Her story
Cook Pam’s traditional Jamaican recipes
“At Christmas time, I see family I have not seen for a long time. It’s a great opportunity to get together, share nice food and spend time with loved ones.”
Tick off as you go!
For the rice & peas
• This is a great dish to batch-cook and save the leftovers, if you don’t need all eight servings at once.
• You can use dried kidney beans and cook overnight to add more flavour and a reddishness to the rice.
• To make the stew vegetarian or vegan, you can swap out the chicken and stock for your favourite meat-free alternatives.
• It can be cheaper to buy a whole chicken and joint it yourself. You can even save the remaining bones to make homemade stock, which can be stored in the freezer for another time.
Cook Pam’s traditional Jamaican recipes
“Families don’t get together as often here as they do back home, so these dishes bring back strong memories of being in Jamaica.”
Tick off as you go!
• Heat the dried fruit, orange zest and juice, rum, red wine, butter and sugar in a large pan over a medium heat. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 5 mins. Leave to cool for 30 mins, then blitz in a blender until smooth and tip into a mixing bowl.
• Heat the oven to 150C/130C fan/gas 2. Grease and line a deep 20cm cake tin with baking parchment. Add the flour, ground almonds, baking powder, mixed spice, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, eggs and vanilla extract to the fruit mixture and stir well.
• Tip the cake batter into the prepared tin and spread evenly. Bake in the centre of the oven for around 2 hrs until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. If it’s not ready, bake for another 10 mins and check again.
• Leave to cool completely in the tin. Before serving, you can poke holes all over the cake and drizzle over a little more red wine or rum, if you like.
