Richard's Travels Cooking Blog

For a long time now I’ve barely even been inside a fast-food restaurant (and haven’t eaten anything there other than ice cream), but I have experienced actual good fast food. Since the 8-hour flight is a bit long I decided to make it myself – the result is Caribbean Chicken and Potato Rotis. It does come from a traditional meal but a lot of restaurants and even fast-food places in the region serve their own versions.

If you order Rotis in an Indian restaurant you’ll just get bread; filling it with a hot curry stew is a Caribbean tradition that gives you a great spicy meal. As you’ll see at the end, this didn’t even last long enough for me to get a photo of the final result. I served this with a great white wine from Van Westen Vineyards – unfortunately it’s a bit hard to get but I was told it was good with spicy foods and it passed the test

This isn’t fast food when you make it at home but the result is unique and delicious (and a bit messy). It takes a bit of practice to do this right since the dough needs to be thin enough to fold after cooking. After a while I caught on to the fact that you don’t get dark dough (like in other photos I saw) from white flour but even after that I still overcook most of the dough I make. If it’s done right it should be soft enough to fold with no cracking after cooking – since the dough is very thin it doesn’t take long to cook. You really just want to cook it long enough for it to hold together.

Both the dough and the curry take a bit of work; you can make them together as long as you keep the dough covered so it doesn’t dry out before cooking, or you could make the curry the day before so it develops a stronger flavor and re-heat it before serving.

Ingredients (serves 4)

Onion, garlic, and ginger

• 3-4 chicken breasts, diced
• 2 large or 3 medium potatoes, diced
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2-3 tbsp ginger, minced
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 1-2 jalapeno peppers or red chili peppers, de-veined and diced (or you could try 1/2 habanero pepper)
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 3-4 tbsp curry powder
• 2-3 tsp hot sauce
• 2 tbsp turmeric
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp coriander
• 1 tsp marjoram
• 1 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• salt and pepper

Dough:

• 4 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1 cup water

Making the curry:

1. Cut up the garlic, ginger, and onion into small pieces
2. Heat a medium-large pan with 2-3 tbsp oil
   

   Chicken, jalapeno, and a bit of thyme

3. Put in the garlic, ginger, and onion and sautee for 3-4 minutes
4. Cut the jalapeno/chili peppers in half and trim off the white veins and seeds (avoid getting it close to any cuts on your skin – I once had my hands burning for a day because of this); slice up the remaining pieces
5. Put in the spices and parsley
6. Put in the chicken and jalapeno (I added some fresh thyme here too for extra flavor) and fry for 5-7 minutes until chicken is cooked
7. Chop up the potatoes
8. Add the green pepper and carrot to the pan
9. Once the chicken is cooked add the potatoes and chicken stock
10. Simmer on medium (6) for 20-30 minutes so it thickens a bit; let it cool or cover and keep on low heat until the dough is ready

Making the dough:

1. Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder
2. Pour in oil and mix the dough with your hands (just stick your hand in and make a fist) until it ends up in small crumbling balls
   

   The dough after mixing in the oil

3. Pour in water a bit at a time and mix well with your hands to get an even dough – mine barely looked wet but had enough water to hold together. You definitely don’t want it to get very sticky, but a bit more might make it easier to stretch.
4. Leave it aside for 15 minutes
   

   The dough in one big ball

5. Separate the dough into 16 pieces (just keep dividing in 2)
   

   The dough split up - from the front-right to the back these make 1, 2, 4, and 8 roti breads

6. On a floured counter, roll each piece into a ball and then start working on it with a rolling pin until it’s slightly thicker than the blade of a butter knife. Once I get it spread out a bit I usually work around the edges a lot, thinning out one area at a time to spread it out. Try cooking the first one and see if it comes out ok or if you need them thinner.
   

   You can see that the dough is very thin after rolling - it still holds together easily since it's fairly dry

7. Prepare a lightly oiled pan and heat on medium-high (7)
8. When the pan is hot put a piece of dough on and cook about 1 minute per side (these really don’t need much cooking since they’re so thin)
   

   The bread cooking in the pan - since this pan is large enough to hang over the edge of the burner I kept some oil on the side. The piece here has too many brown spots and is overcooked.

9. You’ll need to re-apply oil after 2-3 pieces of dough; you could use a spray or take a large pan and tilt it so you have a pool of oil ready to use to make this easier
10. After 6-7 pieces, wipe up some of the burnt flour from the pan with a paper towel or it will end up on the bread

Half a batch of roti bread - again some are too dark. These can harden after a bit but if you warm them again they get soft.

This is the curry cooking before I mixed it all together - after this point I didn't even get a chance to take another photo before it was all gone.

The rest is just like a burrito – take bread, put in a bit of curry, and fold it up. These are so filling but it’s hard to stop eating them unless you put in too much hot pepper. Try them with mango chutney or mint chutney for a little extra Indian taste.

This takes a lot longer to make than it does to eat but it’s worth if it you like any kind of spicy foods! Now I’m starting to wonder what would happen if I used sweet potato instead of regular potatoes…

This recipe is brought to you by Richard’s Travels Cooking Blog.

After a trip to Barbados I wanted to recreate the taste of the fried fish – I was surprised to find out what goes into it but it worked out well. I tried this with chicken (cooking it longer) since it’s a bit harder to get fish here. The batter and breadcrumbs might be too much for the meat, but you can combine the extras and fry small pancakes to make a little extra snack.

Recipe for 4 chicken breasts:

Spice blend

• 6 scallions
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp chopped chili pepper (or something spicier if you prefer)
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• 3/4 tsp cloves
• 3/4 tsp pepper
• 3/4 tsp cumin
• 2 tbsp chopped celery
• 2 tsp marjoram
• 1 tsp thyme
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tbsp grated ginger

Batter

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup milk (start with 1/4 cup and add more if necessary)
• 1 tsp baking powder

Breadcrumb mix

• 1/4 cup fine breadcrumps
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt

Assembly

1. Cut up the ingredients for the spice blend and combine them
2. Heat 1/4 cup of oil in a pan on medium-high heat
3. Combine the ingredients for the batter and breadcrumb mix separately
4. Take each piece of chicken and coat it with the spice blend, batter, and then breadcrumb mix
5. Fry the chicken until done (about 20 minutes), turning several times
6. Reduce heat if needed to avoid burning

If you like the taste of the spices more cumin and cloves wouldn’t hurt; I’ll be trying this next time. I found an amazing fried fish sandwich on the way home, but a chicken breast might be too large for that. It’s always good on its own of course.

There are a lot of things to enjoy in Barbados but this brings part of the fun back home!

This recipe is brought to you by Richard’s Travels Cooking Blog.