Live the Live ™

I’m not a jealous guy. But when, just the other day, I saw my friends post that they’re on their way to one of my favorite islands in the world, St. John in the USVI, I got jealous.

I thought about the many trips I’ve taken there, alone and with friends, and the mandatory catamaran trip we took to sip Painkillers at my all-time favorite beach bar, the Soggy Dollar on the island of Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands.

For a while during Covid, the BVI was closed to Americans, but now, happily, we’re allowed back!

The Painkiller is one of the tastiest rum drinks you can make, and one that certainly brings you back to the Caribbean. And it was invented at the Soggy Dollar. Located on White Bay, a stretch of the whitest most beautiful sand in the Caribbean, surrounded by beautiful turquoise waters, there is no dock. You have to anchor your boat offshore and swim…hence the name: the Soggy Dollar.

Daphne Henderson was the owner of the Soggy Dollar years ago, and she is credited for inventing the Painkiller, which used Pusser’s rum, a British rum that is readily available here in the United States. Charles Tobias, a businessman that received permission from the British Royal Navy to commercialize Pusser’s rum in 1980, tasted the Painkiller and realized the potential of this amazing drink. He took some Painkillers home to the island of Tortola, where he experimented in recreating that drink, coming up with what he thought was something that was as good as—if not better than—the original. He called it the Pusser’s Painkiller.

Tobias never found out what Daphne Henderson’s original recipe was, but when he brought his own Pusser’s Painkillers back to the Soggy Dollar, and had a tasting battle between the two recipes, legend has it that his recipe won 10 out of 10 times. With 4 Pusser’s bars and restaurants in the Caribbean and 2 more in the states, Tobias quickly made the Pusser’s Painkiller the signature drink of these now-famous establishments…and perhaps the most popular drink among the sailing community in the US, Caribbean and West Indies.

The drink itself is simple…

PUSSER’S PAINKILLER

4 parts pineapple juice
1 part cream of coconut
1 part orange juice

Combine these 3 ingredients, with lots of fresh grated nutmeg in a glass with ice. How much Pusser’s rum you use depends on how hammered you want to get! A Pusser’s #2 uses 2 parts rum…a Pusser’s #3 uses 3 parts rum…and a Pusser’s #4 uses 4 parts rum!

I’ve had several Pusser’s #4’s back in the day when there was a Pusser’s bar on St. John in the USVI many years ago. I’ve also sampled them in the BVI at the 2 Pusser’s locations on Tortola.  But I still prefer going back to Jost Van Dyke and knocking back a few at the place where the Painkiller was born, the greatest beach bar on planet Earth: the Soggy Dollar Bar.

I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to go back. But my bathing suit is already packed. Me, below, in happier days…

Cauliflower seems to be the veggie of choice these days. You’ll find it riced to take the place of rice or mashed potatoes, in a crust for pizza, and now, the dish du jour is a cauliflower steak. All you need to do is to slice the cauliflower into thick, steak-like pieces, and then bake them. The thicker cut gives the cauliflower a more meaty texture. Of course, with a meat sauce, I’m using cauliflower as a pasta substitute in this dish.

The marinade I use for the cauliflower is pretty simple, with my favorite Italian flavors. With the garden now growing happily, I use fresh herbs, but you can use dry as well.

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cups chopped scallions
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
chopped fresh parsley and oregano to taste
salt and pepper

Combine these ingredients in a bowl.

Slice the head of cauliflower across the whole head into 1 1/2-inch steak-like pieces. Place them on a baking pan covered with non-stick aluminum foil. Brush the cauliflower on both sides with the marinade. Use it all up!

Place the baking pan in a pre-heated 400-degree oven and bake it for about an hour, until the cauliflower is golden brown on the edges. Flip the cauliflower steaks over after the first 30 minutes.

The meat sauce I use is one that I make all the time with simple ingredients…

1 lb. grass-fed ground beef
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 28-oz. can of whole San Marzano tomatoes
dried oregano, basil and parsley
granulated garlic
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a pan and add the onions. Sauté them until they’re translucent, then add the ground beef. Cook the beef until it has browned completely. Add the can of tomatoes, chopping the whole tomatoes up with a spatula (or squeezing them with your hands), breaking up the big pieces into smaller chunks. (I like my sauce a little chunky.) Add the oregano, basil, parsley, garlic, salt and pepper to taste.

Let the sauce cook down until it has thickened.

When the cauliflower steaks are ready, place them on a plate and pour the awesome meat sauce on them. Garnish with some freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

I love chimichurri and I love pesto. And although both are similar, with many of the same ingredients, they are definitely not the same.

Chimichurri is found in Argentinian, Paraguayan, and Uruguayan cuisines, and features parsley as the main green ingredient. People from those countries will tell you that cilantro has no place in a true chimichurri recipe. It is used as a marinade as well as a side dressing to grilled meats, and often contains vinegar, which pesto does not.

Pesto, on the other hand, is less strict in its ingredients. I’ve made pesto with the classic basil, but also with spinach or arugula. Pesto also features nuts, like the classic pine nuts, but also pistachios, walnuts, or even macadamia nuts. (There are no nuts in chimichurri.) Pesto often features cheese as well.

So when my garden had an abundance of scallions, I decided I would make a chimichurri/pesto hybrid using whatever ingredients I had in my cupboard. What I came up with was absolutely delicious as both a marinade and side dressing. This time, I tried it on chicken.

1 cup chopped scallions, tightly packed
2 large garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
1/4 salted pistachio nuts, shelled
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup (plus more) extra virgin olive oil

Place the scallions, garlic, pistachios, salt, and pepper in the bowl of a food processor.

Start the processor and slowly drizzle in the olive oil, until you get the consistency of a loose paste.

How thick you want your pesto is a personal choice. You might need more than 1/4 cup of olive oil.

I used chicken leg quarters, and I brushed them on both sides with the pesto, and let them sit for an hour before baking them in a pre-heated 350° oven. They baked for one hour.

A bad weather day prevented me from finishing them on the grill, but they still came out flavorful, with a crispy skin.

I ate the chicken using the extra pesto as a dipping sauce on the side.

Note: For safety, I take a small amount of the pesto and put it in a separate bowl when I brush it on the meat. I don’t want to have raw chicken contaminating the rest of the pesto I will want to use later to serve on the side!

We had an unusually cool spring here in Southern New England, and although my radish plants thrived, the sudden spike in temperature means the end of the radish season. What’s left in my “vedge ledge” garden are lots of radish plants that never formed bulbs…just the tops.

Radish tops are too rough and chewy for salads. But can I save them for something a little more adventurous than simply steaming or sautéing them? The answer is yes: pesto!

I harvested all of my radishes, finding a few lovely little bulbs along the way, and washed the greens thoroughly. Then they took a ride in the salad spinner to dry off. I measured out 4 packed cups…giving them a squeeze down into the measuring cup. The rest of the ingredients were pretty standard for pesto, with a few exceptions.

4 tightly packed cups radish greens, washed

3 cloves garlic, chopped

Juice of 1/2 a juicy lemon

1/2 cup salted pistachios, shelled

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt

Add the radish greens, garlic, lemon juice, pistachios, grated cheese and olive oil to a bowl of a food processor. Run the processor for a minute, then check the pesto.

Scrape down anything that crawled up the sides of the bowl. Give the pesto a taste. Does it have enough salt? Is it too dry? Does it need more olive oil or tartness from the lemon juice? Add what you like to tweak it and make it your own.

I’ve found that despite using salted pistachios and grated cheese, it still needed more salt. After all, a little pesto goes a long way, so the flavor needs to be intense.

I’ve made basic pesto using basil and pine nuts, and it’s delicious. I’ve also made pesto with arugula, and I’ll feature that recipe in an upcoming blog. Now I’ve added radish greens to my repertoire, and I’m really glad I did.