Green Seasoning
A key ingredient when cooking any meat or fish dish in the Caribbean, it can also be used to add flavour to any vegetarian or vegan dish too.
Green Seasoning is used as a marinade and each Caribbean island has its own version. Typically you would use an ingredient called shado beni a herb native to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, it can be tricky to get hold of in the UK so I've substituted it with coriander which is similar but not as pungent. For this recipe, I've also used fresh broad leave Guyana thyme, which my dad grows. You can just use regular thyme if you can’t get hold of any Guayana Thyme.
Ingredients
1 bunch of Coriander (Shado beni if you have it)
4 spring onions
1 stalk of celery
1 small red bell pepper (optional)
1 bulb of garlic
100ml extra virgin olive oil (more or less depending on the consistency you like your seasoning)
1 small onion
2 pimento peppers (or you can use 1 Wiri Wiri or ¼ scotch bonnet)
1 bunch of fresh thyme
pinch of salt
Method
1.Clean, wash and drain all your ingredients.
2. Chop them up into medium sized chunks ready for blending.
3.Add your ingredients to your blender/food processor and add the oil.
4. Blitz! You may have to give it a bit of help here and push your ingredients down or move them about a bit so that they all get some blade action.
5. After a couple of minutes of blitzing you'll see it all start to come together. I like my Green Seasoning on the more chunky side, you can see the consistency I've blitzed to in the photo above but it’s a personal choice as to how far you want to go with the blending.
6. I store my Green Seasoning in a jar then pop it in the fridge. If there's any leftover you can freeze it.
TIP - If you're not going to use it on a daily basis pop it into an ice cube tray and then take out a couple of cubes when you need it.
