Hello everyone, and happy summer! My favorite season is officially here and I couldn’t be more thrilled! This is the perfect time for light, fresh meals that can be prepared outside, and that are bursting with life and color.

A few weeks ago I gave you my mom’s recipe for a grilled chicken with a latin-loving salad made of beans, plantains, avocado, and jalapeno peppers. That recipe got me inspired to have a grilling session of my own, using another of the World Harbors marinating sauces that my mom raved about. She loved the lemon pepper and garlic one that she put on the chicken, but this time I decided to be adventurous and try the Jamaican-style Jerk sauce, which I must confess, I had never had before. And I also have to confess that I LOVED it! If you’ve never tried Jamaican Jerk Sauce, it has an exotic and punchy mix of flavors (soy sauce, vinegar, chili peppers, and spices) that goes perfect with any kind of meat you decide to use.

Since I’m a big fan of fish, but don’t eat it as often as I should, or as often as I would like to (cooking fish in a small apartment in NYC can be a very smelly experience!), I chose this special occasion to get my protein dose. After all, one doesn’t try a new sauce everyday!

These skewers are the result of this experiment with Jamaican Jerk. I think the pictures show how awesome they were, and not much description is needed. But if you need reassurance: THEY WERE DIVINE. Don’t waste any more time and go try them! If you’re a fish lover you can’t go wrong with these, and thy are the perfect option for a healthier BBQ.

Have a great summer full of fresh and delicious food!

For the brochettes we need:

1 lb swordfish fillet, cut in 1 inch cubes
12 red and yellow grape tomatoes (or other veggies)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 lb new potatoes
2 bay leaves
1 bag baby chard, or rainbow chard, chopped
6 radishes
1 cup World Harbors Jamaican Style JERK Marinade

• Preheat the oven to 350F. Or get the grill ready.
• Put the potatoes in a square of baking foil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, add bay leaves, a couple tablespoons olive oil, close the foil to form an envelope. Bake for 30 – 45 minutes, until the potatoes are tender when pierced with the tip of a knife.
• Using wet wooden skewers, thread pieces of swordfish, alternating with grape tomatoes. Add salt, pepper, and olive oil.
• Now you can grill, bake or fry your brochettes. The fish should be cooked through, juicy, not dry.
• Meanwhile prepare the salad. Wash the baby chard, slice the radishes paper thin, combine them in a salad bowl, add salt and pepper, olive oil, and the juice of half a lemon. Mix everything and serve in a plate.
• Over the salad arrange two fish brochettes. Serve the potatoes at the side, with more salad.
• Serve with JERK Marinade.

** Use any fish available. Salmon, halibut, sea bass, etc. You can add scallops.

** Instead of grape tomatoes use bell pepper, onions, mushrooms, etc.

Once you go to the store and buy your World Harbors marinade, make sure you check the bottle because you could be one of the lucky six people to get the Golden Label which means you’ve won an exotic vacation to either Maui, Fiji, Tahiti, Cabo, New England or a trip for a tropical cruise!

Another chance to win big with World Harbors can be found on their Facebook page via the Adventure sweeps where the Grand Prize winner will received two roundtrip plane tickets and a runner up will get a $500 gift card for a weekend getaway hotel stay. Click here to enter that sweeps.

May the summer fun begin already!!

Disclosure: This post is part of a sponsored series to develop recipes using Mizkan products. All opinions are our own.

These days have been warmer than usual, and I felt the heat especially intense because my A/C was broken for five days, including the holiday, and I –working from home- have been literally melting, with all the windows open and no intention to cook anything in the stove. This, as you may imagine, can be problematic if you are a food blogger, like I am, and need to be cooking stuff all the time!

Talking to my mother about this over the phone, got her inspired to create a dish for these hot Spring and Summer days. As soon as I mentioned what was going on, she knew what she wanted to prepare (that’s how the head of a chef works!), ran to the grocery store, bought chicken legs and breasts, some vegetables, charcoal, and decided to prepare grilled chicken with a tropical salad. She lives in an apartment that doesn’t have a grill, but once she has a recipe idea in her mind, nothing stops her…and certainly not that little detail. The first thing she made, back home, was to marinate the chicken in a Ziploc bag. Carefully, she sprinkled a little coarse salt on the chicken pieces, put them in the bag, and added an amazing ingredient that we have recently discovered: World Harbors Lemon Pepper & Garlic Marinade and Sauce. So easy to use! She just closed the bag and stored it in the fridge to give enough time for the chicken to infuse with the flavors of the marinade. In the meantime, she prepared a salad with all her favorite Latin American comfort foods. She packed the salad, the chicken, a bottle of iced water, forks and knives, and her ever-present camera, and headed to the park!

Lighting the fire and getting everything ready was just a matter of minutes. Then, after the chicken was patted dry, and the marinade discarded, she began to cook, and used more of the bottled marinade to baste the chicken to keep it moist. After about 30 minutes, lunch was ready!

I wish I had been there to enjoy the outdoorsy day with her, eating that nourishing meal full of color and flavor. There’s something magical about eating between greenery and silence, don’t you agree? Now I know exactly what to do for lunch on those extremely hot summer days. If you want to try my mom’s recipe, follow the instructions above for the chicken, and to make the beautiful salad, here’s how:

2 cups cooked black beans –or kidney beans, or garbanzo beans… your choice- (canned is fine)
1 cup grape tomatoes, quartered
1 cup avocado, chopped
1 cup fried ripe plantain, chopped
¼ -1/2 cup red onion, finely diced
2 tablespoons parsley leaves, chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, finely chopped (optional)
Lime juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, season, and mix carefully. Put in the fridge.

Once you go to the store and buy your World Harbors marinade, make sure you check the bottle because you could be one of the lucky six people to get the Golden Label which means you’ve won an exotic vacation to either Maui, Fiji, Tahiti, Cabo, New England or a trip for a tropical cruise!

Another chance to win big with World Harbors can be found on their Facebook page via the Adventure sweeps where the Grand Prize winner will received two roundtrip plane tickets and a runner up will get a $500 gift card for a weekend getaway hotel stay. Click here to enter that sweeps.

May the summer fun begin already!!

Disclosure: This post is part of a sponsored series to develop recipes using Mizkan products. All opinions are our own.