Caribbean Stewed Chicken (via Hackney)

OK. This is something my mum has made since I can remember. Basically it's caramelised chicken and gungo peas with onions in a rich brown gravy that you serve with rice (and some other side dishes which we'll come onto another time, maybe).

There are many variants, some don't have the peas and some don't caramelise sugar to start with, and all are equally delicious I'm sure, but this is the one I know. Some recipes will have you put a whole (uncut) scotch bonnet pepper into the stew while it cooks which does add great flavour but there's a chance that if it splits some people will find too hot, so I leave it out and let people add their own pepper sauce. Up to you.

Tonight, and there was easily enough food for four people, this is what we did.

Prep: 20 minutes (plus marinading time and cooking the gungo peas unless you're using tinned)

Cooking: an hour-ish.

INGREDIENTS:
Chicken - we had 12 chicken thighs but you could cut up a whole chicken or use a mix of thighs and legs. I trimmed the excess skin off and gave it to the cats as there's quite a lot of fat anyway but if you're a skin lover leave it as it is.

Onions - a largish one, finely chopped, I favour lengthways (being chinese).

A few cloves of garlic, chopped.

A few slivers of chopped ginger - big pieces so people can pick them out.

Gungo peas (also known as pigeon peas). You can buy them tinned or dried - I like dried but we have a pressure cooker (15 minutes in a pressure cooker). About half a packet or (I'm guessing here) 250 grams dried weight or a coupla tins.

Pork - we had as a special treat some bacon ribs which we boiled for 5 minutes before using them but normally we'd have a few strips of belly pork cut up into 1" cubes and seasoned with the chicken pieces.

Spices and other stuff that you should have already.

DIRECTIONS:

Season your chicken (and pork if you're using it) pieces in a mix of soya sauce, worcester sauce, pepper, chopped garlic, a splash of lemon, pimentos (if you're fancy). The main things are that it looks brown (soya sauce does that) and that you don't drown it in the stuff as you're going to fry it before you stew it. Leave for anything between 24 hours and 5 minutes.

Heat some sunflower or corn oil in a large tough pan. Add a teaspoon of heaped sugar (preferably demarara) and heat it until it caramalises to the point of burning, but not quite. At the moment when it's just about to turn into a black burning mass throw the chicken and pork in and stir like fuck. If it's not spitting and browning like crazy then it wasn't hot enough (but carry on anyway). Brown the chicken all over on a high heat - about five minutes.

Add onions and garlic and ginger and turn the heat down and cook for a few minutes until the onions are soft-ish.

Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, or passata, or water and tomato puree, or just plain water, bring to the boil (if you have some thyme add a pinch or twig and a bayleaf), turn down to a simmer and cover and leave for 20 minutes or so. You can add finely chopped celery leaves and chopped spring onions now if you have them.

Uncover, look and taste, season if needed. Now add you gungo peas. Cook for another 20 minutes, uncover to reduce if needed, while you cook your rice. I would serve it with some sliced avocado, maybe a tomato salad and some hot pepper sauce.