CSA week two - Sayur manis bayam dan jagung muda

Roughly translated from Indonesian, that's stewed spinach and sweet corn. Less roughly, bayam--usually translated as "Indonesian spinach"--is amaranth, or, around here, callaloo.

Technique-wise, this recipe is very simple and pretty similar to a standard Islands preparation, but the inclusion of a lot of typical Indonesian flavors makes it distinctive. I found it at bigoven.com, but it's on most of the big recipe websites so there's no knowing where it came from originally.

Ingredients:
a little cooking oil
1 thumb-sized knob of ginger, julienned (my ginger was too dried out to slice so I just threw it in whole and fished it out later)
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
hot peppers to taste (I chopped one and left another whole)
1 small shallot, sliced (the original recipe says onion, but shallot goes nicely with the other aromatics)
1 stalk lemongrass, cored and crushed
1 thumb-sized knob of galangal, sliced (I only have dried so I put in a big chunk)
1 salam leaf
1 cup chicken stock (the original recipe calls for vegetable stock, which might be fine if you wanted to go vegan, but I'd be concerned that the particular mix of vegetables wouldn't go well with Indonesian flavors.)
7 ounces (by weight) sweet young corn (the original recipe calls for "baby corn" but those little cobs would be pretty odd to use here so I'm pretty sure that's not what they mean)
2 bunchs callaloo, thick stems removed (around 10 ounces total)
1 cup coconut milk
salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the fresh aromatics (garlic, peppers and shallot in my case). Cook briefly until aromatic. Add the dried or otherwise inedible aromatics (ginger, lemongrass, galangal and salam for me). Cook a little longer until even more aromatic.

2. Add the stock and corn. Season with a little salt and pepper. Return to a boil. Add half the callaloo. Stir to wilt until there's room for the rest. Add the rest and stir a little more. Cover, turn heat down to a simmer and cook seven minutes. Stir in coconut milk, recover and cook five minutes more.

3. Remove inedibles, adjust seasonings and serve over rice.


Callaloo and coconut milk are, of course, a classic combination. Corn less so, but cornbread is a common accompaniment so corn isn't a big leap. So that's all pretty accessible. The overlay of the floral citrusy Indonesian flavors is something else entirely, at least if you've got some expectation of Caribbean flavors. But, if you set aside your preconceptions, I think they do counterpoint against the callaloo's distinctive flavor. I know you guys don't have the galangal or salam leaf, but try using the lemongrass when you cook up your callaloo. It's not bad at all.

CSA week 20 - vleeta

Next stop on our callaloo world tour is Greece! And, as I warned you on Saturday, the recipe isn't terribly exciting. Typical Greek really: boil to death and dress with lemon and olive oil. Maybe add some onion and red pepper for little pizazz. Serve next to a slab of under-seasoned meat and maybe some orzo.


The results are, well, not bad really. It doesn't improve in flavor with overcooking like green beans do, but it certainly stands up better than spinach would have in the same situation. There's some small hint of callaloo's character left in there, both in flavor and texture and I do think lemon and olive oil are good accompaniments. I suppose it would be a decent option for someone who doesn't really care for the stuff. I do, myself, so I'm a bit disappointed. This did seem a particularly tender bunch; maybe that's why it didn't hold up as well as I hoped it would. So things go. Next time I get my hands on callaloo, I've got an Indonesian recipe to try.

CSA week one - Mchicha

I mentioned a while back, I think, that mchicha is the Swahili word for callaloo. It's also the name of this Tanzanian dish, but all of the versions I found called for spinach. I'm making a, small I'll grant you, logical leap that these are Westernized recipes substituting in spinach for amaranth. Cooking times quite unsuitable for spinach are good supporting evidence that of a late insertion or a clumsy translation. But those cooking times are too long for amaranth too so I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.

Whatever the case, I used the calalloo and it turned out just fine once I cut it in quarter to use the small bunch we got this week and tweaked the cooking times a bit.

Ingredients:
1 small bunch callaloo
1 1/2 Tablespoons natural smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup thin coconut milk
1 Tablespoon butter (or ghee if you've got it)
1 small tomato (I used four cherry tomatoes), peeled (unless you're using cherry tomatoes, then don't bother)
1/4 onion, chopped
1/2 teaspoon curry powder (a South Indian blend would be most traditional, but whatever you've got is worth a try)
1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Trim the woody stems from the callaloo, separate the leaves, roughly chop the remaining stems and roughly tear the leaves. Wash everything somewhere along the way. I got about 1/2 pound after cleaning.

2. Mix the peanut butter and coconut milk. Set aside.

3. Heat the butter over medium heat in a medium frying pan or dutch oven. When it stops foaming add the onion, tomato, curry powder and salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onion softens and the tomato breaks down, about 5 minutes.

4. Add the callaloo stems. Cook 5 minutes more.

5. Add the callaloo leaves. Cook 3 minutes more to wilt and begin cooking the leaves.

6. Add the peanut butter and coconut milk. Stir well and scrape the bottom of the pan. Cook 5 minutes more to blend the flavors adding water to keep the sauce saucy as necessary.

Serve with an approximation of ugali, a Tanzanian starch dish that is essentially an extra-thick polenta made with more finely ground corn meal.


It looks a mess, but I really like how this turned out. The flavors have blended together in a synergistic way I haven't seen in other African recipes using similar ingredients. There's an earthiness, but I'd be hard pressed to identify peanut butter; a spiciness but I couldn't say it was curry powder; there's a creaminess but no clear coconut. The amaranth, though, is unmistakable. It stands up to the strongly flavored sauce in a way spinach couldn't. I even like the pairing with the ugali, and polenta really isn't something I could have predicted to work with these flavors.

This may be the first fully successful sub-Saharan African dish I've made (although I don't think I've done any Ethiopian cooking. How could I have missed that? That's going right on my to-do list.) If you've still got your amaranth, give it try.

Zom

I've been wanting to cook some more African dishes while we're still experiencing serious tropical heat here in Miami. I don't often match action to thought on this, but I think cuisines are best experienced in the climate that spawned them. This particular dish is from Cameroon. I found it while looking for alternative sources for African recipes since my latest not-entirely-satisfactory experience working from the Congo Cookbook. I found one version at the Fair Trade Cookbook and another in Celtnet's collection of world recipes. Both call for spinach, but that's probably substituting in for the local green, bitterleaf, so I'm going to use callaloo instead. Unfortunately, I got a small bunch from the CSA this week so I'm using under one pound to replace two pounds of spinach, but callaloo won't wilt away nearly as much, so I think I'm still in fair shape.

Ingredients:
2 pounds beef suitable for stew, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
4 Tablespoons cooking oil
1 large onion, thickly sliced
1-2 pounds medium weight greens, coarsely chopped
2 medium tomatoes, chopped or 1 can diced tomatoes, drained
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
2 Tablespoons natural peanut butter
chili pepper flakes to taste
salt and black pepper to taste
a squeeze of lemon for each serving

1. Season the beef with salt and, using as much of the cooking oil as necessary, brown in batches in a large pan. Remove the beef to a pot (I used my slow cooker), salt a little more and cover with just enough water to cover, approximately four cups. Bring to a boil and simmer for around 1 1/2 hours, until the meat is just starting to get tender. Drain the beef broth you just made. Reserve two cups for this dish and keep the rest to use later (bonus!).

2. Add the remaining oil to the pan you browned the beef in, heat to medium and add the onion. Fry, browning slightly and scraping up the stuck on beefy bits. When the onion is soft, add to the pot (deglazing the pan with the reserved beef broth if necessary), along everything but the lemon. Stir a bit to get the tomato paste and peanut butter dissolving. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, until the beef is tender and the tomatoes are falling apart. Adjust seasonings and serve over rice or millet.

And here it is:


I dunno. It's not actively bad but it's not great either. Maybe it's me; I keep getting exciting about trying regional African cuisines but peanut butter and tomatoes are just peanut butter and tomatoes, not some revelatory experience. The flavors just don't blend into anything excitingly synergistic. I can say that the callaloo works well with that combination and stands up to a half hour in the stew pot better than spinach can. That's the best I can say for the dish, though.

I've done a bit more research, and I think, instead of Cameroonian zom, I should have made Tanzanian mchicha. According to a few different sources, amaranth is common in East Africa. A few even say mchicha is the Swahili word for it. The recipes I've found call for spinach, but I'm comfortable saying that they're substituting for callaloo. They also add coconut milk and curry powder to the mix, which I think will help the peanut butter and tomatoes get along better. That certainly sounds much better than how the zom turned out, but then the zom recipe sounded better than how the zom turned out too. Next time I've got some callaloo, I'll just have to try it and see.

Maldivian amaranth and lentils

This is going to be an odd one, folks. Unless you live in the Maldives, I suppose, but with the substitutions I made maybe it's odd to them too. The Maldives, for those who don't know and haven't Googled it up yet, are a small island chain in the Indian ocean and, like most islands on trade routes, has a cuisine that takes in influences from all around. This particular dish has a lot of South Indian and Thai elements. I found this recipe on asianonlinerecipes.com where it was miscatalogued under Chinese recipes. The inclusion of Maldive fish in the ingredients was a giveaway as to its origin, but I checked maldiviancuisine.com to make sure and it looks pretty traditional. I had never made Maldivian cooking before so I was pretty excited to find such an accessible recipe.

Ingredients:
4 1/2 ounces green amaranth leaves a.k.a. callaloo
(but lots of other plants are a.k.a. callaloo so check what you've got. If you do happen to have amaranth, and that's what my CSA supplies most commonly under the name, there's plenty you can do with it outside of Caribbean cuisines.)
10 1/2 ounces (can you tell I'm translating from metric?) lentils
(the original recipe calls for red lentils but I have plain brown so I used that)
2 cups thin coconut milk
3 Tablespoons thick coconut milk
(A good trick here is to carefully open a can of good quality coconut milk without disturbing it too much. There's frequently a thick layer of coconut cream on top separated from the coconut water below. Skim off the cream for the thick and then add water to the rest to make the thin.)
1 dried red chili, stemmed and seeded and broken into pieces
(I used an ancho. I figured if the recipe calls for seeding then heat isn't the goal.)
1 teaspoon turmeric 2 teaspoons pounded Maldive fish
(Maldive fish is smoked or sun dried spiced tuna. The good bits are left in chunks. The not-so-good bits pounded to a powder. No idea what it tastes like, but my money is on funky. I substituted in 1 Tablespoon of Chinese shrimp paste and 1 Tablespoon of Thai fish sauce to get in the right neighborhood.)
1 Tablespoon cooking oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 small stick cinnamon
1 sprig curry leaves
(I could have sworn I had dried some from the last fresh batch I bought, but I must have used them up. I substituted in salam leaves which have a similar flavor.)
1 strip pandan leaf
(This is a fragrant leaf used mainly in sweet Thai dishes. I wasn't confident enough to substitute so I just left it out.)
1 stalk lemon grass, trimmed and bruised
salt to taste along the way

1. Wash and roughly chop the amaranth. Put into a dutch oven

2. Pick over, wash the lentils. Add to the dutch oven.

3. Add thin coconut milk, chili, turmeric and Maldive fish (or substitutes).

4. Turn heat to medium-high and bring to a boil, stirring well once the amaranth has wilted a bit. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until lentils are soft, around 30 minutes. Add a half cup of water if it seems like it needs it. I think salting might slow down the cooking here so refrain at this point.

5. Meanwhile, in a medium pan, heat the oil over medium heat and fry the curry and pandan leaves (or substitutes), onion, cinnamon and lemon grass until everything is fragrant and the onions are soft and just turned a light golden brown. Do salt here.

6. When lentils are ready, add the pan contents to the dutch oven along with the thick coconut milk. Optionally, toss in some shrimp at this point too if you want some protein beyond what's in the lentils. Simmer uncovered for 5 minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Serve with rice.


Yet another dish that tastes better than it looks. Maybe it's my photography?

It's earthy, but not muddy as the flavors are clear. The amaranth and lentils go together quite well. Yeah, lentils go well with greens in general, but you can tell this is amaranth and that particular flavor works surprisingly well. Who knew? The coconut milk and funky fishy ingredients tie the two together the way bacon and chicken stock might in a more European version of the dish and give a really interesting undertone to the dish. The spices linger around the edges, rounding out the flavors without asserting themselves. Maybe the cinnamon is identifiable; the rest are just light fragrant notes freshening the flavor of the greens. A squeeze of lemon helps there too. The shrimp are a nice addition. They picked up the seasonings of the dish and matched with the other main ingredients well.

I don't think any of my explanations here are going to evoke this combination of flavors for you, but take my word that it was pretty darn good and worth trying yourself.

CSA week 16 - Mulai keerai kadaiyal

a.k.a. callaloo curry.

I wasn't looking forward to cooking the callaloo this week. I hate to say it but, at least as far as home cooking is concerned, Caribbean cuisine just isn't doing it for me. But then I remembered that the particular callaloo (the Spartacus of the vegetable kingdom) we've got is amaranth a.k.a. Chinese spinach. Did that name mean anything or was it just meant to sound exotic like Chinese gooseberries or Jerusalem artichokes? When I started looking into it I found out that amaranth is cultivated and eaten all over the place. In China it's yin choi and it's used in really boring stir fries; in Viet Nam it's rau dền and used in pretty much the same boring stir fry; but in India it's either mulai keerai or thota kura and it's used in some pretty interesting curries. Most of which, unfortunately, call for ingredients I haven't got. Once recipes are calling for amaranth instead of spinach, you're pretty well out of the adapted-for-the-Western-kitchen zone.

However I was able to cobble together something presentable without making a trip to an Indian grocery (which I really ought to do one of these days).

Ingredients:

1 bunch of amaranth for a couple servings. It cooks down quite a bit so use substantially more than you think you'll need.
1 1/2 cups water
1 pinch turmeric
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 teaspoon white rice flour
salt to taste


2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 dried red peppers, broken up
1 teaspoon mustard seed, whole
1 teaspoon cumin seed, whole
1 teaspoon black lentils or, failing that, millet
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil

6 extra large shrimp, cleaned and brined
The shrimp is optional, but I think they add a lot to the dish. You could use whitefish or crab instead if you'd prefer.

1. Strip amaranth leaves from stems. Cut off the woody bits and peel the tougher stems. Chop roughly.

2. Place amaranth in a medium pot with water and turmeric, heat on medium high until boiling, stir, cover and turn down heat. Simmer until amaranth is tender, 4 to 5 minutes.

3. Move amaranth from pot to food processor, leaving the water in the pot. Add tomato, rice flour and salt to processor and process into a paste. Adjust for flavor and texture.

4. Add shrimp to pot, return to heat and poach gently until firm.

5. Meanwhile, in small pan heat oil and spices until garlic is golden and mustard seeds start popping.

6. Serve amaranth with rice, topped with shrimp. Pour oil and spices over top.


Now that's tasty and expeditious (although I'll admit it could be prettier). You might think that that's just saag, but you can identify the amaranth through the spices and it's a better match with the spices than spinach would be. You can see that I overcooked my garlic a little, but I didn't quite ruin it and I actually like the crunch it added. Maybe some peanuts would be a good way to get that instead. Also, I would have liked to top the dish with some curry leaves but I'm long out of those.

The substitution of the millet was a good idea, I think, as there's a toasty flavor in the dish that's particularly nice with the shrimp. Those shrimp were my addition and I don't think I could have made a better choice of protein except maybe crab. It all worked together very well indeed.

CSA week 14 - Boscobel callaloo fritters

I got this recipe from getjamaica.com, one of the places I looked at when researching callaloo patty recipes. It's written pretty vaguely so there was a good bit of room for personal judgment. You might want to compare the original with my version to see how you might want to make it. I don't know what "boscobel" means here. The only Jamaican connection I could find for the term was a Beaches Boscobel resort. Maybe the chef there came up with this recipe.

Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped
1 stalk scallion, finely chopped [or one spring onion, chopped more finely the farther up the stem you go]
2 tomatoes, chopped [no indication of size or type. I used three small Campari tomatoes. They're particularly juicy which is probably appropriate as there's not a lot of liquid in this recipe to moisten the flour.]
1 Tablespoon butter [The original recipe calls for margarine, of course]
2 cups callaloo, chopped [I started slicing at the top of the bunch of callaloo and stopped when I got enough. That makes the rest a bit harder to find a use for, but I think the leaves and thin stems are best suited for this recipe. I also went a bit heavy on the callaloo and light on the onion to keep the recipe representative of its name.]
2 1/4 cups flour [I used half white bread flour and half whole wheat pastry flour]
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
spices to taste
1 egg beaten

0. Wash the callaloo but don't dry thoroughly.

1. Sauté onion, scallion and tomatoes briefly, just until onions start to soften and tomatoes to break down. Add callaloo. The original recipe says to "steam for 10 minutes" and I decided to take that literally and lay the callaloo on top of the other ingredients instead of mixing it in. Then I covered the pan, lowered the heat and let it cook for ten minutes. I think the callaloo wilted well.

2. Remove from pan and cool.

3. Heat deep frying oil or at least 1/2 inch of oil for shallow frying if you prefer.

4. Mix flour, baking powder and salt. Add egg to vegetables. Slowly add flour mixture to vegetable mixture until you reach, the recipe says "a medium batter". Small problem here as the mixture thickens into a dough after only 3/4 cup of flour. I checked other fritter recipes and this one is definitely missing an instruction to add water. I found I had to add 3/4 cup water to reach a not-too-thick, not-too-loose batter.

5. Check for taste and add salt, pepper, curry powder, jerk powder or whatever. I used a bit of curry powder.

6. Deep frying was a bit tricky or maybe I'm just not very good at it. I found it best to use quite high heat and Tablespoons of batter to make bite-sized fritters. Any larger and the insides refused to cook through no matter the temperature or how long they stayed in the oil. The high heat seemed to make them puff better so I settled on that despite any risks of burning. I also ended up cutting the early batches of large undercooked fritters in half and re-fried them which turned out tolerably well. But the later ones were definitely better.


Once I got that hang of it, the results are pretty nice. Crisp and chewy on the outside, light and a different sort of chewy on the inside. A subtle but distinctive flavor of callaloo coming through the fried dough flavors.

If I was more ambitious tonight I would have made some dipping sauces, but I just opened a couple bottles instead. The green stuff's not bad.

CSA week 12 - Jamaican callaloo patties

I apologize for the quality of the pictures this post. I left my camera at work so I had to fall back on using my cell phone's camera.

I'm surprised this idea for using callaloo hasn't come up earlier. It's kind of obvious and doesn't seem all that tough. But then I'm writing as I go along. We'll see just how difficult it turns out to be. I looked through a bunch of different recipes and am using bits from a few different ones here.

It's a three step process: make the dough, make the filling and then make the patties. Let's start with the dough:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 pinch salt
1/4 cup butter, cold
1/4 cup lard, cold (margarine and suet or shortening are more traditional, but I used what I've got)
1/3 - 1/2 cup cold water

1. In large bowl, combine flour, curry, turmeric and salt. Cut in fat until the mixture gets crumbly. Gradually mix in water until the mixture coheres enough to form a ball of dough. I found I used a little over 1/3 cup of water. Try not to work it too much so the gluten doesn't form.

2. Wrap the dough in plastic and put it in the refrigerator to rest and chill while you make the filling.

Filling:
3/4 pound callaloo
a handful of Swiss chard stems saved from last week
1/2 large red onion, chopped (I don't think red is authentic but it's what I've got)
1 Tablespoon butter
1 clove garlic, minced
1 hot pepper, chopped (optional)
1/3 cup salt cod, soaked and drained (surprisingly not an authentic addition, but what else am I going to do with this stuff?)
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup water

1. Wash callaloo and separate thick stems from leaves. Don't dry the leaves.

2. Roughly chop leaves and cut stems into 1/2 inch pieces.

3. Sauté onion, garlic and pepper in butter on medium high heat. When it becomes aromatic add the stems and maybe some cooking oil if you think it needs it and cook two minutes longer.

4. Add leaves, salt cod, water, a bit more cooking oil and stir. Turn down heat to medium low, cover and cook for 7 minutes. Thy to leave it a little undercooked since it's going to get baked later. Adjust seasoning, remove from pan leaving most of the liquid behind and set aside to cool.

5. Mash up the callaloo mixture to smooth it out a bit.


Patties:
work surface
rolling pin (with tapered ends if you've got that sort)
small bowl
smaller bowl
dough
filling
flour
water

0. Fill your smaller bowl with cold water. Or maybe with the liquid you left in the pan earlier.

1. Remove dough from refrigerator. Tear off a tangerine-sized piece and toss it in flour.

2. Place dough piece on work surface and roll out from center. Turn dough, work surface, pin or yourself 60 degrees around the circumference of the dough and roll again. Repeat until the dough is about 1/8 inch thick and your small bowl, upside down, can fit neatly in the center with excess on all sides. Slice off the excess, return it to the rest of the dough, and remove the bowl. This, I found, was not nearly as difficult as I expected.

3. Place a spoonful of filling on the top half of your dough circle. How much depends on how small your small bowl is. Dip your fingers in the cold water and run them around the outer edge of the dough circle until it starts feeling sticky. Fold the bottom half of the circle over the top half and press down around the edge until it sticks. You may have to stretch the dough a little if you used a lot of filling which seemed to work OK for me. Crimp all around the edge with a fork. Set aside.

4. Pull off another piece of dough. I tried to include some of the previously rolled dough in each new piece so the gluten that formed during rolling would be distributed in all of the patties, but I don't know if that was actually a good idea or not. Roll and fill until you're all out. I had enough filling and dough for 6 1/2 patties about the same size as the patties I used to buy in New York.

5. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes until golden brown. Let cool slightly before eating.



That actually was pretty easy, didn't make too much of a mess considering and only took an hour or so of work all told. I'm really impressed by how light and flaky the crust turned out while still being sturdy enough not to burst during baking. I think this may be the first patty, or empeñada for that matter, I've ever had with a decent crust. I suppose that may have something to do with all that butter and lard.

The filling seems to have lost a little of its flavor, or maybe it's just too hot to let sit on the tongue long enough to taste. Spice it a bit more before filling or condimentize with a little jerk sauce when you're eating and you're set. As they cooled I got a bit more flavor but it's still not wowing me here. Not bad, but honestly, I prefer the beef patties.

CSA week five - Braised callaloo

So, like I said yesterday, I set out this afternoon to follow Jennifer's advice and sauté the callaloo but upon closer examination I found the particular sort we've got is a bit too tough for a straight sauté so a braise was called for.

It's a pretty straightforward procedure but I figured I'd give it a post since I misled you in the last post. I started by browning some pre-desalinified salt cod and some ham in bacon fat in a dutch oven.



After a couple minutes I removed them, turned down the heat a bit, and added in my aromatics. I used a typical Caribbean combination of red pepper, hot peppers (sliced jalepeños instead of a pricked scotch bonnet), scallions, garlic and thyme, plus some Caribbean-style curry powder to try to cut through my cold.



I sweated them for a couple minutes and then added the callaloo leaves. Some recipes include the stems but they didn't strike me as particularly edible. Have any of you tried them? It only took a minute to wilt the leaves down. Then I added a cup of water (or you could use chicken stock of coconut milk), turned down the heat and covered the pot.

A lot of recipes call for up to forty minutes cooking time at this point, and if you're using dasheen that's probably a good idea. But for what we've got fifteen minutes was plenty. I added the salt cod and ham back in at around ten. A lot of those same recipes add okra at this point too. Fifteen minutes probably isn't enough for okra so I'd leave it out.

I served it all over a bowl of rice with a squeeze of lime and a dash of hot sauce to finish it off. Not bad at all and a lot less of a pain than the callaloo soup I made last time I had some. I don't think this sort of callaloo is so distinctive you're stuck using Caribbean accompaniments. This method is really a pretty generic mess of greens preparation so the flavors are adjustable any which way you'd like.

CSA week two - Callaloo

First up this week is callaloo. Looking around at recipes on-line I get the impression that callaloo is a very vague term that covers any soup or stew that has braised callaloo as it's main ingredient. I chose a Trinidadian variation I found on Recipezaar because it included Maggi seasoning cubes and golden ray cooking margarine. I'm not going to use either, but the fact that it kept those traditional Caribbean ingredients is a good sign. Also, it includes a bit of butternut squash substituting for west Indian pumpkin which seemed a nice bit of happenstance.

The first problem was adjusting the recipe for the amount of callaloo I've got. I'm not sure how to interpret the recipe's call for 15-20 dasheen leaves. (As best as I can tell, different types of greens are used in making callaloo on different islands around the Caribbean and whatever the locals use, they call callaloo. On Trinidad, they use dasheen which I'm hoping is what I've got.) I can't take that literally both because the leaves vary a great deal in size and because, even using the largest leaves, 15-20 won't make the 6 to 8 servings this recipe's supposed to make. After picking off all of the leaves I measured them out and I seem to have around 3 cups worth. Looking around at other recipes that measure out the leaves by volume and assuming standard serving sizes I need to cut down this recipe by three quarters. That gives me:

* 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 1/4 medium onion
* 1 garlic cloves, minced
* 1/2 tablespoons chopped celery [which I skipped because I'm not buying a whole head of celery for that tiny amount]
* 1/16 cup fresh thyme [none handy so I used dried]
* 1/8 cup chopped chives
* 4 okra, sliced [which I skipped because stewed okra is icky]
* 1/8 cup chopped west Indian pumpkin (substitute butternut squash)
* 1 CSA half-share dasheen, washed and coarsely chopped
* 1/4 cup coconut milk
* 1/4 Maggi seasoning, cube plus [this is just bullion so I used stock]
* 1 cups water or chicken stock
* 1/2 live blue crab, cleaned and washed in lime juice (or 5-6 pieces salted beef or salted pigtail) [I didn't like the looks of the crabs I saw at the market so I bought a jar of pre-picked crab. Also, in the recipes I saw it looked like any smoked pork product would do. I cut up some smoked ham and used that too.]
* 1/4 whole scotch bonnet pepper (Congo pepper) [Caribbean cuisine uses the hottest possible pepper and prepares it in the wimpiest possible way. I presume that's because that's the only peppers they have to use. I split the difference by using half of a more reasonable Serrano pepper]
* 1/2 tablespoons golden ray cooking margarine [or butter]
* 1/4 teaspoon salt (if using Maggi cube taste first before adding salt or the soup will be too salty.)

1. Put salted pork [or beef or cod if you're using anything of the sort] pieces in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil. Drain off this water. Repeat this process to draw off the excess salt from the salted meat.

2. Heat the oil in a large pot and add the onion, garlic, celery and fresh herbs [and ham]. Sauté until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add okras, pumpkin and dasheen leaves and sauté for another minute or so. Add the coconut milk and stock or water, crab and hot pepper.

3. Keep an eye on that hot pepper use one that is not bruised. You DO NOT want that pepper to burst while cooking. The heat from the burst pepper will overpower the other flavours. [So why ask for trouble if you don't need to?]



4. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook uncovered for about 35 minutes.



5. Taste and add salt if needed.
6. Remove hot pepper and crab or meat, [Whoops! I should have left my chunks of ham large. It took me some time to pick all the little ham pieces out during this step.] and swizzle the callaloo, or put in a blender or you can use an immersion type blender, and beat until smooth. Return the crab or meat pieces to the soup. Add the cooking margarine or butter. Simmer for 5 more minutes. Stir well. [I used the blender]
7. Serve hot as a soup on it's own or as a side dish. [or over rice]

And the results are...OK. The texture is a creamy sauce about the same as palak paneer; Okra definitely would not have been a help. The flavor is rather mild, easily diluted by the rice or overwhelmed by the Pickapeppa hot sauce I used so I didn't want to thin it out into a proper soup even if I did screw it up to get it this thick (which I don't think I did). The ham doesn't stand out and there's a hint of the crab but the flavor is mostly just the callaloo. The differences from spinach are subtle. There's a slight pungency and a chard-like bitter aftertaste that's interesting, but not something I'd aim at deliberately. A pinch of sugar mixed in helps with that and a pinch of salt brightens the flavors up. No real heat despite the fact that I chopped up the pepper and put it back in the pot. Overall, it's not bad, but it's not great either. Next time I think I'll try a different variation--something with tomatoes maybe.