Ainsley’s Caribbean Kitchen: The ultimate holiday feeling at home part 2

Bring in the Caribbean kitchen!

What is it that makes you feel like holiday? The complete picture probably. Pack your bags, traveling, check-in at the hotel or house, the food and the drinks. We wrote a previous blog about how to experience the ultimate holiday feeling at home by decorating your table in Caribbean and tropical spheres. Time to take it to the next level! Bring in the Caribbean food…

The ingredients to use

Most important when cooking, is to work with fresh ingredients. No freezer vegetables, but fresh from the market or supermarket. Same with fish and meat. Although both can be good and tasty when it was put in the freezer if completely fresh and they/you used the fast freeze method.

The second important thing is to check what kind of food they use in the Caribbean and compare this with what you have at home. Keep in mind several things: freshness (again), ripeness, diversity (specially when using herbs) and eventually ecologic footprint.

The third important thing is… use the ingredients you love. That way you can’t ruin your dishes!

Environmental friendly

Typically Caribbean food is food with ingredients that can be found on and around the island. No large transportation, no CO2 footprint, only what is available. If you live on the mainland of the USA or of Europe, some ingredients can be hard to find. But that’s OK. Just try to find similar or comparable ones. Better for your wallet and the environment!

How to get your recipes?

There are several options to get recipes for Caribbean dishes. The first is: taste them yourself during your Caribbean vacation and try to reproduce them at home. The second one is: make pictures of the restaurant’s menu of the restaurants that you visited and try to find similar looking meals on the internet. The third one is try to find recipes on the internet with specific ingredients you want to use. And at last, the fourth one, one of the best in my opinion… is to watch the TV series of Ainsley’s Caribbean Kitchen and buy Ainsley’s book! It contains lots of dishes typically for the north Caribbean islands including cocktails, side dishes, fish, meat and veggie ones.

I bought it and I definitely don’t regret it. Actually, I would like to prepare those dishes on a daily basis! I tried some of them and they are delicious.

My favorite ones

One of my all time favorite Caribbean dishes is definitely the coconut shrimp! And not only the coconut y shrimp… noooo the one with the Piña Colada dip! How much more Caribbean do you want it to be?

• Big shrimps: check.
• Coconut: check.
• Piña Colada: check.
• Oh actually Piña Colada dip: check. But you can have that Piña Colada cocktail as a drink matching your dish.

Are you curious about the recipe? You can read the simplified recipe via this blog post. There is a more complicated recipe in Ainsley’s Caribbean Kitchen with coconut lobster and Piña Colada dip.

My favorite dish in Ainsley’s book? The lemon shrimps. Definitely have to prepare them again soon, very soon…

Bon appetite!