In Melbourne, Florida, Betty Helton relies on a can of cranberry sauce to create the sweet sauce for this tender pork entree. She adds orange juice and ground cloves to the mixture to season it nicely as it simmers.
While not nearly as sweet as bananas, plantains do have a sweet flavor. In this soup we keep that sweetness at bay by using firm plantains with green skins rather than riper brown-skinned ones--the sugars will have not yet developed, so the fruit will add starchy body to the soup without too much sweetness.
Your cookbook inventory is not complete without a volume or two from best-selling cookbook author and food writer Nancy Harmon Jenkins. For the olive oil...
Couscous is a great secret weapon for busy nights because it needs only a 5-minute soak to be ready for the table. If you don't like scallops, peeled deveined jumbo shrimp make a tasty substitute.
Caribbean-influenced shrimp, skewered with sugarcane and basted with a dark rum glaze, rely on high heat to caramelize the glaze and infuse the shrimp from the inside out with the cane's mild sweetness.
