This New York Times recipe is good for a dinner party. It easily serves 4-6 and spends 40 minutes unperturbed in the oven, making it something that can cook during cocktails and chit chat. We made just a few tweaks to the original recipe.

A cousin to our delicious mango chow, courtesy of Caribbean Pot.

1 Large Pineapple (peel, cored, diced into pieces)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 jalapeno pepper (sliced thin)
1 scotch bonnet pepper (sliced thin)
3 large cloves garlic (crushed)
2 tablespoon cilantro (chopped fine)
5+ oranges (juice)
2 limes (juice)
1 small red onion (sliced thin)

Mix all ingredients together. Store in a glass jar - will keep for up to a week.

Billed as Caribbean by Bon Appetit, this mango chow could go equally well with Indian, Thai, or other South/Southeast Asian cuisines. Sweet, spicy, salty, and sour -- delicious!

INGREDIENTS
1 small shallot, thinly sliced into rings
2 garlic cloves, finely grated
½ Scotch bonnet chile or habanero chile, thinly sliced crosswise, seeds removed if less heat is desired
2 Tbsp fresh lime juice
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 ripe but firm mango, peeled, cut into ½-inch-thick spears
½ English hothouse cucumber

Adapted from Bon Apetit, ~4 servings

Leche De Tigre

• ⅔ cup fresh lime juice
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• 1 tablespoon (packed) chopped fresh cilantro leaves

• ½ ají limo or habanero chile, seeded, halved lengthwise

• ½ small red onion, chopped

• ½ cup bottled clam juice (optional)
• Kosher salt

Purée first 4 ingredients and 4 large ice cubes in a blender until smooth. Add onion; pulse 3–4 times. Strain liquid into a medium bowl. Stir in clam juice, if desired; season with salt. Cover and chill.

A tasty and relatively easy recipe with a great classic red sauce. The original recipe linked below uses canned chipotles, but this has been adapted to use more dried chiles, as the heat from the canned chipotles overpowers the eggs.

Sauce
* 3 whole dried ancho and/or pasilla peppers
* 1 canned chipotle chile
* 1/4 cup canola oil, divided
* 1 small yellow onion, thinly sliced
* 4 medium cloves garlic, thinly sliced
* 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
* 1 (14-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, preferably fire-roasted (such as Muir Glen)

Easy and delicious Bon Appetit recipe. Also keeps well in the fridge for several days and, in some ways, improves over time.

4 ears of corn, husked
1 large shallot, thinly sliced into rings
1 red chile (BA recommends Holland or Fresno, but a Jalapeño will do), optionally deseeded, thinly sliced into rings
¼ cup fresh lime juice
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
2 oz. fresh Cotija cheese or queso fresco, crumbled
¼ cup cilantro leaves with tender stems

I have previously discussed my introduction to Caribbean food through my college roommate. Of the dishes she made, my favorite was a brown stewed chicken.

http://chickeninacherrysauce.blogspot.com/2012/06/torta-rogel.html

So, not really a true recipe, but pretty good and pretty easy. Maybe next time we'll get fancy and make our own empanada dough, but for the first try this turned out pretty good.

1 lb dried beans, soaked overnight
1 hamhock
2 hatch peppers, roasted and sliced
bacon grease
pepper, smoked salt

I'm not sure it's possible to really make beans without a hamhock.  I've tried. 

Soak the beans overnight; rinse.  Place back in large pot and cover with water. Bring to a simmer. Add hamhock, bacon grease, and peppers.  Let simmer for as many hours as possible.  Add pepper and smoked salt close to the end to taste.

In 2010, we attended a Oaxacan dinner as part of the annual Literary Feast on Capitol Hill. One of the dishes we ate was goat cheese, corn, and bean enchiladas with mole sauce. It was really delicious, and I finally got around to recreating it.

This dish makes a great week-long side dish for summer - a chilled, but protein-rich vegetarian dish!

1 can black beans
1 can pinto or small red beans
1 can small white beans
2-3 jalapenos, chopped
1 medium white onion, diced
1 bunch cilantro, lightly chopped
juice of 2 limes
1 can or 2 ears corn (boil, cut off kernels)
salt and pepper to taste
salsa, to taste

Avocado
Tomato
more limes to taste

Mix together all but avocado and tomato and let the flavors marry overnight. Add chopped avocado and tomato, and more limes and salsa to taste, upon serving.

We recently got a digital antenna for our TV, which has opened up a mostly crappy selection of ".1" stations to us. But... there is an entire PBS station seemingly dedicated to cooking shows. My new favorite: Pati's Mexican Table. This is the first recipe of hers that we tried, and it was easy and delicious! I was especially excited to make this dish because we actually have a large log of piloncillo (like brown sugar) that we've been eating down for the last 2 years. Any opportunity to use that stuff is a win in my book.

Oh, how I learned to love a steak while honeymooning in Argentina.
Chimichurri, you are the secret.
So delicious.
And delightful.
You have brought me to the land of grilled meats.
And my grill-master husband thanks you.
Forever, and beyond.

Head of garlic (~ 10 cloves)
1/2 medium or whole small onion, chopped
1/3 cup roughly chopped red bell pepper
1/2 bunch parsley, leaves and tender stems only, roughly chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
1 large bay leaf, crumbled
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper

We modified a recipe from Bon Appetit to spice it up and re-balance this posole.

Roasted Pork

• 1 pound boneless pork shoulder (Boston butt)
• ½ red onion, sliced
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• Dash smoked salt

Posole

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Ackee ans Saltfish is the national dish of Jamaica. I was fed so much of this pungent breakfast during training that I swore off it afterwards. That didn't last very long. Ackee is an odd ... fruit? The wikipedia article on ackee can fill you in better than I can, but in short, the scientific name comes from a pirate, it's originally an African plant, and it's very poisonous if harvested incorrectly. It's related to lychees, but is better described as being similar to avocado.

Having just returned from Mexico, we were craving Mexican food. We decided to take on the ultimate: Mole. We headed up to our local latin-american superstore market to pick up the necessary ingredients. Because we couldn't exactly get everything we needed, here's the record of what we actually did (and how it turned out). Our recipe is basically the ingredients list from Fonda San Miguel, a delicious Mexican restaurant in Austin, with the process taken from Nuevo Mexican guru Rick Bayless.

I began making my own hot sauce during Peace Corps - peppers were plentiful, but good, non-tabasco-style sauces were hard to find (and generally bad). It's always a big hit, but actually really easy to make.

You can also see this recipe in a much more amusing flowchart form (PDF)

A good, staple salsa verde recipe that balances the tartness of the tomatillo with a nice char and some spice. Makes about 2 cups.

• 8 medium tomatillos, husked, rinsed
• 3-4 fresh chiles (a mixture of jalapenos and poblanos creates a nice flavor)
• 8 unpeeled garlic cloves
• 1 cup (packed) fresh cilantro
• 1 small white onion, roughly chopped
• Juice of 1 lime

This is a great fresh chutney that could go with most carribean or indian dishes. Vary the size of the mango chunks to taste.

Classic Caribbean "rundown" stew - best served on rice with fried johnnycakes or "festival".

1/2 lb salted or smoked mackerel, deboned and skinned (can also use mussels, or bite-sized mixed seafood). If using salted mackerel: rinse it, and then cover it with boiling water for ½ hour to extract some of the salt.
2 cans of coconut milk
½ yellow onion
5 cloves garlic
3 stalks chopped scallion
2 diced plummy (roma) tomatoes
1 habanero pepper sliced
½ cup cubed pumpkin / butternut squash (optional)
1/2 cup white wine (optional)
Ground black pepper
Thyme
Cooking oil for sautéing

2 cans dark red kidney beans
1 can coconut milk
3 cups water or broth
2 cups rice
1 scotch bonnet or habanero pepper, whole
4 T butter
salt, pepper and thyme

In a very large pot, heat kidney beans with their can-water, water, coconut milk, and spices until simmering. Add rice, butter and pepper. Bring back to simmer, let cook, covered until done, approx. 30 minutes. Remove cover near the end, to let the mixture dry out a little.

Turkey Carcass Soup V.2 - Venezuelan "Chicken" caldo

I was making turkey carcass soup (http://audreyandjon.com/recipes/turkey-carcass-soup) and it ran away from me into a soup styled after the fantastic caldos de pollo I had in Merida, Venezuela. Here's a discussion of Spanish Caldos. Venezuela is not big on spicy foods, so I concentrated on savory spicing and the broth itself.

1 liter turkey broth/soup with ~ 1 cup of turkey meat. It's best if there's still some turkey fat included.
1 can diced tomato

The Arepa is the Venezuelan staple, and their version of meat-in-bread. They're very filling, if hard to get the flour for. Online, Amigo Foods offers it (Harina P.A.N.), and often you can find it at more Latin-oriented groceries (Austin: Fiesta almost always has it. In DC, I've found it at La Casa Latina on Georgia near Piney Branch and at Caribbean Market II on New Hampshire near Takoma Park)