Really LAME nerd jokes aside (oh god, stop), the culinary transition between winter and Spring has been a combination of the old and new. Some recipes I’ve developed from scratch and others I’ve simply borrowed from my library of awesome. I didn’t record much of these past few months in detail, but here are some of the menu items I’ve concocted:

1. Strawberry-mayonnaise in a turkey bacon wrap with fresh basil, mint, romaine, escarole, thinly sliced red onion, toasted slivered almonds, balsamic vinegar, and goat cheese (optional).
2. Fava beans, peas, and young asparagus in a light cream sauce with fresh linguine, alongside baked wild salmon topped with a watercress-basil pesto.
3. Grilled jerk chicken with black beans, mango salad and a yogurt dressing. Today's feature article.
4. Mock Vietnamese rolls filled with young carrots, Japanese cucumber, daikon, Chinese spinach, egg, and chicken.
5. My pork, veal, and beef lasagna, with a few modifications. Currently in progress.

But let me pause a moment to explain the choice for today’s article. On May 2, 2009 (nearly a year ago), I was desirous of something summer-ish: not barbecue, and not merely grilled meat, but something in a similar vein, preferably with a certain heat and a kick of acid. My answer was, of course, jerk chicken. Now authentic jerk chicken is a little difficult to replicate, unless you are in possession of a rather large allspice tree and are familiar with the production of a slow burning wood fire. However, the jerk marinade itself is rather simple. So I produced a recipe, marinated the chicken overnight, grilled the meat, made a sauce of the marinade, and served up the whole shebang (okay, really, stop) to my husband—who loved it and then asked me to make it again. I did. Then I promptly forgot about the whole thing and consigned the recipe to an old notebook, where dust gathered and little mites chewed on invisible flakes of skin.

Eleven months later my husband declares an insatiable desire for jerk chicken which must be satisfied now, now, now. Of course I have no idea where the bloody blue blazes I’ve put the buggering book of records. (If I descend into an alliteration of Brit-speak, blame Jonathan Miller and The Atheism Tapes—which, by the way, is fascinating if firmly seated in Western patriarchal hegemony.) So I reinvent the wheel, or in this case, the jerk chicken. And then I realize: hey, isn’t that what CCC is for—to keep track of all this crap?

Well it’s not crap, but you get the idea. And, naturally, after I reinvented the recipe, Tyler digs through my evil filing cabinet of doom (brave, brave soul) and finds the original recipe. I would weep, but too much of life is precisely that kind of comedy; its simultaneously fascinating and discomfiting.

So today I present the reinvented recipe! May it be preserved for all posterity (or, at least, for my sanity).

Yield: enough marinade for 4-5 lbs of chicken.

Marinade Ingredients
1 cup white vinegar
1 cup orange juice
1 cup soy sauce
2 tsps dried thyme
2 tsps allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
1 small pinch of cloves
2 cloves garlic, added through a garlic press
1 cup loose fresh scallions, finely chopped
4 scotch bonnet peppers or habañeros, 2 seeded and deveined, blended or very finely diced
1 lime, juiced
black pepper to taste

Additional Ingredients for the Sauce
1 cup orange juice*
1 cup soy sauce
1 ½ limes, juiced*
2 tsps thyme
2 tsps allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
2 pinches cloves
¼ cup molasses*
½ tsp ginger
arrowroot (optional)

*If you prefer, you may reduce or eliminate the orange juice, increase the number of juiced limes, and increase the amount of sweetener. Molasses is what I usually use, but you may also consider brown or white sugar, or Splenda.

1. Combine all marinade ingredients. Use a blender, if necessary.
2. Marinate the chicken overnight.
3. Grill the chicken. Brush the meat with a bit of oil, if necessary.
4. While the chicken is grilling, combine the marinade with the sauce ingredients (except arrowroot). Quickly reduce the liquid by more than half, until the sauce begins to coat the back of a spoon. Add arrowroot to increase the thickness, if necessary. Note: if using arrowroot, first combine the powder with a small quantity of lukewarm liquid until the liquid is a homogeneous and milky white. Then add the mixture to the sauce.
5. Serve with a heavy starch, like black beans or refried beans, and a sweet, cool salad and/or alcoholic beverage.

There’s not much for me to say about this variation of jerk chicken, as I haven’t sampled the recipe in more than a month. However, it’s quite popular with my husband, and the spiciness is at a level acceptable to both of us. You can play with the ratio of orange juice:lemon juice:sweetener. You can also add bulbous onion (white or yellow), if you like. Persons in possession of the proper equipment might consider smoking the chicken over wood chips of various kinds.

I have only one word of caution: do not put oil in the marinade. Not only will the spices migrate to the oil, but when you reduce the marinade for your sauce, there will be a film of grease at the top and you’ll have to spoon it out by hand.