Brown stew chicken is a common Caribbean dish, yet I don’t see it too often on restaurant menus in Peckham. Well, not compared to jerk anyway. The stew takes its name from the colour of the sauce, which is made by caramelising the marinated chicken in brown sugar before adding the reserved marinade. This caramel flavour is essential to make a good brown stew and it’s important to spend time ensuring the chicken is properly sticky and golden before moving on. The sauce is then cooked down to an intense gravy; it’s sweet and damn spicy, depending of course on how liberal your hand is with the fierce yet fruity scotch bonnet pepper.

It’s a proper carnival of Caribbean flavours, with depth from the caramelised sugar and soy, plus fragrance from the thyme, ginger, spring onions and  lime. The smell carries like nothing else and will make your neighbours insane with jealousy. This is proper winter comfort food, Peckham style.

Brown Stew Chicken (serves 2-3, depending on how many chicken thighs you fancy)

1kg bone-in chicken thighs (about 6), skin removed
Juice of 1  lime
4 spring onions, finely shredded, plus one extra to garnish
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 scotch bonnet chillies, de-seeded and finely sliced
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 regular onion, finely chopped
1 red pepper, finely chopped
4 sprigs thyme
1 thumb sized piece ginger, peeled and grated
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
Half a tin chopped tomatoes (I used the cherry ones)
Water to just cover the chicken pieces

Place the chicken pieces in a dish and add all the ingredients except the sugar, chopped tomatoes and water. Mix well and leave to marinate for an hour or overnight if possible.

When you’re ready to cook the chicken, remove them from the marinade, reserving the marinade to add to the stew. Pat the chicken dry with kitchen paper. Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a high-sided pan and add the sugar. When it begins to turn dark brown and caramelised, add the chicken pieces, taking care because it will splatter a lot. Fry them until you have nice caramelised bits on both sides, then remove from the pan and set to one side.

Add the reserved marinade to the pot and fry for a few minutes to soften. Add the chicken pieces back plus the tinned tomatoes and just enough water to cover the meat. Season, then simmer for 20 minutes until the sauce is thickened and the chicken cooked through. Serve with rice and peas, or plain rice, garnished with the a little chopped spring onion.

I was going to call these ‘Spiced Snail Buns’ but when I tweeted about it I had a load of replies from people who were, quite rightly, confused about the link between snails and buns. It’s the shape, people, the shape!

Anyway. I don’t cook a huge amount of sweet things (ice cream excepted) and puds are not my area of expertise by a long stretch. When I do venture into the World of  Wallace however, I like a savoury note, be it salt in caramel or in this case, spices in cake. I started out with a basic bun and showed it a bit of Peckham love by adding allspice, ground ginger and citrus zests in with the cinnamon, thinking along the lines of a Jamaica ginger cake.

I left them in the oven a few minutes too long but I’d just been dealing with a gas leak (my oven is electric for those detectives amongst you) so you’ll forgive me for feeling a little distracted. I had to use a fan heater to melt the butter for the buns for goodness’ sake. Now that’s dedication.

And come on, they do look like snails, right?

Spiced sticky buns

I started off with a Chelsea Bun recipe from the BBC website then added my own spices and citrus zests. I’ve tried them with the glaze and also with a very thin icing made of just icing sugar and water. I prefer the glaze.

500g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
1 teaspoon salt
1 x 7g sachet fact-action dried yeast
300ml milk
40g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg
Vegetable oil, for greasing

For the filling

25g unsalted butter, melted
75g soft brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 orange
100g currants

For the glaze

2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp caster sugar

Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl, then make a well in the middle and add the yeast from the sachet. Warm the milk and butter in a saucepan until the butter is melted and the mixture is tepid.

Add the milk and butter mix to the flour and stir until it comes together in a soft dough. Tip the dough out onto a generously floured work surface. Knead for five minutes, adding more flour if necessary, until the dough is smooth and elastic and no longer feels sticky. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave until doubled in size. Knock the dough back then roll out on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle about 20 x 40 cams in size.

Brush with the melted butter, then sprinkle over the currants. Mix the ground spices with the sugar and sprinkle all over. Starting from the longest edge, roll the dough into a long cylinder. Cut 10-15 slices from it and place them on a greased baking tray, leaving a gap between each one. Let rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 190C. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown. For the glaze, heat the milk and sugar gently in a saucepan. Let simmer for a few minutes then remove from the heat.

Place the buns on a wire rack to cool. Brush over the glaze and let cool completely. Serve with a good spreading of butter, if you dare.

We’re two thirds into December and I’m feeling the need to vary my beer snacks. I turned to Peckham for inspiration.

Bright yellow patties stack up high in shop windows but most of them have been pre-made and frozen. They always look jaded and sad to me but I could see the potential so I had a bash myself. The primary stuffing is minced beef (fish and vegetable fillings are also common) wrapped in the easiest flaky crust, stained yellow with turmeric and curry powder.

Jamaican patties are a product of English colonialism and East Indian migration into the Caribbean: the former brought the idea of pastry while Indian slaves brought cumin. Both mix well with the Caribbean flavours: thyme, spring onion, scotch bonnet pepper and allspice.

The patties are highly savoury and perfect if you’re growing tired of snacking on mince pies, deep fried brown things and crisps, as I am. The way to eat a Jamaican patty is to pick it up and dunk it gleefully into your favourite hot sauce. Wash it down with a Red Stripe.

Jamaican Patties (makes 8-10)

For the crust

250g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
125g fridge cold butter, cubed
5-6 tablespoons cold water
1 egg, beaten

For the filling (I have a bee in my bonnet about doing a slow-cooked goat filling next time).

250g minced beef
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 inch piece ginger, finely chopped
1 heaped teaspoon thyme leaves
5 spring onions, finely chopped
1/2 scotch bonnet chilli, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 tin chopped tomatoes

Preheat the oven to 170C

Heat 1 tablespoon vegetable or groundnut oil in a pan and add the ginger, garlic and chilli for 30 seconds. Add the beef and cook until brown. Add the spices and stir for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, spring onions and thyme and let simmer for 10 minutes or so, stirring every so often, until nearly all the liquid has evaporated.

While the beef is simmering, make the crust. Sift the flour, turmeric, curry powder and salt into a bowl. Add the cubes of butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mix resembles fine crumbs. Add 5 tablespoons of cold water (add another if it’s too stiff) until you have a stiff dough then turn it out onto a lightly oiled surface and knead until smooth. Do not over work the dough, knead it just enough until it is smooth.

Grease two large baking trays. Roll out the dough until a few millimetres thick and use a saucer to cut circles from it – as many as you can. You can re-roll the trimmings to get more circles. Lay the circles on the baking tray (they will be too hard to move once filled) and brush the edges of each with the beaten egg. Dollop some of the filling in the centre of each then fold over to form a patty. Seal the edges by crimping with a fork.

Brush the patties all over with more beaten egg and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve with hot sauce and beer.

The crust recipe is adapted from the Waitrose website.

[Al's has sadly closed. I don't know why].

There is a group called Peckham Vision which is dedicated to improving Peckham town centre. One of the ways they propose to do this is by advising local shops on appearance – product arrangement, signs, layout etc. Walking into Peckham is like walking into a giant jumble sale; stock is stacked in precarious towers – yams on popcorn machines on washing baskets on yams on bags of rice on yams on yams, with a phone unlocking shop wedged in at the side. While I agree there is a lot traders could do to smarten up and make themselves more appealing to the masses, I want to plead that we keep the higgledy piggledy arrangement and delegation of space. You can find brilliant things in unlikely places and personally, I relish the adventure; the lady I buy most of my decorated plates from, for example, trades from an old garage; bars, artists’ studios and restaurants squeeze under railway arches and now there’s Al, selling his Caribbean food from a tiny cramped passageway.

Alvin and his partner Zeena opened their business just a couple of weeks ago and they could be easily missed amongst the bustle of Rye Lane but my jerk-dar is highly sensitive, and I was in there faster than you can say ‘curry goat with rice and peas, plantain and a side of ackee, please’.

It’s amazing what people can do with a little fire in their belly – into that space Al has arranged a gas ring, a grill, a prep table, a fridge and by the time he and Zeena are in there too, there’s room for a person to stand and place and order, or you can call ahead and he’ll have it ready. Signs are strung up over the front, because there’s no door or window to speak of.

At the moment you can buy jerk lamb, chicken, rice and peas and salad but soon Al will start making curry goat and other traditional dishes. Zeena makes gorgeous fresh fruit juices at the ‘juice station’ (a shelf in the corner) and soon she’ll be selling her cakes, too. They tell me they’ve decided to start small and build up slowly, but twice I went down there and they’d sold out of everything. A good sign.

Jerk chicken was moist and coated with a thick, well-spiced marinade rather than wet-glazed like that of nearby competitor Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre. My favourite thing about Al’s though, is the gravy. A rich, brown stewed onion mixture which he ladles over your rice and peas before topping it with the meat. It’s sweet and addictive, tasting of the bottom of roasting pans and caramelised things. My only criticism is that the jerk isn’t very spicy, but then not everyone wants it so; variety is good and there’s always hot sauce.

Al and Zeena are so welcoming, that you’ll go away feeling like you’ve made new friends. He greeted me with outstretched arms and a beaming smile last time I was there, asking after my boyfriend too, who wasn’t. Al’s sums up everything I love about Peckham: the randomness, the sense of fun, the food and more often than not, the people. There’s a raw energy in the air here, which comes from characters like Al and Zeena, who believe in the value of the area and work with its idiosyncrasies, not against them. Let’s keep the heart of Peckham pumping.

[Edit: Al's has now closed, I do not know why. I hope he has moved premises as he was doing so well and selling out daily].

Al’s Caribbean Food
Umm, well it’s about two doors down from Khan’s Bargain Ltd. on Rye Lane, near the station. If you come out of the station, turn right and cross over the road, you will find it.
I’ll update this with a phone number when I next see Al.

[IMPORTANT EDIT DECEMBER 2011: Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre has now been taken over by new management and I'm sorry to say, is no longer worth visiting. They once served the best jerk in South East London but it's now dry, lacking in heat, flavour and all around love. I couldn't be more sad/angry!]

Just a little heads up. I’ve posted about Peckham’s new Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre before but at that point I’d only tried the chicken. The pork is out of this world.  It’s pure joy to work over every last piece, teasing meat from bone and nibbling on the fat perhaps a little more than necessary.

I’m loving their dry rub and glaze technique; it’s making me think about re-working my recipe. Again. A smokier, stickier jerk pork surely can’t be found in SE London? I’ll soon be finding out as I’m organising a Jerk Tour of the area. No rib or wing shall remain unturned.

In preparation, I’ve buggered off to Spain for a week for a bit of stomach-stretching. Adiós!

Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre
Station Arcade, Rye Lane
Peckham
(It’s in the alleyway that is the side entrance to the station)
Tel: 0207 358 8491

[IMPORTANT EDIT DECEMBER 2011: Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre has now been taken over by new management and I'm sorry to say, is no longer worth visiting. They once served the best jerk in South East London but it's now dry, lacking in heat, flavour and all around love. I couldn't be more sad/angry!]

I’ve been working my way around the jerk shops of Peckham. Some have been soul destroyingly pants. Spice and Nice Bakery, I’m looking at you. Gabby’s takeaway, you made me sad. It has not been a good couple of weeks on the SE London jerk scene and then, to top it all, I received the earth-shattering news from a friend that the chef at my favourite place, Smokey Jerkey in New Cross, doesn’t use scotch bonnets in his jerk marinade. I mean, what?! I’m still reeling.

It’s enough to plunge a woman into dark mental places but I’ve found salvation in Caribbean Spice, which has sprung up all happy and yellow under an arch near Peckham Rye station. As with most jerk shops and to be fair, most places in Peckham, it’s a no-frills outfit. There’s a kitchen where they cook stuff, a counter for serving it on and a few stools should you wish to hang about to eat it. No messing.

I was down there the day after they opened, default-ordering jerk chicken. It was very good indeed. Wet marinated and suitably sticky with sugar, it necessitated a good bout of finger-licking afterwards. The chilli heat made me sniffle. I wondered if it needed more allspice but when I looked down for my next bite to make sure, it was all gone. Caribbean Spice, welcome to Peckham. You’ll do a roaring trade in such a perfect location. So many times, I’ve come out of that station and before I know it, I’m standing in front of the counter placing an order. At this rate, I’ll need to start taking a different route home.

Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre
Station Arcade, Rye Lane
Peckham
(It’s in the alleyway that is the side entrance to the station)
Tel: 0207 358 8491

Apparently they have another place around Bellenden somewhere but I’ve not seen it.

It’s the end of the summer and the corn is going cheap. I bought four cobs for a quid in Peckham yesterday and a frankly quite staggering twelve red peppers for the same. Twelve. Not joking.

This soup only uses one you’ll be pleased to know, along with two cobs and some classic Caribbean flavours: thyme, scotch bonnet chilli and coconut. It’s a hearty mix, thickened with yellow split peas and potato but my version is light compared with other recipes which use pumpkin or squash and other vegetables. I prefer a fresher version which keeps the focus on the juicy bursts of corn. I strip one cob and slice the other so I’m not denied the pleasure of gnawing on it.

The scotch bonnet chilli is left whole and slit lengthways to release just moderate fruity heat and the creamy coconut milk smooths things over. It tastes tropical and most importantly, it celebrates the corn. At that price, it would be rude not to.

Jamaican Corn Soup

1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 scotch bonnet chilli
150g yellow split peas
1 litre stock (I used vegetable)
400ml tin of coconut milk
2 sprigs of thyme
2 cobs corn
1 red pepper, diced
1 large potato, diced

Heat a couple of tablespoons of vegetable or groundnut oil in a pan and add the onion. Let it sweat over a lowish heat for about 8 minutes then add the garlic for a couple of minutes more, taking care not to let it burn. Make a cut down the length of the chilli, but keep it intact and add it to the pan with the split peas, thyme and stock – simmer for 30 minutes.

Prepare the corn by shaving the kernels from one of the cobs, running your knife down the sides, top to bottom. Slice the other one into 2cm thick slices (I nicked that idea from this recipe recently. I also nicked their presentation). Add the corn, coconut milk and potato and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Add the red pepper for the final 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Allow the soup to cool a little then remove the chilli, thyme and corn slices (reserve the corn slices) and blend half the soup. If it is still quite hot then make sure not to fill the blender more than half way and hold the lid down because if you don’t you will end up with soup all over your kitchen. It will blast the lid off the blender. Return to the pan and add back the corn slices. Reheat if necessary, adjust the seasoning and serve.

I snubbed breakfast and arrived absolutely ravenous and half an hour an hour early for the Jerk Cook Out. I wanted to get the measure of the place, formulate a plan of attack and talk to some of the cooks. As the meat hit the grill and the smoke started twisting above the trees though, I got impatient and began repeatedly texting and calling my friends until one of them turned up; some pleasantries were exchanged (“how are you?” “yes yes fine whatever so let’s go to this place first then this then this…”) and we were off.

Tasty Jerk have won the competition two years running. I asked them if they fancied their chances but the answer came that they were just in it for kicks; if you win twice in a row then you have to take a year off. We got stuck right into some of their jerk pork belly. The fat was like eating the pork scratchings of my dreams. I like a touch more cloves in the mix but the allspice was prominent enough and I wonder if they put berries in the coals to infuse the smoke. As styles go it was more dry rub than sticky glaze but there was skill in the cooking and confidence in the spice.

There are different styles of jerk; there’s the all-in-one marinade and then the dry rub and glaze. I want to experiment with the latter. Some places seemed to be serving the meat with a sweeter sauce on the side. Last year’s runners up Jerk Lan took this approach, with disappointing results. Their sign urged us to ASK FOR SPECIAL SAUCE and so of course we did, which was a shame because it ruined the meat. I was thinking hot pepper paste with a kick to rival a donkey but instead we got saccharine gloop which seemed to be a mixture of the worst sweet and sour sauce of my life, sugar syrup and water. We could only judge the meat by licking the crusted remnants of chicken skin from the corners of our mouths, which, incidentally, were good and garlicky.

Over a swift pint of Meantime Pale Ale at The Florence it was time to re-group and digest before riding back on the second wind. My friend enjoyed our third portion better, although I can’t say I thought much of it. The real surprise came in the form of a spit roasted lamb, again from Tasty Jerk. Shards of crunchy skin and fat with a proper heat elevated to an out of body experience by the accompanying chilli sauce.

The lurid artificial hue of a drink is directly proportional to its level of efficacy in quenching the fire in your mouth. Everyone should know this. A couple of Slush Puppies the colour of 1980′s neon legwarmers brought us back from the endorphin super highway. Thought you’d turned your back on the SP at ten years of age? Think again.

The problem with an event getting bigger of course, is that quality becomes diluted. Our pork and lamb were great, although I did know of them and make a beeline. A later impulsive purchase of curry goat was watery and timidly spiced but there were so many places to choose from, it was hard to know where to start over-indulging. When considering this conundrum, it seemed that my only chink of light would come in the form of my judging the competition, so that I could visit each and every stall. I would systematically work the field, savouring each nugget of pork, fish and chicken like it was my last before slipping peacefully into a jerk coma.

And then I’d wake up.

The annual Jerk Cook Out Festival takes place in Brockwell Park (formerly Horniman Museum) in August. Dates vary so keep an eye out. This year’s event ran from 12-6pm.

If you like jerk check out my jerk recipe and my top tips for great jerk.

My event of the summer. I’ve been to The Jerk Cook Out competition for the past three years and every time it gets bigger and (in most ways) better; so much so in fact that this year it has moved from the gardens of The Horniman Museum, to the larger and much more suitable, Brockwell Park. The Horniman gardens, although lovely, are hilly and the stalls were forced to spread out; you could never really get the measure of the place. Planning your course around multiple jerk stalls is a serious business and one needs to size up the scale of the challenge. You could never do them all though, we’re talking a week’s worth of eatin’ out there.

Jerk chicken, pork belly, fish and crab claws. Rice and peas, plantains and fresh coconut water. Rum. Music. My advice is to get there early (the queues can get a bit silly) and to go seriously hungry, because one plate of jerk is never enough.

When: Sunday 15th August, 12pm-6pm
Where: Brockwell Park, (Dulwich, SE24 9AE)
Cost: Free entry, then you obviously pay for the jerk.

The question I get asked the most when shopping on Rye Lane is, “do you actually eat those chilli peppers?!” This usually comes from a man of Caribbean background of a certain age; they’re always amazed that this little White English girl even knows what jerk is, let alone makes it in her own home. Cue smiles, wistful eyes and tales from the tropics. Don’t even think about asking for a recipe though, it’s a short cut to the end of the conversation.

I don’t claim to have the best jerk recipe out there; I still aspire to the heady heights of Smokey Jerkey in New Cross, but I have learned a thing or two about cooking it through repeated mistakes, research and tips that people send to me. Here are those things, in a list. A list! With bullet points and everything.

• Grind your own allspice berries; makes all the difference. It’s all about freshness with spices; ready-ground have the tendency to taste dusty and lose pungency. Pestle the berries yourself in a mortar, they crush easily and you get to suck up the scent while you pound.

• Use a lot of sugar in your recipe. This tip I picked up from Josh. It was one of those beautiful moments when you work out what your recipe has been missing. I also add a tablespoon of molasses to mine, which gives a dark, sticky quality. Thanks to Laura for that one.
• Don’t ever, EVER be tempted to use different chillies in place of scotch bonnets. SB’s are the cornerstone of jerk flavour; no other pepper has the same fruity tingle. Just be careful when preparing them and de-seed if you like (I do) . There are actually quite a few varieties of Caribbean chilli (e.g. Trinidad Scorpion, Billy Goat, Jamaican Gold), but we only seem to get the one variety here.
• Always marinate overnight.
• Don’t use too much sauce. It’s tempting to leave a thick layer on when you’re grilling but don’t, it will just burn. If you’ve given it a good marinating overnight then the flavour should have seeped right in and all that’s left to do is cook it properly…

• Cook on a BBQ. The major problem with cooking jerk at home is the lack of a cooking drum. This is a barrel turned on its side and mounted on legs, basically (see above). The jerk is grilled over coals like a BBQ.
• This is an absolute blinder of a tip – sent on to me by a reader (cheers Joe). Those tantalising wafts of smoke you get coming from the jerk drums?  They come from spritzing the coals – with BEER. This creates more smoke which you can then seal inside with your meat or fish.
• Same reader, second awesome pointer: throw some soaked pimento (allspice) berries into the coals so when you spray them with the BEER, they sizzle and flavour the smoke.
• And finally, I find it best to use the indirect BBQ cooking method because this recipe has a lot of sugar in it and any direct flame with burn the shizzle out of it. Build your coals in a pyramid shape in the centre of the BBQ, then when they are lit, leave until they turn white. At this point you can move them to the sides of the BBQ, put your meat in the centre of the grill and put the lid on. The heat will circulate inside but there will be no fat dripping onto coals and therefore no flaring. You can also cook large joints of meat in this way.

And so ends the summary of my jerk-cooking know-how. Now come on, I know there are some tips tingling on your fingertips right now. I can sense it. Tell me.

You can find my current jerk recipe here and I must remind you that The Food Event of The Year is coming up soon – The Jerk Cookout Festival. If you look at my post about it last year, then you’ll see a comment from Joe, who heard a rumour about it being moved to Brockwell Park this year, having outgrown its usual venue – the gardens of The Horniman Museum in Forest Hill. Watch this space. I’m all over it.