Lorraine Pascale appeared on the food scene about 10 years ago as a change to her modelling career. I loved her TV programs and the accompanying books. Her paella recipe is my go to and her lamb shanks slow cooked in Rioja are firm favourite with the Chief Taster. I have tried other recipes from her books and none have disappointed.
I thought one of her books ( of which I have 5 in my library ) would be perfect for my Friday Facebook Cookalong – so I picked Fast, Fresh and Easy Food as I realised I hadn’t actually tried any of the recipes in it.
So what did I cook:
The dish that topped my Facebook poll was Baked jerk chicken with pineapple salsa, coconut rice and beans (p. 98) . Jerk chicken has been on my to try list for a while so this choice suited me plus I wanted to pretend I was relaxing in the Caribbean sun 😎
The book says that the dish takes 40 minutes from start to finish – I talk too much during the cookalong to test this timing but still we did it in an hour!
To be honest I started to worry about the way the dish was going not long after we started but hey, that’s the gamble I take with the cookbook cookalong 🙄
The chicken turned out okay but I found that the overriding taste was that of allspice. Now I know this is a main constituent of the dish but next time I’ll add scotch bonnet chili rather than the tabasco used in this recipe and I’ll marinate the chicken in advance.
I was very sceptical about the cherry tomatoes in the pineapple salsa and I’m still not convinced 😉
Instead may I recommend the pineapple salsa I’ve been using for years :
- What you need:
- 1 fresh pineapple, cored & finely diced
- 1 red chili, deseeded & finely chopped
- 1 red onion, finely chopped
- 2 tbsp. finely chopped coriander or mint
- Zest and juice of 1 lime
- Salt, Tabasco
- What you do:
- Mix pineapple, chili, red onion, herbs, lime zest & juice. Add salt & Tabasco to taste.
- Allow to stand for about 30 mins to allow flavours to develop.
Now it comes to my most disappointing part of the dish – the rice and beans. I ended up adding a lot more liquid than in the recipe to cook the stated amount of rice. I added the lime to try and improve it and as a personal preference I added black beans instead of kidney beans.
My verdict:
Overall I found this dish very disappointing – espevailly as I said, I’ve never had any issues with her other recipes. Hopefully it was just a one off – if I try any more from this book I’ll report back . Thanks to those of you who tried the dish and confirmed my suspicion that the dish would benefit from marinating.
In the book’s favour, it is well laid out a with timings and a picture for every recipe, but if you want to buy one of Lorraine Pascale’s books I would recommend ‘Home Cooking Made Easy‘ over this one.
If you missed my Fast, Fresh and Cookbook Cookalong you can catch up here
Happy Cooking!
Yvonne xx
If you’d like to join the weekly Hey Pesto! cookalong or attend one of my online cookery classes then please click here for details.
📷Special thanks as always to Jeff Harvey for the great food photography 📷
PS I found padron peppers in my local Polish shop last and I cooked this as part of the cookalong – they saved the day ☺
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