Olympic Food Challenge: Dominica - Caribbean Reef Chicken

Researching a meal for tonight's Olympic Food Challenge proved to be quite tricky.  Almost all of the recipes from Dominica that I found were in fact from the Dominican Republic and not Dominica.  They are not a million miles away from each other in the Caribbean, but there are always regional variations.

The Dominican recipe that I settled on was Caribbean Reef Chicken.  The chicken is baked with a marinade of brown sugar, dark rum, lime juice and spices.  The smells coming out of the kitchen were reminiscent of Christmas, but that could have been the cloves in the sauce.  After forty five minutes the chicken is coated in a mixture of mango chutney and more rum creating an even stickier glaze delicious on the chicken skin.

We served the chicken legs with Caribbean spinach and rice which, although not necessarily from Dominica, was a really nice, fresh accompaniment to the sweet chicken.  Z had a little moment when she had a nice chew on one of the whole chillis that were cooked with the rice but other than that the meal was a success. 

Dominica's Olympic team of two athletes failed to take home any medals and they have no athletes taking part in the Paralympics, so for them London 2012 is over.  Caribbean Reef Chicken lives on however.  We will be using this recipe again but not for roast chicken portions.  We both decided that the marinade and glaze would make great finger licking chicken wings.  All we need now is the excuse to cook some.