Chuck Hughes' Caribbean Jerk Crab Recipe

Chuck’s Day Off is the only show on the Cooking Channel I can watch in its entirety.  All the rest of the so-called celebrity chefs totally irritate me.  As far as I can tell, the only skills they acquired in cooking school were chopping and rolling their eyes ecstatically after tasting a mouthful of whatever they just concocted.  Boy, they sure can chop and  don’t miss an opportunity nor a beat to show us how well they do it. And there must be a special acting class they have to take to achieve that orgasmic look in the tasting scene. Chuck Hughes is good at it too but he’s also cute and affable and has some pretty good recipes up his  T-shirt sleeve.  If it weren’t for Chuck, I would have gone through life not knowing that POUTINE is a very popular Canadian dish that consists of french fries topped with cheese curds and gravy.   

So Chuck was just getting some crab legs out of his fridge, when my son walked in, looked at the television screen and said “wow, that looks good”. He loves shell fish.  Chuck proceeds to heat a bit of canola oil in a pan, throws in a handful of ginger slices, a rosemary sprig, the crab legs, sprinkles jerk seasoning over everything, shakes the pan a few times while things are heating up.  Then he adds lime juice and a little water.  He puts  the pan into the oven.  Five minutes, he says.  When he takes the pan out,  he adds a little butter, lots of parsley.  A good toss, and .. voila! Jerk Crab Legs a la Chuck.  Greg and I are drooling.

Greg leaves and comes back with a bag of crab legs.  Fifteen minutes later, he pulls the pan out of the oven, adds the butter and the parsley, gives everything a good stir, and while I get my camera, he’s already picking crab meat out of the claws.  I haven’t smelled anything so delicious since the last time I roasted garlic. I can’t even take credit for this heavenly aroma.  But  I did provide the incendiary jerk seasoning which I made from scratch with Spanish smoked paprika, black pepper, cayenne pepper, ground celery seeds, sea salt, onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder and a bit of thyme.*  Greg did all the rest. Holy maple leaf!  Not only is he cute and affable like Chuck, but he can cook like him too.

Here's a close-up of the crab legs:

* Minus the sea salt, this is my favorite mix of herbs and spices.  It is so good, I hardly miss salt. 

Chickpea Hummus with Roasted Red Peppers and Roasted Garlic

I am not ashamed to admit that to the right of this column is a blatant advertisement for my cookbook “Alcapurrias, Klopsenburgers & Purple Salad: Kitchen Memories from A - Z”.  It was written for my sons who asked me for the recipes of their favorite foods so they could prepare them in their own kitchens when the time came.  It is not a vegetarian cookbook.  My sons are carnivores.  I cook for carnivores.  But I also cook for myself.  Separately.  Occasionally they’ll show interest in my salt and fat free creations as they did when I spooned this hummus into a bowl.  “Fantastic!” they agreed after sampling ample portions.

Fresh red peppers are usually very expensive this time of year but our local market had a three-day sale recently and I bought several pounds for less than five dollars.   A quick inventory this morning of the vegetable crisper revealed just two remaining red peppers which would be just the right amount for hummus with roasted red peppers and roasted garlic. 

The oven was set to 400 degrees.  I lined a baking sheet with foil that got a quick spritz of canola oil cooking spray.  The seeded and cored papers joined a foil-wrapped whole head of garlic   that had its top sliced off and into the oven they all went.  After twenty minutes I checked on them, turned the peppers and set the timer for another twenty minutes.  What aroma!  Roasted garlic is definitely a comfort food in a class all by itself.

The squeezed-out garlic, the skinned peppers and the rinsed contents of a can of garbanzo beans took a five-minute spin in the food processor. It was slow going at first without any liquid.  The added lemon juice didn’t help much.  Chipotles in adobo sauce came to the rescue once again,  and the hummus spun to smooth perfection.

With cucumber, carrot and zucchini sticks for dipping, I munched away contentedly while enjoying a rerun of The Bob Newhart Show.

These are the ingredients I used for this recipe:

2 large red peppers, seeded, cored and cut into wide strips

1 whole head of garlic

Canola cooking spray

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Juice of half a large lemon

1 chipotle

Adobo sauce (enough to aid the food processor in processing)

Soup Day

Hanging out in the backyard with our resident groundhog wasn’t an option today. It was cold and rainy here in Bucks County. 

Soup Day!

Pea Soup.  Rich and creamy, with the smoky, salty taste of ham,  served with seasoned croutons browned in butter or olive oil, pea soup is definitely a comfort food favorite for many, especially on a nasty day.

Fortunately, I had all the ingredients including a meaty ham bone that I stuck in the freezer after Easter dinner.  But of course this pea soup was going to be just for me so the ham bone stayed frozen and I assembled and chopped what the celebrity chefs on the food network always call the “holy trinity”: celery, onions and carrots.  Since frying was out, I  emptied the chop block into my well-seasoned cast iron pan that had been heating on medium high while I was chopping.  It took about ten minutes and a lot of spatula use to get the veggies to acquire a toasted look and aroma.  Perfect for that smoky flavor I wanted.

Next came about six cups of water, a cup of yellow split peas, additional carrots and celery, garlic cloves, a couple of bay leaves, a little cayenne pepper, black pepper.  I let     the soup simmer for a while before I gave it a taste test.  It was palatable but very bland.  I considered adding a shot of Tabasco Sauce but decided it would be too vinegary.  But there right above the Tabasco bottle was  a jar of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.  And before I could say EUREKA!, a couple of whole pepper were chopped and in the soup along with a spoonful of adobo sauce.  The pieces of pepper looked like bacon bits.  At this point, a good amount of the liquid was lost to evaporation and not wanting to dilute the soup with plain water, I poured in a cup full of brown rice milk that I had made a few days ago to use on my morning oatmeal.  Now it was way past lunch and I was very hungry, so after letting the soup simmer for five more minutes, I ladled out a bowl full.  Not bad.  Next time I’ll be sure to make croutons to go with the soup.

To recap, here’s the list of ingredients I used

6 cups water

1 cup yellow split peas

5 celery stalks, chopped

5 carrots, scraped and chopped

2 garlic cloves

2 large bay leaves

cayenne pepper

black pepper

2 chipotle peppers, chopped

1 spoonful adobo sauce

My first entry. Hold the fanfare

Ever since I started getting serious about this vegan way of life for health reasons … not necessarily because I want to live to be a hundred but because I would like to watch a few more summer and winter olympics … I must confess that food is on my mind pretty much all of the time.  I miss it.  I miss Fettuccine Alfredo, Wiener Schnitzel, corned beef hash, Brie, shirred eggs, fried eggs, eggs in potato salad, eggs over easy …. I could write a book listing all the foods I'm missing.   But instead I'm focusing my energy on creating dishes that smell, taste and look good.  

With salt and oils permanently banned from my condiment shelf, I have been experimenting with spices and herbs, vinegars and citrus fruit, to give my dishes not just character but  have them taste good too. Occasionally I've come up with a dish that surprises even me with its intense flavors and pleasant texture.  How did I do that?  I was only experimenting, trying a bit of this, a bit of that.  Inevitably I can't remember exactly what went into the pot and this wonderful salt-free, fat-free, totally vegan dish of delicious sauerkraut (yes, salt-free sauerkraut!) with sweet smoky onions, creamy potatoes and carrots will never be recreated.  I tried, really I did, but so far have failed.

But this will never happen again.  This blog will be my recipe holder, whether it's a failed dish or a success.