Before you jump into conclusion, I'll tell you this is not my cooking. We ordered from Caribbean Spice Restaurant on Sunday evening. Since it was really damn cold - 43 degrees Celsius with windchil, both of us craved Caribbean food, we didn't feel to go out to get warm and hot spicy Caribbean food. Our Caribbean favourite restaurant, Tropikis doesn't deliver, we looked up on yellow pages and tried another Caribbean restaurant in the city.

I didn't aware about Caribbean food until I came to Canada. My husband who introduced me to Caribbean food and I felt in love right away. I do love their goat curry roti as well. It does taste spicy with chili but not too much other spices . I guess Caribbean food is closed to Indonesian culinary that has more chili added.

As you can see above picture, that hot sauce is real damn hot. It did made my lips "jontor" or burn. The oxtail stew was really tender and I can taste combination of allspice. Allspice is a small round fruit if you can see on these pictures, strongly aromatic, like cloves with a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg; the taste is similar, but with some peppery heat. Allspice is also known as Jamaican pepper or Pimento. My order came with roti and garden salad. The thing that I like from Caribbean roti is stuffed with dhal puri. Dhal puri is a seasoned mushy split pea. If you wonder how to make that dhal puri roti from scratch, please visit Cynthia's blog, Tastes Like Home.

As my husband is a pesco vegetarian, he stuck to his favourite vegetarian roti. His lips did got burned by the hot sauce too :).

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Due to my busy days, I barely posted each recipes that I have tried, created or modified the past two months. However, laziness is still with me.

I still had 2 small BBQ potatoes from Father's day at my laws family. I had fresh ground salmon that I bought at superstore, might as well I made salmon burger. I always like adding curry powder to make any burger patties.


Salmon Burger Patties
recipe by me

Ingredients:
100 g fresh ground salmon
1/2 tsp Jamaican curry powder
1/2 tsp freshly ground coriander
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 onion, chopped
2 small BBQ potatoes, peeled and mashed
1 egg white
salt and pepper as desired
1 tbsp Italian seasoning bread crumbs

Directions:
1. Combine all ingredients, shape into patties and grill them until done.

2. Serve with buns, lettuce, tomato and other condiments. I served these patties with with crispy baked sweet potatoes fries, instead of french fries.

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I still remember somebody asked for a recipe of Caribbean Roti that I had at Tropikis while I posted a review of Tropikis here.

According to one of our friends who is her family from Caribbean islands (I'm not sure which country), they say curry vegetable not vegetable curry. So don't think I mistype if I write Curry Chickpeas Vegetable.

Tropikis restaurant itself sells frozen roti shells in a package. I just made the curry with Jamaican spicy curry powder, chick peas, carrots, potato, bird's eye chillies, red onion, and garlic. I found some of Caribbean curry recipes on the internet. Most of them are called for Betty Blind's hot sauce, the Caribbean style hot sauce which I don't have it, so I substituted for chopped bird's eye chillies. This roti shell is very wide and has dhal puri inside, so if you don't have time to cook the curry just warm up the roti shell in the microwave and enjoy it, it's already tasty due the dhal puri stuffed inside :).

Chickpea or garbanzo bean information can be read on wikipedia. Chickpeas vegetable roti's recipe is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging this week, hosted by Katie of Thyme for Cooking.


Chickpeas Vegetable Roti
Internet sources and modified by me

Ingredients:
3 tbsp butter, melted
1 large red onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic,minced
2 -3 tsp Blind Betty hot sauce (I omit this and substituted for chopped of bird's eye chillies)
3-4 tbsp Jamaican style spicy curry powder
1 1/2 cups homemade vegetable broth ( I usually made the pesco vegetarian version by adding shrimp heads and skins)
1 large potato, peeled and cubed
1 can chickpeas, drained
2 carrots, peeled and cubed
250 g cauliflower florets

frozen roti shells ready to use

Directions:
Curry Chickpeas Vegetable

1. In a large skillet saut� garlic, onion and chilli 3-4 minutes. Add curry powder and saut� 1-2 min.

2. Add vegetable broth, potato, carrots, cauliflower and as much water as needed to cover everything. Simmer till potato is very tender and begin to reduce broth.

3. Add the chickpeas and cook another 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cover and turn off. This can now stand till just before serving time. It will thicken a little as it cools.

At serving time, heat the curry mixture to a boil stirring with a wooden spoon. You want a nice thick curry stew.


Chickpeas Vegetable Roti

Warm up dhal roti in a microwave, place on plate, put generous portion of curry chickpeas vegetable in center of roti. Fold into flat tube with ends folded under. Salad and rice are good accompaniments.

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