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.

Cocunut Shrimp with Pineapple Salsa

I usually don't make something this involved and time consuming on a weeknight, but I slept well last night and the weather was just beautiful today... sunny and in the high 60s and I had a very positive frame of  mind when I was searching for something to make tonight.

I decided on Coconut Shrimp with Pineapple Salsa.   This is a Cooking Light recipe I found on myrecipes.com.   I made this once before several months ago and it was ok.   To go along with this I made plain rice and Simple Black Beans, another Cooking Light recipe from my recipes.com.

I got home from the grocery store at about 5:30pm and I had dinner on the table at about 7:40pm!   That's over 2 hours of cooking time.    Now, I also made a separate dinner for my daughter while I was making the adults, but making her dinner was probably only an extra 15 minutes or so.

I modified both recipes tonight, and my version is not as healthy for sure.   In researching black bean recipes, I came across several recipes that used bacon or pork of some type.   The black bean dish is pretty simple- saute onions, red bell pepper, garlic, sugar, cumin, and black pepper.  Then add water and canned black beans and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.   My variation is that I fried some bacon in the pan before I sauteed the onions and pepper and used some of the bacon grease to cook the onions and pepper.   Getting the bean dish to the point where I could just leave it simmering on the stove took me probably 20 minutes with most of the time spent chopping onion and pepper.

After I got the beans on, I started some mac and cheese for my daughter and made her a B sandwich... that's a BLT without L or T.   

For the shrimp I used wild caught, peeled and deveined frozen shrimp.  I take the amount of shrimp I need out of the freezer, put the shrimp in a ziploc bag, and then submerge the bag in hot water for 15 to 20 minutes to let the shrimp thaw.

I made a few changes to the Coconut Shrimp recipe as well.   First I roasted the coconut in a pan on the stove until it was lightly browned.   Another deviation is that I used unsweetened finely shredded coconut instead of sweetened flaked coconut called for the in the recipe.   I shop at Whole Foods and Who Fo doesn't seem to carry sweetened coconut.  I put a little sugar in the batter mixture for the shrimp to the give them some sweetness.   The most significant change from the recipe is that I fried the shrimp after coating it with the batter and coconut instead of baking it.   And, I fried the shrimp in some bacon grease (like my great-grandmother used to do).   The first time I made this dish, I baked the shrimp which is much healthier I guess, since there isn't much fat or oil used.   But, I have been wanting to try frying shrimp with some bacon grease for awhile now to see if brought back childhood memories.

Anyway, it all turned out good, but I don't think the taste was much better than when I baked the shrimp.   So, I will probably bake it next time since that is a much healthier way to go.

Also, the Pineapple Salsa is a very important part of the shrimp dish, and the salsa was great!   I think the strong flavors of the salsa make the baked shrimp work as well as fried shrimp.

The whole dinner was really good.   The beans over rice were my favorite.   My wife said dinner was delicious and she really liked the shrimp a lot.