Jerk Vegetables - My Recipe

Inspired by Levi Roots – Food For Friends

Serves 2 generously or 4 as a small side

Ingredients:
• 2 orange, red or yellow peppers
• 2 red onions
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp jerk seasoning
• 2 tbsp tomato ketchup
• Pinch of dried thyme
• Salt and black pepper

1. Thinly slice the peppers into strips and the onions into half moons.

2. Heat the oil in a large pan then add the vegetables, letting them sizzle before adding in the jerk seasoning, ketchup, thyme and salt and pepper.

3. Allow the onions to colour before turning the heat down to medium and add about 100ml of water. Let the water bubble away until you hear the vegetables start to fry again, meaning all the water has evaporated. Cook them over a low heat until they are very soft and merging together, this should take from 20-30 minutes, overcooking wouldn’t matter.

Lovely served with Levi’s calypso pork chops and jacket potatoes.

Recipe Review - Calypso Pork Chops

From Food For Friends by Levi Roots
Calypso pork chops (p68)

Serves 6

Ingredients:
• 6 pork chops
• 3 tbsp sunflower oil
• Salt and black pepper
For the marinade:
• 10 tbsp dark soft brown sugar
• Juice of 3 limes
• 2 red chillies, deseeded and roughly chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 4 tbsp rum
• Splash of angostura bitters (optional)
To serve:
• Lime wedges, for squeezing
• Fresh coriander leaves (optional)

1. Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a non-reactive bowl. Place the chops in the marinade, turn so all sides are coated, cover with Clingfilm and leave to marinate in the refrigerator for several hours, or up to 24 hours. Turn the chops over every so often.

2. Heat 2 frying pans until they are really hot and take the chops out of the marinade, scraping any that is clinging back to them back into the bowl. Brush the chops all over with the oil, then season. Cook them in the frying pans over a high heat for about 3 minutes, or until you get a good colour, then turn over and repeat on the other side.

3. Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook the chops until cooked through - this takes at least 10 minutes. There should be no pink juices left when you pierce the meat. Towards the end of the cooking time, add the marinade and let it glaze the pork chops and bubble away in the pan. Squeeze on some lime and scatter with fresh coriander, if you like, before serving.

Levi recommends serving with red. green and gold coconut rice (p131) but I served it with fluffy jacket potatoes (obviously oozing with mounds of butter) and jerk vegetables. (see my own recipe) I served this as a midweek meal for me and my family. The recipe was easy to follow, and the ingredients were mostly things I had in the store cupboard. I left out the angostura bitters, as this was optional in any case. The pork chops started to burn after a minute over a high heat as suggested in the recipe, so I cooked them over a fairly low heat which gave them a lovely caramelised colour. The frying pan was a nightmare to wash up though! They tasted delicious but there was a comment that they were too sweet, though I found the mix of sweet, spicy and tangy just right. The four or us who munched on these pork chops rated them 32/40.

Levi Roots - Food For Friends

Published: 2010



Overview: A fair sized hardback book focused on simple recipes with a Caribbean twist, written by the creator of Reggae Reggae sauce.

Review: ‘Food For Friends’ has over 200 pages of delicious recipes, favourite ingredients and an interesting introduction from Levi Roots. His vibrant personality jumps out from the glossy pages, apparent in his colourful recipes and descriptions of his essential Caribbean ingredients. The recipes are arranged in chapter order, with sections such as Lunch, Picnic, Barbecue and Grill, Special Occasions and High Tea, with more in between. I like this layout, making it easy to find a dish to cook that suits the occasion. Some recipes have images, which are all appealing yet homely, some showing Roots and other people making or eating them which gives a laidback, casual feel to the book. The recipe layout is simple and fairly easy to follow, with ingredients that are generally easy to source in local supermarkets. One criticism I have of the recipes is that in some, for example Roots’ version of Spaghetti Bolognese on page 96, it calls for 100ml Sunshine Kit Cooking Sauce, which is in fact a whole recipe in itself on page 123 and contains 14 ingredients, therefore meaning you would need to make this recipe just to make another one. I feel that an alternative should be given, maybe a recommendation to use a bottle of Reggae Reggae sauce would have been better! I do, however, like the recipes, they are user friendly and make Caribbean cookery accessible to the everyday home cook. There is a good balance between sweet and savoury dishes, even showing desserts to make on the barbecue such as Barbecue bananas with passion fruit cream on page 75. The recipes work out to be fairly economical if you are going to be cooking a lot of Caribbean style food as many recipes use the same ingredients such as rum, honey, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, chilli and thyme, which can be bought in large quantities. From reading this book I feel inspired to experiment more with West Indian flavourings and am looking forward to trying out more recipes from this book such as: Pumpkin and spinach gratin (p35); Sweet potato, red onion and feta sunshine tart (p52); Levi’s sticky red cabbage (p120); Coconut pavlova with tropical fruit (p168); Sweet potato pudding (p174); Chocolate and orange spice cake (p178). Can you tell I like sweet things yet?

Rating: 8/10 – Really nice book with great simple layout and lots of colour with some lovely recipes, but a few of the recipes seem a little bit samey and maybe a bit too much rum is used!