Made a Caribbean dinner of jerk chicken, rice and peas and a shaved Brussels sprouts salad tonight. I marinated the chicken in Walkerswood jerk marinade, before grilling it in a cast iron grill pan and finishing it off in a 250 degree oven to ensure it was cooked all the way through but not dried out. Conversely, you could slow cook the chicken in the oven or grill first and then run it under the broiler or sear it on a hot grill to crisp the skin. The shaved Brussels sprouts salad was made a few days earlier from a recipe adapted from Chef Michael Chiarello’s Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad. I did not have the Marcona almonds on hand for this salad, so I improvised with Georgia pecans, from the Atwell Pecan Company, that my mom brought me all the way from Georgia. One of the best parts of this salad is the citrus vinaigrette made from whole citrus using a juice extractor. I also tossed in some dried cherries, cranberries and golden raisins, per the suggestion of my friend, Chef Herb Wilson, which took the recipe to a whole other level! After I made this salad, it occurred to me you could also use callaloo in place of the Brussels sprouts to make this meal even more authentically Jamaican.

National Rum Day was this week, so I thought I would taste test the Refresco Superior Cocktail recipe featured at CocktailCourier. I made it with Appleton Jamaican rum instead of Puerto Rican rum, because that’s what I had lying around. It’s a really refreshing drink in this August heat and a nice offset to the heat of jerk chicken.

A nice wine pairing would be a slightly fruity sparkling wine like the ones from John Legend’s LVE (Legend Vineyard Exclusive) wines. Click here to learn more about them and how to purchase.