Caribbean Food Stall, Kirkgate Market, Leeds

I'm not sure what the name of this place is, or whether it even has a name, but it's a relative newcomer on Butchers Row selling hot Caribbean food. I think they might have started out with a weekly slot at the Source, so it's good to see them progress to being a fully fledged business trading on the market.

You can takeaway or eat in at the handful of tables they have inside and out on the row. Chicken meals are all four quid and curry goat is a fiver. The goat was good stuff, stewed slowly on the bone to melting tenderness. The sauce holding it was deceptive, seeming a bit boring at first but building with fruity scotch bonnet heat.

Rice and peas were the coconutty real deal and soaked things up nicely. Side salad was limp and undressed, but salad isn't really the point of this meal.

A wider range of cooked and ready to eat food stalls is one of the things I think the market really needs, so I hope they manage to make a success of this. Sadly if it didn't last I'd hardly be surprised. For the moment, along with Maxi's Rotisserie there are two good places for lunch filling the gaps on Butchers Row. Use them or lose them.


7/10

Butchers Row
Leeds Kirkgate Market
Leeds
LS2 7HY

Good things to eat [Volume 11]

A few more things I've been enjoying recently but haven't written about elsewhere.

Plum puddings

Not plum puddings in the Christmassy sense, plum puddings meaning any dessert made from plums. After last years magnificent damsons I'm on the look out for anything vaguely plummy. Damsons themselves are yet to appear but I've made a couple of lovely puddings with some Victoria plums and some cheap and cheerful purple supermarket plums of unknown variety.

The secret is in the cooking. Neither variety of plum was that exciting to eat alone, not juicy or sweet enough to give much pleasure. But slowly baked under a thin, crisp topping the juices ran and the flavours came alive.

It's far too early for a full-on crumble and custard is out of the question, so I just make enough topping to barely cover the fruit. A large knob of butter rubbed into a tablespoon each of oats and flour and a dessertspoon of sugar.

Think of it as a late summer plum crisp, and serve it warm rather than hot with a dollop of thick, cold cream or vanilla ice cream (or even better, both). Heaven.

Lamb from Rivelin Valley farm shop

As with the plum puddings a slow roast shoulder of lamb smacks of autumn, conjuring up images of pillowy piles of mash and jugs of gravy. It doesn't have to be that way, have it with roast new potatoes and minty summer veg and you've got a splendid Sunday dinner for August.

The lamb on this occasion was from the farm shop in the Rivelin Valley, and I'd thoroughly recommend it. There was real depth of flavour to the meat, quite strong and very slightly gamey. The farm shop is one of the more basic survivors, there's no plush barn conversion tea room or any other frippery, just fine produce.

Proper jerk

Jerk how I love thee. Proper jerk is one of the finest foods known to man. It really is. Sadly there's a lot of crap out there sold in the name of jerk, so you might have been given the false impression that it's just another chilli sauce and grilled meat combo, caribbean Nando's if you like.

Jerk chicken, or whatever other meat you choose to jerk, is so much more than this, it has real complexity of flavour from the marinade, allspice and scotch bonnet chillies being the dominant forces. It's a hot, smokey, fruity, spicy, lip-tingling thing of wonder.

The jerk in the photo was just such a thing, marvellous it was. I bought it at the Bristol balloon fiesta, a huge event with dozens of food stalls, of which this jerk stall was the least professional looking by a country mile. Mis-spelled menu scrawled by hand in felt tip, a makeshift counter made from an assortment of camping furniture and a great big fuck-off kettle drum barbecue.

These are always the best places for jerk, it's usually better to shun anywhere that looks vaguely professional (especially any upmarket caribbean restaurants, which are all expensive and boring) and make a beeline for the most ramshackle stall or a takeaway carved out of the front room of a terraced house.

Custard tarts from Ho's bakery, Leeds

I'm not always sure what to make of Chinese baked goods. If I'm in the mood I quite enjoy the sweet, doughy buns stuffed with all manner of bits and bobs, roast pork being a particular favourite. I do have to be in the mood though, sometimes they just seem a bit weird to my British palate. I always bite into them half expecting jam or that fake cream stuff they love at Gregg's or anything other than pork.

I do love the custard tarts though, especially when they're done as well as those at Ho's bakery in Leeds. They're really delicate with a wobbly, barely sweet filling and light, flakey pastry. I could eat half a dozen.

Maureen's, Leeds

Continuing with my current obsession with all things jerk, here is a review of one of Leeds' foremost Caribbean eateries.

I've been to Maureen's before, what must be getting on for five years ago. It was here that I got my first proper introduction to Caribbean food, thanks to my ex-girlfriend's Jamaican Mum. I've been partial to a bit of West Indian cooking ever since. I wouldn't put it up there with the greatest cuisines of the world, but it's usually generous, hearty, spicy, packed with flavour and very good value, all worthy attributes.

Having made my first return visit last night, I can safely say I won't leave it so long next time. This was quite possibly the best jerk chicken I've ever eaten.

The chicken was just marvellous. Crisp, smoky skin with a lingering fruity, tingly spiciness from the Scotch Bonnets. The flesh beneath was moist, even the breast portion. The rice and peas were cooked perfectly. Star of the show overall though was the jerk gravy. At many places this is quite a thick, sweet sauce, sometimes almost like a barbecue sauce with added spice. This was a much thinner, stock based gravy, with a really deep chickeny flavour yet still packing a jerk punch. I can't think of many better things to pour over rice. I gnawed the bones and licked the plate dry.

Service with a smile is provided by Maureen herself, and the small jerk chicken with rice and peas costs a fiver. Yes this was a small. Large costs an extra quid and will be very large indeed. In case coconutty rice and peas doesn't provide you with enough carbs and fat, macaroni cheese is available for an extra 50p. Splendid, and very much worth a trip from town despite the less than glamorous surroundings.


9/10

105 Roundhay Road
Leeds
LS8 5AJ

Caribbean Flavas, Salford

Amazing jerk chicken alert. In Salford.

Good jerk chicken is absolutely gorgeous, but bad jerk chicken can be truly terrible. The trouble is it can be difficult to tell by looking at it. The bad stuff might be burnt, dry, stringy, bland and lacking in spice. The good stuff should be smoky, fiery, fruity, moist, crispy and utterly delicious. I've eaten both good and bad that look pretty much like this:

Doesn't look particularly enticing does it? This, I'm pleased to say though, is the good stuff. Beautifully smoky, crisp skinned chicken fragrant with allspice and scotch bonnet chilli. The flesh beneath the skin was moist and the flavour had permeated through suggesting a long, slow marinade. It was also very spicy with a slow burning, lip-tingling heat.

The accompanying rice and peas were also good, rich and sweet from stewing in coconut milk. The vegetables were rubbish (mushy and tasteless) but they're really not the point and are optional. £4.00 for a small jerk chicken meal (a fiver will get you the large which probably includes twice as much chicken). Thoroughly recommended.

A few final notes:
- They have a video on YouTube where the camera pans slowly over fried plantains and dumplings and stuff while music that sounds like it's from the emotional bit of a cheesy 80's film plays. Brilliant.
- The website claims it's in Manchester, but it's very much on the Salford side of the river, next to Salford Central station.
- Finally, I can't take the credit for being the first to find and blog this place. Flavours of Manchester went first and gave me the idea. Thanks again to them.

8/10

Caribbean Flavas
187 Chapel Street
Salford
M3 5EQ

http://caribbeanflavas.co.uk/