My first guest post!!  And it’s a winner…easy to declare from the happy reaction at family dinner last night.  I’ll let Shannon tell the story in her own words:

Sitting here waiting for what will hopefully be a delicious cheesecake to bake, I think about the first and only other time I’ve had it.  My Brussels Study Abroad group had a reunion at our professor’s house and we did our best to bring back Belgian delights mixed with American “homey” desserts.  Among the other delectable desserts there was this Nutella cheesecake with whipped topping and chocolate chips.  There aren’t many words to describe my first impression.  Some imagery may suffice: picture an ad for chocolate pudding or something of the sort and the actress who lingers just 1 second too long on the spoon because it’s just THAT good.  That was me.  I did everything short of licking the plate.

I knew I had to get the recipe because my boyfriend would be coming to visit me in a few weeks and Nutella and Cheesecake are two of his favourite desserts.  Why not combine and get some special golden girlfriend stars!

I got the recipe and went to the Publix down the road to stock up.  The ingredients are all really easy to find; no unicorn tears or anything too complex.  It wasn’t until I got back that I remembered that I don’t own a mixer.  No fear, blender to the rescue – or so I thought.

I combined the first ingredients and the blender decided that they were too thick to ‘beat’.  Once I added the egg, it was a bit easier.  Not totally flawless however.  I pour it out into a bowl and hand stirred it for a bit to get more of an even consistency and put it back in the blender for one more spin for good measure.  It came out creamy and so chocolate-y!  The batter tasted great so I can only imagine and hope for the same with the end product! (ed. note: it was delicious)

SO. I realize that this recipe is not really local (save for the fact that you can find Nutella in Jamaica, and cheesecake is practically a national pasttime here), but lawks is it good.  And easy.  I couldn’t resist – and neither should you!!

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a few glimpses of the fabulous Kingston Kitchen event…before the crowds arrived!! What a great day – the next one will be a night market on March 31st – promises to be a lot of fun…definitely mark your calendars!!

I had a friend in elementary school whose mother was Italian.  Like, REAL Italian, born in Italy, in the last town on the heel of the boot (I’m guessing now, in retrospect, that this was Lecce?).  At Christmas, her family had a party, and her mother would make the most amazing food…that’s the first time I remember eating this dish.  Farfalle con salmone e piselli – butterfly pasta with salmon and peas.  Amazing that I would remember it 25 years later – but it really was that good.

Little did I know then that I would have a love affair with Italy later in life: spending a semester in Padova during college, and a summer in Milan during law school.  And the food – oh, the food!  Some of my fondest memories of Italy are associated with food: eating risotto con gamberi e zucchini at a dinner party in the Procaccini’s castle outside Pavia; fresh, light ricotta at their house in San Sossio Baronia near Naples; piadine with spicy arugula and salty prosciutto late at night in Romagna; lardo in Ferrara; incredible ovoli – a type of mushroom – in Milan with Piero; fritto misto with Tigi in Marina di Ravenna.  My first tortellini in Bologna with Angela were a revelation.  Along the way, I learned some techniques from my roommates in Padova, others from friends’ mothers – but while I never ate this dish in Italy, somehow I figured out on my own how to make a passable replica.

And then I discovered smoked marlin.

If you live in Jamaica, and you’re lucky, you will know someone who catches marlin, and keeps a big hunk of it, smoked, in their fridge at all times, and is willing to share.  If you’re less lucky, you will go to the supermarket and when you find them, you will buy and hoard packs of smoked marlin in your freezer, using them judiciously for appetizers for special people, or with cream cheese on an occasional breakfast bagel for yourself.  Either way, you will quickly learn to stock your pantry with pepper jelly and capers.  Smoked marlin quickly becomes a habit.  You can find smoked salmon here, at exorbitant prices – but remember: Nyamist strives to cook with local ingredients.  And why use imported smoked salmon, when we have an amazing local substitute? (If you are reading this and live elsewhere, feel free to substitute smoked salmon for the marlin in this dish – but then make your way to Jamaica and try some marlin – you won’t be sorry!).  I haven’t seen any local green peas since I’ve been in Jamaica, so I usually omit them – if you find them frozen, their sweetness gives a nice counterpoint to the saltiness of the marlin – but don’t sweat it: this dish is plenty good without.

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I really wish I could take credit for this one, but I can’t.  I first saw this recipe a couple months ago, when I was looking for something new to make for dessert for Sunday dinner.  Frankly, I’m not really a chocolate fiend – I can take it or leave it.  But I love me a lemon tart, a key lime pie, any fruit dessert that has a bright, acidic burst of flavor – sour, sweet.  So I was on the hunt for something citrus-y when I found this recipe for a Meyer lemon tart, which was intriguingly and tantalizingly simple.

Now, we don’t get a lot of lemons in Jamaica.  This is more lime country: small, finicky and thin-skinned – they have a habit of disappearing from supermarket shelves just when you really need them, and sometimes, despite how pretty and plump and green they look, they can be miserly and don’t yield any juice.

So when I heard that Food Basket, a farm in the Blue Mountains that delivers fresh, local produce to Kingston weekly, had some lemons, I promptly ordered them.  What arrived were behemoth, nubby, thick skinned creatures – about as far from a Meyer lemon as you could get.  And because this recipe is designed for the thin-skinned, sweeter mongrels that are Meyer lemons, I wasn’t convinced it would work.  I confess: I gave up.

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For three out of four* Chinese Americans (my extremely unscientific sample consisting of me, my brother and two friends), the best part of Thanksgiving is turkey jook.  Jook (also called congee for reasons that I will never understand since the word has nothing to do with either the Cantonese (jook) or Mandarin (zhou) pronunciations of the actual dish) is basically a rice porridge.  It is comfort food for Chinese people – a meal-in-one, a thick, rich, satisfying soup, usually eaten for breakfast.  Soul food.  At home, my dad makes it every Thanksgiving; after I moved to New York, the arrival of the brisk, early-dark days of November meant that soon my friend Sandy would leave a large container of turkey jook at the little Spanish restaurant next door to my apartment – the surrogate Chinese mother I never had. (An aside: Sandy also makes incredible jewelry).

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One more quickie Thanksgiving recipe before the tryptophan kicks in and I collapse after two days of cooking to produce my first Thanksgiving in Jamaica.  To be perfectly honest, I don’t really love pumpkin pie.  Given the typical holiday choice, I’ll usually opt for apple (with vanilla ice cream, natch), and I do love a pecan pie if it’s not unbearably sweet.  But we’re in Jamaica, and there is an abundance of pumpkin here – you see it in dishes like steamed fish (where it disintegrates and produces a lovely, thick broth) or even just chunks of it boiled alongside a meal.  If we’re being nitpicky (which I can be sometimes), technically speaking what passes for pumpkin here is really kabocha squash.  But that doesn’t make it any less of a good candidate for pie:

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Please, don’t judge me.  I tried to wrap my mind around a local, sustainable Thanksgiving – I really did.  But, at the end of the day, I just couldn’t call it Thanksgiving without turkey and cranberries.  And no matter how you spin it, there ain’t no local, sustainable turkey or cranberries in Jamaica*.  But I was reluctant to let what could be my favorite holiday pass without sharing it with my Jamaican family, continuing the familiar Thanksgiving traditions of abundance, family and food that I grew up with.  So, I admit it: I caved.

But traditions evolve over time.  And while Thanksgiving is technically not a Jamaican holiday, there’s plenty of local inspiration to reflect the evolution of my own life in the flavors of my food.  So while I’ll admit to buying a frozen turkey and fresh cranberries imported from the US, I wanted to give my sides a distinctly Jamaican flavor (without getting all “fusion-y,” natch).  Behold, spiced cranberry sauce!

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I love this dish for so many reasons. I love it because the person who taught me to make it is my sister-from-another-mother, and every time I look at the spring roll skins in my cupboard, I think of her, and the amazing Lunar New Year parties we used to throw in the middle of winter in Providence and New York where we would make Chinese (my heritage) and Vietnamese (her heritage) food for 50 people and dance to hip-hop and dancehall all night long.  I love it because it is infinitely variable – in fact, you should use what follows as less of a recipe, and more of a technique or an idea – the best ingredients are whatever is in your refrigerator, and you will never make it exactly the same way twice, and each time will be The Best One Ever.  I love it because it is light and fresh and soft and crunchy all at once.  I love it because I love Vietnamese food and I can’t find any in Jamaica.  I love it because it is so easy, and so sophisticated and once you get the hang of it, you won’t be able to stop making them – my poor husband ate them for lunch for a week straight over the summer!  But he never complained – at least not yet…

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