Hot Pepper's Cookbook Review

For the month of June, I will be reviewing several recipes from "Beyond Gumbo, Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim." This cookbook was written by Jessica B. Harris and published 2003. My copy is even autographed! I love her cookbooks because she was the first African American cookbook author that I discovered years ago and her genre is the African diaspora. Her cookbooks include recipes, interesting stories and historical facts, pictures, a food glossary and resources.

I chose this particular cookbook because 1) my known roots are from Louisiana, 2) gumbo is a favorite dish in my family and 3) the recipes are an example of the diaspora on this side of the world. Also historically, June is the month for celebrating Juneteenth (more to come on that later) and the recipes I've chosen will become part of my menu for that celebration. So let's get started.

Today was a warm, kind of partly cloudy Sunday and ideal for light fare. I prepared four recipes: US deviled eggs (p. 82), green mango salad from French Guyana (p. 87), US jicama cole slaw (p. 114), and Maryse's salad mix plus vinaigrette from Guadeloupe (p. 116 and 136, respectively). Like many cooks I don't exactly follow recipes to the letter. I improvise and substitute. In this case, 4 green mangos became 3 plus 1 slightly ripe one. I used 3 scallions instead of 1, 4 garlic cloves instead of 2 and 4 tbsps peanut oil instead of 2. All these ingredients got mixed with the juice of 1 lemon, half of a large jalepeno minced, and salt and pepper to taste.

Now any other day I would see jicama in my neighborhood store; today no such luck. I used quince as a substitute. The recipe also called for 1 large green cabbage and 1/2 head of red cabbage. I used half of each, shredded and combined them, then took out 2 quart-size Ziploc bags for later use. To the remaining cabbage I still added 2 grated carrots, 3/4 cup mayo, 1.5 tbsps sugar, salt and pepper to taste, 2 tbsps of buttermilk (instead of 1), and 2 tbsps of apple cider vinegar (instead of 1). And to finish it off 1/2 cup of golden raisins and a tsp of cayenned went into my modified recipe.

The only change to the salad mix was 1 large tomato instead of 2 medium ones was combined with 1 cup canned corn (yes, canned was listed in the recipe!), 2 freshly boiled beets cubed, 1 grated carrot, and 1 small onion, thinly sliced. And rather than drizzle the vinaigrette (which I doubled to include 4 tbsps olive oil, 4 tsps red wine vinegar, 2 cloves minced garlic, 1 tsp Dijon mustard) over the salad, I tossed it.

All my salads got chilled in the frig for a couple of hours. I had some boiled shrimp leftover from yesterday and added a couple to my plate. Pictures of the foods purchased for these recipes and the end results are shown. A picture of my garden, the start of week 3 also is included. My babies are growing!!