JERK PORK WITH CILANTRO LIME RICE

Rather than marinating chicken in Italian dressing for the umpteenth time, I decided to spice it up a bit (pun intended) and find a recipe for jerk seasoning.  I searched online and finally found one that looked easy to do with ingredients that I already had.

I originally made jerk pork chops (as pork was on sale that day at the supermarket - score!), but I've since made jerk chicken that turned out phenomenally.  I served the chops with cilantro lime rice and grilled plantains.  The rice was a success!  The plantains, well... let's just say I need a little more experience picking out plantains.

JERK RUB
Covers 2-3 pork chops.

• 1/4 cup finely chopped/minced onion
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon

Mix all of the spices into a bowl.  Add in the onion and mash it to a coarse paste with spices.  Clean and pat pork chops (or chicken) dry, and rub spice mixture on meat.  Grill it up!

CILANTRO LIME RICE
I used one cup of Mahatma rice.  Make the rice just as you normally would, or if you don't normally make rice, read the back of the package!  (Boil 2 cups water for 1 cup of rice, throw in the rice, cover, simmer for 20 minutes)   

Into cooked rice, add in the following:

• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
• 2 T lime juice
• 1 tsp lime zest

If you don't have a lime (or would rather just use store-bought lime juice), you can leave the zest out - it might not be as fancy, but it's just as tasty!  This rice really balanced out the spice of the jerk.  Yum!