepper and then cook the chicken.   In my version, I cooked the chicken over a charcoal grill.   The recipe calls for chicken thighs, but I used boneless skinless chicken breasts instead.

To go along with the chicken, I made Simple Black Beans, which is another Cooking Light recipe.  I found this recipe on myrecipes.com while searching black bean recipes of Caribbean cuisine.   The beans are cooked with onion and garlic and in the last stage they simmer on the oven for a half hour creating a thick and flavorful dish which I served over rice.

Both the beans and the chicken turned out great and this is something I am sure I will make again.