7 articles Articles posted in Grenada

Pan-Fried Tamarind Chicken Thighs

Aside from making juice with all that newly prepared tamarind paste, try it on a savory dish! The tart, fruity flavor pairs particularly well with chicken and pork. I whipped up this recipe for dinner one night, and it took me less than half an hour (minus the marinating time).

Tamarind Chicken Thighs
6 servings

1/2 c. tamarind paste
2 Tbsp. honey
1/4 c. white wine or cooking wine
2 tsp. salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs, trimmed
2 Tbsp. oil

1. Combine first five ingredients together to make the marinade.

2. Next, cut slits in the underside of the chicken thigh on either side of the bone. This helps the marinade soak in and also helps the chicken cook more evenly.

3. Pour marinade over chicken and let rest for 30 minutes in the refrigerator or overnight.

4. When ready to cook, remove chicken from the marinade. Reserve marinade for sauce.

4. Heat up oil in a large pan over medium-high heat.

5. Place chicken thighs in pan and cook for 8-10 minutes per side. Check to make sure the chicken is done by poking with a knife or fork. Juices should run clear.

6. Place cooked chicken on paper towels to soak up excess oil.

7. Pour the reserved marinade into the pan and bring to a boil. Make sure to scrape up any browned bits for full flavor.

8. Serve over chicken and rice.

Tamarind Paste + Juice

I’ve been trying to incorporate more local Grenadian ingredients in my cooking, so I was thrilled to discover tamarind trees on one of my visits to the beach. I happened to be walking through a grove of trees when I saw piles of brown, roundish pods littering the sand below. Upon closer inspection, I realized the pods were actually tamarind pods and confirmed this by cracking open their dry, brittle pods to find the sticky, flesh-covered seeds of the tamarind inside.

The fruit of the tamarind is edible, but can be quite tart, so it’s usually cooked or added as flavoring to dishes. In Grenada, they like to mix the flesh with sugar to make tamarind candies, but you’ll also find it used to make juice and to flavor stews.

The tamarind tree can also be found in Southeast Asia, so you’ll see it in a lot of southeast Asian dishes, like pad thai or Vietnamese canh chua (sour soup). Today, I’ll be showing you how to extract the pulp from the tamarind pods to make tamarind paste and a deliciously refreshing tamarind juice!

The flesh of the tamarind tastes best (and is the sweetest) when the pod is fully ripe. You can determine if the pod is ripe if the shell is dry and brittle to the touch. It should crack easily in your fingers. Simply crack the pod in half and pull out the seeds and flesh.

I didn’t collect nearly as many tamarind pods as I needed to make a lot of paste, so I went ahead and purchased about a pound of fresh tamarind from the market in St. George’s. The tamarind here has been de-shelled, but still contains all the seeds. You can also find dried tamarind paste, as well as whole tamarind pods (sometimes in boxes, sometimes loose), at Asian grocery stores in the States.

To remove the seeds, add about 2 cups of water to your fresh tamarind paste. (If working with dried tamarind paste from the grocery store, use hot water instead.)

Mix it around to fully incorporate the water. It should start becoming a thick, gooey mixture. Let it sit in the water for about 15 minutes.

Using gloves, grab a handful of the mixture (seeds, pulp, water, and all), and in a separate bowl, slowly squeeze to separate the paste from the seeds.

The seeds will still have a bit of pulp left on them, so I throw them into another bowl filled with water to continue soaking. This water can later be added to your juice.

Continue the squeezing process until all the seeds have been extracted and you’re left with a whole bowl of pure tamarind paste.

Strain the seeds from the water and reserve the water to add to juice. Discard seeds.


At this point, the tamarind paste can be refrigerated and added to different recipes. It should last in the fridge for a few weeks, or can be frozen for several months. Freeze in an ice cube tray to help portion the paste*! You can then defrost as much as you need for recipes like pad thai and canh chua. Or you can use the tamarind paste right away to make tamarind juice.

Tamarind Juice
10 servings

1 cup tamarind paste
6 cups hot water
1/2 cup sugar (or honey)
ice

1. Dissolve the sugar (or honey) in the hot water.

2. Stir in the tamarind paste.

3. Serve over ice. Add more sugar as needed. Enjoy!

*Update – You can also make tamarind chicken with all that leftover tamarind paste.

cooking in grenada

Hello from the sunny island of Grenada (pronounced gruh-nay-duh)! Grenada is a tropical island located in the West Indies, just north of South America. This will be our home for the next two years while Dean is studying, so I just wanted to introduce you to this beautiful island, as well as share about how I’ve been getting along with all the new foods and different cooking styles here.

First off, we’ve found that the food here is generally much more expensive than in the US, especially if you’re going to buy American/imported products. Because we’re both pretty adventurous when it comes to trying to new foods, and because we’re trying to keep costs low, we’ve decided that we’ll be buying mostly locally grown and raised products. We’ve made a few exceptions for things like peanut butter, milk, cheese, and occasional treats, but for the most part, we’re trying to immerse ourselves in the culture and foods of this new place.

Grenada is bountiful, with tons of different tropical fruits – mangoes, papayas, bananas, starfruit, soursop, citrus, and lots of varieties of new, indigenous fruits. We’ve tried to sample a few different ones: golden apples, cashew fruits, sapodillas, but haven’t taken a liking to any of them yet. The fruits that we’ve found most available and inexpensive have been the mangoes, bananas, and papayas.

I expected there to be a lot of fresh fruit here, so I actually brought my Magic Bullet with us to make smoothies! I’m so glad we did. :) There are several smoothie vendors around Grenada, but I’ve found their prices to be almost like Jamba Juice back home (about $4)!

We ventured out to the fish market in town last weekend to pick up some fresh fish. In Grenada, it seems that all the vendors sell the same exact things at exactly the same prices, so there isn’t a lot of competition or bargaining to be had. We picked up this “red fish” for about $3/lb and then had it washed and cleaned for about $1 in the back of the market (with a machete, I might add. Did I mention they use a machete for everything here?). I ended up steaming the fish Asian-style, but I was disappointed with how chewy the meat and skin were. My mom suggested that I could try a less delicate cooking method for the fish, such as stir-frying, stewing, or simmering in soup.

It’s been hard to find all the same types of ingredients that I’m used to cooking with back home, but one thing that I can find in abundance here is spices! Grenada is often called the Isle of Spice because they grow and produce so many of the spices that we find at home. In particular, nutmeg is Grenada’s number one export. They use the fruit on the outside for jams and jellies, the red skin of the pit for cosmetics and dyes, and the inside for spice.

I’ve been experimenting with lots of new recipes that I hope to share with you soon, using some of the available ingredients here like pumpkin, local goat, and salted pork! [Update: You can find a recipe for pumpkin soup with salted pork here.]

P.S. We weren’t sure how available Asian food would be here, particularly Vietnamese food, so we brought a little stash with us (rice paper, rice noodles, Shin Ramyun, plus other assorted instant noodles). We also brought along some condiments too. :D  Turns out, there are a few Chinese restaurants, and we have been able to find things like soy sauce and sesame oil, but there is only one brand: Roland. Has anybody ever heard of it? It just seems weird to me that Roland makes soy sauce and saltine crackers.