Roasted Chili Chicken with Lemon, Rosemary and Thyme

Ingredients

  • 6-8 chicken thighs, bone-in

  • 1 medium onion, sliced coarsely lengthwise

  • 8 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

  • Juice from 1 lemon

  • 1/4 cup of thyme

  • 6 sprigs of fresh rosemary

  • 2 teaspoons sea salt

  • 1 teaspoon black pepper

  • 1 handful chili flakes (if you’re sensitive to pepper, use about half that)

  • 1/2 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions

  • Score chicken before marinating to help the marinade penetrate as deeply as possible by pricking the surface of it with a fork or slicing it shallowly with a knife

  • Place all ingredients in a resealable plastic bag for 2 hours

  • Spread onions and garlic cloves in a baking dish that can fit the chicken in a single layer

  • Bake for 30 - 35 minutes at 425 degrees F.

  • Enjoy over any grain or alongside a side salad

Moroccan Chicken Lentil Soup (A Modern Twist on Harira)

Inspiration: North Africa, with a twist

Harira is a Moroccan soup with lentils and chickpeas and is typically made with lamb/lamb broth. I’ve adapted the recipe below to include chicken/chicken broth. This soup is most divine 1-2 days after cooking and makes for the perfect winter comfort food. I was lucky enough to take a Moroccan cooking class a few years ago where I first learned the basics of harira, but I’ve taken some liberties with the recipe below and have adapted it to make it my own.

When you reheat it, add a little bit of water. Note that I haven’t added salt here because the preserved lemon and chicken stock (when not made from scratch) can often be salty, so be sure to taste and adjust as you go.

  • 2 tbsp olive oil

  • 1 large onion, diced

  • 2 tsp fresh ginger, grated

  • 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

  • 1 leek, washed and finely sliced

  • 2 tsp chopped cilantro

  • 2 tsp ground cumin

  • 1 cinnamon stick or 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  • 2 tsp ground turmeric

  • ½ tsp paprika

  • ½ tsp saffron

  • 2 tbsp harissa

  • 4 cups of chicken stock

  • 3 tablespoons tomato paste, mixed into 1 cup water

  • 3/4 cup brown lentils

  • 1 handful dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and peeled

  • ¼ cup dried apricots, finely chopped

  • 1.5 tablespoons preserved lemon, minced

  • 1 cup fresh spinach

  1. Heat the oil in a medium-sized pot over medium heat and sauté the onion, leeks, and ginger until the onion turns translucent — about 7 to 10 minutes. Add the spices and sauté another minute.

  2. Add chicken, stock, tomato paste mixture, lentils, chickpeas, salt, saffron, dried apricots, and chicken thighs.

  3. Bring to a simmer for 30 minutes, then taste the broth and adjust the salt.

  4. Remove the chicken from the chicken and shred it with a knife and fork before returning to the pot.

  5. Keep the soup going for another 15 minutes to allow the lentils to become softer. Be sure to watch the liquid levels — the soup should be on the thicker side but still pourable. If you add more water, continue to taste to monitor the salt levels.

  6. Add the preserved lemon, honey, spinach, and cilantro.

You can eat this solo or you may wish to add a bit of khobz, a traditional Moroccan bread, which you can also substitute with pita if you prefer to go the simpler route.

Jerk Yassa: Jamaica meets Senegambia

This recipe is inspired by the Caribbean with a dash of African flavor by way of Senegambia where yassa chicken is one of the most popular dishes. I grew up eating yassa chicken, but first experienced jerk chicken through my childhood best friend Liz, whose family hails from Jamaica. In Jamaica, jerk chicken is famous due to its marinade, which always uses allspice and Scotch bonnet peppers. Meanwhile, yassa chicken (or yassa au poulet), is typically prepared with onions, lemon or mustard, and is a specialty from the Casamance region in the south of Senegal, near Southern Gambia. I took the lemon and onions from the yassa and crossed it with Jamaican jerk chicken to create a fusion dish that is sure to delight. Serve it alongside this fantastic recipe for rice and peas.

Serves 4 - 5

Ingredients

8 -10 pieces of legs and thighs
1 lemon
1 tablespoon chopped ginger
6 chopped garlic cloves
1 - 2 scotch bonnets
2 sprigs of fresh thyme leaves
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground allspice
3 onions, finely sliced
6-8 tablespoons Dunn’s River Jamaican jerk seasoning
Salt and pepper to taste

(Note that for this recipe you will need a drip pan)

  1. Trim the chicken of excess fat, then slash the skin lightly before patting it dry. Put it to one side then mix the ginger, lemon, garlic, allspice, brown sugar, scotch bonnets and tablespoons of the jerk seasoning together.

  2. Cover the chicken with the jerk marinade and make sure it is well-coated. Marinate the chicken in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours (preferably longer or overnight). Be careful when handling the jerk marinade as it will be extremely hot. Use gloves or wash your hands vigorously after handling it.

  3. After you take the marinated chicken out of the refrigerator, prepare for the next stage by pre-heating the oven to 375 degrees then add all of the cut onions to a drip pan with a few tablespoons of water. This water will create steam inside the pan as the chicken bakes, and keep it moist and juicy.

  4. Brown the chicken on the stovetop over medium-high heat then transfer it to the drip pan with the onions and the water at the bottom. While the chicken is cooking, the jerk marinade will also drip onto the onions giving them a delicious flavor.

  5. Cook the chicken and onions in the oven for around 30 minutes then serve the chicken with the onions arranged over them with a splash of lime.

Kenyan Classic: Beef Pilau & A Bit of Swahili History

Serves 8

Pilau Masala
1 tablespoon cumin
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon paprika
1 cinnamon stick, broken into three parts

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Pilau
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced
1 chile, finally chopped (I use scotch bonnets because I enjoy heat but you can use serrano chiles)
2 tablespoons pilau masala
2 bay leaves
2 beef stock cubes
¼ cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
1 lb beef, cubed
4 plum tomatoes, diced
4 medium-size tomatoes, finely diced (I prefer to use plum tomatoes because they don’t add too much moisture)
4 cups water
2 cups basmati rice
Salt to taste

You usually would serve pilau alongside kacumbari, a simple and light tomato-onion salad. Here’s a recipe.

  1. Combine the ingredients for the pilau masala then set aside.

  2. Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat, and sauté onions for 10 minutes or until they begin to brown.

  3. Add the pilau masala as well as the ginger, garlic, bay leaves, chile, beef stock cubes, and cilantro. Stir continuously to ensure the spices are well-distributed and fragrant.

  4. Add the beef and let it cook fo 5 minutes until browned to preserve tenderness.

  5. Add the tomatoes and cook until they have softened then add the potatoes and water before bringing to a boil and cooking for 10 minutes.

  6. Once the water is boiling, add washed rice and stir it to ensure it is even distributed then add a pinch of salt to taste.

  7. Cover the pot, reduce the heat and cook it over medium-low flame. After 8 minutes has passed, stir the rice to ensure it is cooking evenly and does not stick to the bottom of the pot. Continue to for 20 minutes until all liquid is fully absorbed.

  8. Garnish with cilantro, serve, and enjoy. Best served alongside kachumbari (a traditional Kenyan salad of diced tomatoes, onions, and cilantro with a hint of lime juice)

As you can tell by my name, I’m Kenyan — from an East African country of 43 tribes and nearly 50 million people. Kenya is a remarkably diverse country, and its cuisine is likewise shaped by its history as a major trading region over the centuries as Indians, Arabs, and, most recently, Chinese, have arrived on its shores. The influence of these diverse groups can be seen perhaps most vividly in foods that have made their way into everyday Kenyan life: chapatis, samosas, and, of course, pilau, one of the signature dishes of the Swahili coast.

Swahili (or Waswahili) refers to people living along the coast of East Africa, primarily in Kenya and Tanzania, whose native language is Kiswahili, a language now spoken by over 200 million people within Africa in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi. With its roots in the Bantu language, Kiswahili became more widely spoken when Arab traders began arriving in Kenya during the 2nd century. Swahili is derived from Arabic word Sawāhil سواحل, meaning coasts, and thus unsurprisingly shares many similarities with the Arabic language. Some other examples of Swahili words of Arabic-origin: safari (trip), mahali (place), kahawa (coffee), among others.

While East African food isn’t necessarily known for its spices, Swahili food is very flavorful as it is well-known for its use of coconut, cloves, cumin, and other aromatics. Zanzibar in Tanzania was the centre of the Swahili spice trade and once known as the “Spice Islands” due to its former status as the world’s largest exporter of cloves as well as a large producer of other crops such as nutmeg and cinnamon. These spices are also common in the Swahili cuisine found today in Kenyan coastal cities such as Mombasa and Lamu. In this recipe, you’ll find plentiful Arab influences as well as Indian ones — one might describe pilau as similar to India’s famous biriyani. The main difference between the two is that in pilau the rice and the meat are cooked together in one pot, and rice and meat in biriyani are cooked separately and combined at the end.

Chocolate Chin-Chin Cheesecake

Inspiration: Nigeria meets American South

Growing up, I had many Nigerian-American friends. As the largest African immigrant population in the United States, you'll find Nigerians in all corners of the country from New York to DC to even Alaska, where my best friend from college, Ifeoma, is from. Whenever I visited my Nigerian friends at home, I delighted in the delicious snack foods from akara to meat pies to puff puff. One of my favorite tasty treats is chin chin (also called achimon in Ghana, where I moved post-Yale), which is made from basic combination of flour, milk, sugar, eggs, and nutmeg. This cheesecake recipe is an homage to all the aunties that let me eat my weight in chin chin (literally) growing up. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

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CRUST
2 cups crushed chin chin (recipe here)
3 tablespoons sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted

FILLING:
24 oz soft cheese
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs

CHOCOLATE SAUCE:
1 bar of chocolate
1 can (5 ounces) evaporated milk

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 375° then butter and line a 23cm loose-bottomed tin with baking parchment.

  2. Put the chin chin in a plastic food bag and crush to crumbs using a rolling pin. Transfer the crumbs to a bowl, then pour over the melted butter over the crumbs. Mix thoroughly until the crumbs are completely coated. Tip them into the prepared tin and press firmly down into the base to create an even layer. Chill in the fridge for 1 hr to set firmly.

  3. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add the flour, vanilla, and eggs then beat until blended. Pour into the prepared crust.

  4. Bake 30 minutes or until center is almost set then cool on a wire rack 10 minutes. Remove the sides from the pan and then cool for an additional hour.

  5. In a large heavy saucepan, melt the chocolate with the evaporated milk over low heat; stir until smooth and then spread on top of the cheesecake.

  6. Refrigerate the cheesecake overnight, and then serve!

 

 

Plantain Cacao Bread

Inspiration: West Africa meets America

My guilty pleasure is definitely making breads that should really be called cakes. In the last few months, I've spent a lot of time mastering recipes by great chefs like Deb Perelman and Yotam Ottolenghi. In the process, it's renewed my desire to experiment once again. With that, here is my recipe for plantain cacao bread. 

While plantain is a food that I grew up eating regularly, I've only recently been introduced to cacao.  Cacao (pronounced "cu-COW") refers to the Theobroma cacao tree from which cocoa is derived, and is used when referring to unprocessed versions of the cacao bean. Cacao is the purest form of chocolate, and it is much less processed than cocoa powder or chocolate bars, and contains a large amount of antioxidants like flavanols. 

In this recipe, I used overripe plantain, which is quite sweet, and balanced it with the slightly bitter, rich cacao. The result: one of the most delicious breakfasts (or, let's be honest, desserts...) that I've made in a while. I used applesauce and vegetable oil instead of butter so that I could pretend I was being healthier. Enjoy! 

Plantain Cacao Bread

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Yield: 1 8 x 4-inch loaf

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup applesauce
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 over-ripe plantains, mashed
1 cup raw cacao nibs
1 tbsp brown sugar mixed with 1 tsp cinnamon for topping and slivered almonds (for topping, optional)

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together, and set aside.

  2. In a separate bowl or stand mixer, whisk eggs then add oil, applesauce and vanilla. Mix until combined. Add sugars and continue to mix until smooth.

  3. Add the flour mixture in batches to make it easier to mix. Fold in the mashed plantains and cacao nibs, and pour into a lightly greased 8 x 4-inch loaf pan.

  4. Optional: Top batter with sugar/cinnamon/slivered almond topping.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.