Spicefreak

Greetings, spice lovers, today is talk like a pirate day again* and I’m sure it’s late enough to drink somewhere in the world.

Which is good news for this particular recipe, since we’ll be using a fair bit of booze.

You see, today’s treat comes from the caribbean and was chosen specially for its connection to today’s theme. Since it features both rum and pineapples – Favourites of pirates and castaways, alike.

Indeed, those are the main ingredients of today’s golden, spice-glazed fruit.

And it’s a face-reddening delight!

So, let’s stop talking and get to it. You will need:

1 whole pineapple

1 red scotch bonnet

1 lime

200ml dark rum

100ml water

60g brown sugar

2 cinnamon sticks

20 allspice berries

8 cloves

1 teaspoon of nutmeg

And I’d like to recommend George Morton’s O.V.D. Rum for the base of this concoction, since its quality demerara provides some intense, dark, burnt sugar notes and any nuance that it might be missing, when compared to more expensive brands, will be made up for by our spices. Though you’re welcome to use another brand if you’d rather.

Either way, it’s time to find a pan and start filling it. Throwing in the rum, water, sugar and spices. As well as the juice of your lime and the chilli, deseeded and finely chopped.

In other words, everything but the pineapple, itself.

Then bring it all up to a boil on the hob, before dropping the heat down to keep it at a slight simmer for the next fifteen to twenty minutes. Long enough to get rid of half the liquid and create a thicker, more concentrated glaze.

When that’s done, we can turn the hob off completely and strain out our spices, with a sieve. Setting them aside for later use.

Because, while this recipe no longer needs them, there’s no sense letting them go to waste when they can still liven up other desserts. Like ginger cake, for example.

And now that your smooth rum glaze is complete, it’s time to fire up the grill and quickly chop your pineapple into eight segments. Relieving it of its skin and, if you want, its core, in the process.

Then brush the resulting slices thoroughly in your glaze and place them atop the wire rack of a grill pan, with water underneath to prevent any drips from burning during the next stage.

Which is to pop them under our newly pre-heated grill for ten minutes.

After which they’ll need to be flipped and glazed, again, more heavily than before, so as to replace any lost juices. Then they can go in for ten minutes more.

Following which, a third glazing and just five further minutes will give you this beautifully spiced and boozy, lightly-charred tray of treats.

And it is shockingly good!

Sweet, yet not too sweet, and full of both dark rum hints and a smooth cinnamon and allspice overtone. All resting on that tropical, lightly-caramelised, pineapple base flavour.

It kick is mild – A mere

1.5/10

Heat

in my throat. Yet its flavour is far greater and more than makes up for any missing fire. Be it on its own or with a touch of the leftover glaze, sitting atop a bowl of ice-cream.

And that’s all I’ve got to say, for now, but I urge you to give this one a go at home. With the red scotch bonnet that I used or, if you’d like it hotter, something in the 7-pot/pod family, to keep the caribbean flavour.

Either way, I’m very happy with how this piratical special has turned out and I know you’ll like it, too.

*For those who don’t know, this is a holiday that began in 1995 as a way to improve a game of tennis but, helped by newspaper writers, the internet and even the satirical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it is now celebrated world wide, every september the 19^th.

For my own festivities, I put a tonne of effort into writing today’s recipe in pirate lingo so, while this translated post exists for those who need it, I would prefer if you’d at least give the original a go, here. Since, you know, it’d be sad for all that work to go to waste.