Rice & peas

"Rice & peas" is a regular carbohydrate served at Jamaican meals. It is really rice & kidney beans. It is cooked with coconut milk, which imparts a unique flavor, & a purple color to the rice. It should be covered with "gravy" (which is really "au jus").

Chicken is a very common dish in Jamaica. It is usually prepared as "fricassee chicken", which means pan-seared, then stewed in the skillet.

Plantain (pronounced "plaan-tin") is a very coarse member of the banana family. It is fried & eaten along with meat (like "sweet & sour").

You can see from the photo above that the plantain is larger than the banana. It grows on a tree very much like a banana. Note in the photo below, that the bunch grows down, but each "finger" points up. When the bunch is tiny, the fingers point down. Then as it matures, the fingers reverse direction!

You may have noticed that some of the bananas in the earlier photo were green. We boil these green bananas & serve them as another starch - like potatoes. They can be eaten whole, or crushed with butter.

Cho cho is a vegetable that can be seen in the dish of Fricassee chicken and rice & peas above. It has very little taste. It does however absorb the flavor of whatever it's cooked with. So it can be used as "hamburger helper" - in case you don't have enough meat for your stew!

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