For the longest while I have wanted a decent sized Dutch oven; or as they’re called in Trinidad, a coal pot and in Jamaica, a Dutch pot ot ‘Dutchie’.
Using one of these Dutch ovens, you can grill, bake, barbecue, fry and even turn out a great sourdough loaf. It’s probably the most versatile pot in the kitchen – and works equally well when cooking outdoors.
Of the three Dutch ovens, I’d have to choose the traditional Caribbean version. You get the three parts; the bottom ‘oven’ that holds the charcoal, the cooking pot and the lid. I’d add a circular grill so that I could use the oven as a barbecue and also perhaps use it with my cast iron Welsh griddle stone too.
Some of the links on our blog are affiliate links. We may receive a small commission - at no cost to you - if you click through and make a purchase.
Prices & links correct at time of publication.
Surface casserole dish – Serax £158.00
Dutch pot and coal stove combo £59.21 - £160.26
Pinnacle Cookware 4.7 litre cast iron double Dutch oven £44.95
Surface casserole dish – Serax £158.00
Dutch pot and coal stove combo £59.21 - £160.26
Pinnacle Cookware 4.7 litre cast iron double Dutch oven £44.95
Surface casserole dish – Serax £158.00
Dutch pot and coal stove combo £59.21 - £160.26
Pinnacle Cookware 4.7 litre cast iron double Dutch oven £44.95
Surface casserole dish – Serax £158.00
Dutch pot and coal stove combo £59.21 - £160.26
Pinnacle Cookware 4.7 litre cast iron double Dutch oven £44.95
Surface casserole dish – Serax £158.00
Dutch pot and coal stove combo £59.21 - £160.26
Pinnacle Cookware 4.7 litre cast iron double Dutch oven £44.95
When I was young, back in the early 1970s, there was a little bakery located across the road from our house. They baked their bread in a wood fired oven – half a century before this method became trendy. The bakery made the most fantastic hops bread – a queue would build up, just before they opened their doors – people with their paper bags in hand – to buy fresh, hot hops bread.
Hops bread has been on my ‘to bake’ list for a long time; I just needed to find the right recipe. When I was back in Trinidad last year, one of my friends shared her family’s recipe. The recipe calls for ‘shortening’ which, over there, would probably mean Prize or Cookeen – things I have no hope of getting my hands on in rural Wales. I swapped it for plain old butter.
I’ve made two batches of hops bread so far, but I’m yet to master the process. I’m still to duplicate that perfect, golden brown crusty domed top with a soft pull-apart centre that’s similar to Hokkaido milk bread. Practice makes perfect!
Enjoy them plain – spread with butter, with slices or grated mounds of strong cheddar or stuffed with buljol. I filled my first one with a delicious crispy fried tofu slice… I’ll be sharing that particular recipe next week!
Following on from last week’s pholourie recipe, here’s another of my favourite fried foods that hails from Trinidad – fried bakes (or fry-bake, if you’re a proper Trini!). ‘Fried bakes’ – a contradiction in terms!
My aunt sent me a recipe that she cut out of the TT Guardian – complete with a few of her personalisation notes!
It’s a very quick and simple recipe; a basic dough of flour, raising agent, fat and liquid – but the end product… wow!
Fried bakes are traditionally eaten with fried fish (the famous bake & shark eaten al fresco at the beach) or buljol, a spicy salted fish dish.
Here is a video of my aunt making fried bakes recently. This is what she advocates:
I decided that tapping the dough down into the oil, whilst turning it but by bit, results in it puffing up immediately.
As a vegetarian, I thought about what best to stuff them with. In the past, I’ve had them with extra mature cheddar, Branston pickle and salad. Perhaps smashed avocado or hummus with grated carrot. Instead, I went a step up and decided on fried bakes with grilled halloumi, salad and hot sauce.
These bakes are traditionally served with fried fish or buljol
Ingredients
260g/9oz plain flour
8g/¼oz butter/shortening
2 tsp baking powder
½tsp salt
½tsp brown sugar
190ml/6 fl oz water
vegetable oil for frying
Add ingredients to shopping list
If you don’t have Buy Me a Pie! app installed you’ll see the list with ingredients right after downloading it
Instructions
In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and brown sugar
Rub in the butter/shortening until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs
Add enough water to just about make a soft dough
Flour your work surface and knead for about 5 minutes
Cover the bowl with a tea towel and rest the dough for 30 minutes
Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces and then divide each into 6 equal pieces (getting 12 in total). Or, weigh the entire ball of dough and divide into 12 equal weights; mine were about 40g/1⅖oz each
Rest the dough again for a further 5 minutes before rolling each piece into rounds about 7cm / 3" in diameter
In a heavy-bottomed, deep frying pan or saucepan, heat the vegetable oil and fry each bake making sure that it's covered in oil (my aunt recommends spooning oil over the top of the bake as it cooks, to help it puff up)
Carefully flip and fry the other side until fully ballooned or puffed
Remove and drain on kitchen paper to remove excess oil
Slice in half horizontally and load with your chosen filling
Print
Adapted from Trinidad & Tobago Guardian
Adapted from Trinidad & Tobago Guardian
H is for Home Harbinger https://hisforhomeblog.com/
When I published my recent post on Trinidad street food, the eagle-eyed ones of you would have noticed a glaring omission to the round up. Pholourie – fried balls made from spiced flour and served with either a mango or tamarind sauce.
For some reason, every Indian food stall I visited while I was in Trinidad either didn’t sell or had run out of the delicious snack. Now that I’m back in the UK, I’ve cooked my own home-made pholourie. I used the recipe from my Trini food bible, The Multi-Cultural Cuisine of Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean: Naparima Girls’ High School Cookbook. I converted all the measurements from cups to metric and imperial as well as scaled it down so that the portions were right for two people. It made around 20 small balls. It would be simple enough to scale it back up again if needed.
Where I live, it’s not easy to get hold of split pea flour without buying it off the internet, so I made my own. I have a little processor that’s for grinding spices so I used it to powder some dried split peas. It worked surprisingly well – I just sieved out the few residual lumps.
Simply combine all the ingredients (except the water) into a large bowl, make a well in the centre, pour in the water, whisk and spoon teaspoonfuls into pre-heated oil. A useful tip: dip two teaspoons into the cooking oil before you heat it. Use these to drop the batter into the pan – it will just slip right off!
I looked for tamarind concentrate in the supermarket to make a sauce to accompany my home-made pholourie. Instead, I came across a bottle of imli pani, which I’d never heard of previously. Apparently, it’s served alongside panipuri.
The imli pani ingredient list includes tamarind, sugar, cayenne, salt, chilli, mint, cumin coriander, mixed spices and black pepper. Not a million miles from a Trini ‘tambran’ sauce!
My pholourie was delicious – crisp on the outside, soft and spongy on the inside, with a lovely flavour. If I’d known how quick and easy they were to make… I might have set myself up with a street food stall – I’d clean up!
Fill a deep, heavy-bottomed pan with vegetable oil up to at least the 8cm / 3" mark
Dip two teaspoons into the oil and set them aside to use later
Preheat the pan of oil over a medium flame
In a large mixing bowl, combine the split pea flour, plain flour, baking powder, turmeric, salt, pepper sauce and garlic
Make a well in the centre and add the water
Whisk together to form a thick batter
Using the pair of oiled teaspoons, carefully drop a teaspoon of batter at a time into the hot oil. The size of my pan meant I could fit about 6 pholourie at a time
When the pholourie begin to float (less than a minute), turn them over using a metal skimmer or slotted spoon so they cook evenly
Remove from the pan onto some kitchen paper to absorb the excess oil
Repeat until all the batter has been used
Eat immediately
Serve with tamarind sauce or pepper mango chutney on the side
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
