As you might have guessed by now, I am inspired by cooks everywhere.
By many cooks.
I am especially inspired by those who think outside the box.
And yes, I am a little partial to cooking that I have picked up from Jamaica.
This dish was inspired by a Jamaican dish called pepper pot soup.
The two main ingredients are spinach and of course coconut milk.
And there are other things too.
Now just to be clear, I do not profess to have a dish equating to the authentic pepper
pot soup.
In mine for example, I used chopped ham sauteed with onions and seasoning and I also used
pigtail.
Please don't equate my dish with the original authentic pepper pot soup of Jamaica.
But I will say this, mine turned out to be very delicious.
After the first bowl, I had to have a second.
Okay, this is what I did.
I did not use pork that was already salted so in very salted water I added the pigtail.
Now if you are going to use pigtail that is already salted, then you are going to have
to remove as much of the salt as you can.
Once that happened, once I had the pigtail in the water of course, I brought it to a
boil and this after two hours, this is what it looked like.
I boiled it for two hours, okay, and then it set that aside.
As for the water, I threw that down the drain.
Boiling the pork for two hours, that was the end of phase one.
Then we went on to phase two, a dab of butter in my frying pan.
And here I used butter because quite frankly, I didn't need to get it really super hot.
My stove was on medium and that was good enough.
And as you know, I prefer to use butter as opposed to that other stuff.
Other stuff meaning margarine.
I don't use margarine.
Do you know what's in butter?
Butter.
Do you know what's in margarine?
I don't either.
Anyway, I added my seasoning, thyme, a little bit of Italian seasoning.
I also added some black pepper.
Now is a great time to add any seasoning that you like.
Remember, I'm always saying this, I think cooking is a creative process and I think
that it is also a personal artistic form.
A personal artistic expression, don't you agree?
Because you can do something, you can make it just the way you like it.
Anyway, on we go.
Once my onions were cooked, well not cooked, but clear anyway, then what I did was I added
some chopped ham.
And really, once the chopped ham went in, remember I've seasoned it the way I like it,
so it is really onion, all my seasoning, chopped ham.
Now this is in phase two, okay?
Come to think of it, this is a meal unto itself, isn't it?
Chopped ham, sauteed in butter, and there you have something for a sandwich.
Anyway, we'll talk about that another time.
The next thing was I added some frozen spinach, by the way.
This spinach, this is a cheap way of buying spinach, it's one dollar for a bag of spinach,
and it's also a lazy way to buy spinach.
A better way would have been to, instead of adding frozen spinach, just get fresh spinach
and cut them up the way that I would like to cut them up.
Anyway, the lid goes on, of course, and once the spinach has been integrated into the ham
and the onions, and everything is back up to temperature, then that's the end of that
phase.
Now what we need to do now is to add, remember the pig tail that we had from earlier, then
we add the pig tail, there you go.
The pig tail is added into my pot with the spinach, ham, and onions, and in addition
to that, of course, I mixed everything well, but not, you can't be too vigorous in your
mixing here, because don't forget, the pig tail is already cooked.
So if you get too vigorous, it's going to fall apart.
Then I added the coconut milk to the spinach and to everything else.
Now keep in mind that is cold in my kitchen.
So the coconut milk looks like this, don't be alarmed, it's okay, it's just that coconut
milk will do that from a cold kitchen.
If you want it to pour, perhaps you can put it in warm water.
Anyway, the coconut milk goes in and everything is in now, and I just wanted to simmer for
a little while.
Now this next operation is very important.
Everything comes to a boil, as you can see, and then I put the lid on, and I'm going to
let it simmer for about 30 minutes, that's about it, with the lid on.
You may want to exercise your creativity, and if it is too thick, then you may want
to add some boiling water to it to make it thinner.
After 30 minutes, of course, it's all done.
That's your cooking.
It's all done.
All you have to do now is to serve it.
By the way, I did something, shall we say, something in keeping with my style of cooking,
which I'll explain to you later.
But what I did was, I served my dish on English muffin.
I just put it on a plate, instead of drinking it as a soup, just place it on English muffin,
and then I enjoyed it.
As I said earlier, it was so very good.
I mean, it was excellent.
I had to go back for seconds.
I hope you enjoy this, and don't forget to keep your comments and your suggestions coming
in.
Now, I want to share a little secret with you.
Are you ready for this?
Two secrets, actually.
First of all, I was a little concerned about how this dish may turn out.
That's the first secret, but I was very confident that would be delicious.
The second secret that I wanted to share with you is this.
When I placed this into the pot to cook for two hours, I wanted to add something that
would reflect me and my taste.
Something that would actually say, microdac.
So I added a scotch bonnet pepper, and a whole, uncut scotch bonnet pepper.
Now, what I should have done, perhaps, is to add half of the scotch bonnet pepper that
was cut.
Of course, after two hours, I simply removed it from the water, as I told you before, and
that was the end of that, and I went on to cook.
In the end, the result was really, really, very good.
Thank you.
