Need some help with West Indian ingredients

[LadyWellian]

I bought a packet of Grace's Cock Flavour Soup Mix. I'll freely admit I bought it because the name made me roar with laughter and DH needed cheering up.

I've had it a while now and it needs using up. There is a recipe on the back for One Pot Chicken Curry that I thought looked nicer than just making the actual soup. But there are some ingredients I don't understand.

What is a cho cho? I live in SE London so could probably get one if they are imported, but is there something I could use as a substitute if not?

When it asks for pimento seeds, should I use the seeds from dried chillies?

What are spinners? It tells you to make some dough with flour and water, leave it to rest and then make spinners, so I assume they are some kind of dumpling, but what shape are they and are they nice?

Thanks!

Hi

You'll definitely be able to find cho cho in SE london, this is what it looks like;

www.caribbeanhut.co.uk/caribbean_ingredients/cho-cho.htm

Re Pimento seeds, i would use ground pimento [also known as jamaican allspice] that too will be found very easily in SE london.

Spinners are dumplings, the spinners i know are made with margerine or butter too, i dont much like them tbh! too greasy, they can easily be made with just flour and water though [adding some fine cornmeal to the flour makes them nice too]

Spinners are usually rolled into a short snake shape. I make my soup dumplings in a 2inch round shape with a pressed in dent in the middle [dont know why thats how they were when i ate them as a child!]

Oh and bit of salt in the dumplings too, they are very different from english dumplings as they dont have suet so they dont rise [puff up] they are dense and stick to your teeth but are very nice honest!

I love cock soup mix, i use it in the way you might use stock [real or cubed/pastes etc] when making soup. like this....

www.encoproducts.co.uk/recipes/chicken-soup-jamaican-saturday-soup

Thats a simple recipe if you make it and like it google 'jamaican saturday soup' and you'll get more variations of the recipe, you can also adjust the quantities easily when cooking like this.

Good luck let me know how you get on with it if you give it a go!

Im hungry now!

When you get your cho cho, look out for plantain too, its nice in soup or fried, they look like big bruised bananas,they will have yellowy green ones or yellow/black bruised looking ones-thats the ones you want as they have a nice sweet [in a savoury way] flavour.

Amber thanks so much for that. I'll be passing the right sort of shops tomorrow so will look out for cho cho and Jamaican allspice (need yams too for the recipe, but I do at least know what they are!), and will consider a bit of ripe plantain for the curry. Not sure I fancy the sound of the spinners though!

Our local corner shop is a reliable source of Cock Soup so if it's good I'll try your other suggestions too.

Word of warning though, don't add chilli to cock soup as it is already fairly spicy and you could make it too hot iyswim? I make saturday soup with it all the time. You can get yam in supermarkets in se london, I would leave the cho cho out though as I don't like it but that's just personal preference .

Fanjo, im not a huge fan of cho cho either!

Good luck with your cooking LadyWellian!

Glad to help out!

Thanks guys. Now worrying if DD will eat it (and DH for that matter). They're both a bit pathetic with spicy.

(Didn't manage the shops today btw, but they'll still be there tomorrow .)