Island Spice: Jamaica
From the "Ravenous" column for Ulster Publishing
Jamaica offers much more than billowing palm trees, soft white sand and diamond-clear, bath-warm water, although those are the draw for many visitors. I think this Caribbean island’s big treat for the senses comes from its people, with their musical patois and cheerful, laid-back music, their pan-global heritage of Africa, Europe, India and beyond, and a cuisine that’s as much a reflection of that worldwide influence as their music and art. Jamaican food is a bounty of tropical fruit, fish and spices, its stewpots and grills sending up steam redolent of scallions, fresh thyme, allspice and a touch of hot pepper.
My family and I stayed at a tourist hotel on the beach in Negril this month, such an off-season trip being a less expensive vacation than many other options, including, it seemed, Maine or Cape Cod. While Negril has seen a lot of development since our 1990 honeymoon there, it’s still much smaller and calmer than the popular Montego Bay, where our plane landed. Nicknamed The Capital of Casual, Negril was “discovered” by hippies decades ago and retains, in places, some of that 60s and 70s vibe, with hippie accoutrements and accessories quite easy to find should you require them, all along its peaceful seven-mile beach.
Our hotel had a pool, a mess of kids, skinny wild/tame tabby cats to feed cheese to, tiny sand-hued crabs scuttling all over the white sand beach, all of which kept our kids happy, and a wide beach shaded by sea grape and almond bowers to keep their frazzled parents happy. There was plenty of eye-pleasing exotic flora and fauna like tiny lizards scuttling along pathways and up stucco walls, pausing to puff out tiny orange balls on their neck to catch girls, coconuts clustered around the tops of perilously swaying palms, bushes with waxy evergreen leaves and bright fat pink, yellow, red and purple blooms.
We had planned to go crocodile hunting, perhaps, or on a glass-bottom boat ride, water park visit, or to a seafood festival on the southern coast, but every activity was wildly expensive, so we contented ourselves with a bit of village exploring and a lot of relaxing. It was a joy to get to act on all those lazy, do-nothing, self-indulgent urges that I try to keep in check most of the time in real life.
Days began with a leisurely “continental” breakfast on a large patio on the beach: rich coffee, three chunks of fruit: usually watermelon, pineapple and papaya or cantaloupe, some moist not-too-sweet coconut muffins, slabs of banana bread and thick toast with New Zealand butter and guava jelly to spread on it. Sometimes we’d add side dishes, splurging on sides of bacon, boiled eggs, golden crispy-edged sauteed plantains or ackee and saltfish, a favorite Jamaican breakfast dish. Ackee was in season and a tree full of the ripe fruits grew next to the hotel’s outdoor showers. The ackee is Jamaica’s national fruit, a so-ugly-it’s-beautiful contrast of textures. It grows on a pretty little evergreen tree, as vaguely pear-shaped orbs in leathery red-tinged carapaces that split open the second the fruit is perfectly ripe, revealing a freaky-looking collection of three big shiny black seeds, each surrounded by yellow blobs that vaguely resemble scrambled eggs. Some say it tastes like scrambled eggs, too, but I disagree, it has a bit of bitterness and richness that contrasts perfectly with the salty fish and the sweetness of onions and pepper in ackee and saltfish, a dish that sometimes includes bacon and always plenty of fat of one kind or another. “Ackee lub fat, okra lub salt,” say the Jamaicans. It makes an excellent breakfast, albeit a dangerous one for reasons that go beyond high cholesterol. You must eat only ackee that’s been picked and cooked by experts, because it’s quite toxic if you eat it before its perfect stage of ripeness.
When breakfast wore off we were usually lazing about on the beach, so if we were lucky the Patty Man would wheel by with his insulated metal box full of crispy greasy little pies descended from Cornish pasties but said to have been invented in Haiti. The most common is filled with a rich beefy filling, but you can get curried chicken or a veggie mix with broccoli and corn. Our favorite filling was the callaloo, a hearty green that reminds me of sweet collard greens.
If the Patty Man or his competitor didn’t show up, we were consoled by a visit from Cardiss, the fruit seller, a stately but warm woman who carried a gigantic basket of luscious fruits on her head and would peel and cut them up to order: the sweetest, juiciest oranges, pineapples, mangoes and bananas of all sizes. The youngest vendor on the beach was barely bigger than my five- and six-year-olds and sold clusters of little green guineps, too sour for me but adored by my daughter.
Lunches and dinners were mostly fish and seafood, which tastes better with your toes in the sand. We didn’t have to travel far for lobster, shrimp, snapper, kingfish and conch. Sometimes the fish would be previously frozen and a bit dry, but more often it was fresh and sweet. We had it simply grilled and served with drawn butter (lobster or snapper), or piled with raw slivered vegetables (the dry but meaty kingfish) or curried (conch or shrimp), in creamy chilled salad (ditto), in a rich green fish soup, escoveitched (doused with a warm pickling sauce of lime, vinegar, allspice, ginger, mace, onions and hot pepper) or as “brown stew fish,” much more succulent than it sounds, with onions, garlic, green and hot peppers, tomatoes and thyme.
At Chill Awhile, my favorite restaurant, which was--happily--right next door, there were some out-of-the ordinary dishes. With rollicking live music a few feet from us, a very charming waiter, the caress of delicious sea breezes and the kids busy playing with beach toys in the sand nearby, we dove into unusually generous portions of curried shrimp with mango chutney, a “Rundown” (a dish normally made with mackerel) of heaps of shrimp with papaya and coconut cream stuffed in papaya halves-- tasty, rich and fun to eat. They served us cool shrimp salad with tiny dices of sweet pepper, a “fish burger” which could have been anything, but was a large slab of very fresh snapper, perfectly seasoned and cooked on a soft good bun with lettuce and tomato, and on the last night a marvelous callaloo-stuffed snapper.
Another favorite place was Sun Beach, with tablecloth-covered, candlelit tables right in the sand just a few crab-scuttlings from the water, resin chairs on ropes to keep the kids busy, excellent live music twice a week and very kind waiters who would twirl trays to amuse the kids or give us three intensely tasty split grilled lobsters for our “2 for 1” special. Their intense lobster bisque rivaled the best Provençal soupe de poisson, rich with thyme and the flavor from the spiny lobster shells.
It wasn’t all seafood, though. The favorite dish of many Jamaicans is “curry goat,” usually reserved for weddings and important parties but available on many menus for those for whom every day is a celebration. On the rare occasions I can find goat meat at home, I love to cook this dish, so we had to have it a few times in Negril. It was invariably great--mean, lean and green--and our waiters even seemed to approve happily when we ordered it.
Then there’s oxtail, my favorite Jamaican dish, succulent and gelatinous after simmering for hours with garlic, onion and allspice. I had to wait two hours for mine, at Irie down the beach, but it was spicy and tender.
Jerk is essential to try when in Jamaica, whether chicken or pork, a dish originated by the original occupants of the island, the Arawaks, who cooked wild pigs over allspice wood, and perfected by the Maroons, escaped slaves living in the mountains. Modern versions include in the marinade ground allspice and other spices, scotch bonnet peppers, fresh thyme and minced scallion. Fortunately a shack selling perfect jerk chicken was right across the road from our hotel. Jamaican chicken is bony and full of flavor, good plain fried but ethereal as moist and smoky jerk.
Served with nearly everything was “rice and peas,” the classic Jamaican coconut milk-infused rice with red beans. Supposedly bammy (fried grated cassava patties) and festival (fried dough) are common sides, but in our tourist town we saw none of that, just one tiny festival with our jerk pork at a small truck stop en route from the airport to the hotel.
On the side as well there is usually a heap of vegetables like cabbage, carrot and maybe chayote, either boiled and buttered or raw and lightly dressed or garnished with slivers of an almost spicy sweet green bell pepper.
My lips touched not a drop of wine the whole trip, just Red Stripe beer and rum punch or frozen fruit daiquiris (usually a mix of banana, papaya and pineapple, cut up to order). Milder Jamaican beverages include ginger beer, the grapefruit soda Ting or the scarlet gingery sorrel made from hibiscus petals.
Jamaica got its independence from Britain only in 1962 and still retains that English sweet tooth, with a huge variety of sweets and desserts, like coconut tarts called gizadas and all kinds of jams, pies and tarts made with local fruits. And the African heritage is still strong with dishes like dokono, a.k.a. tie-a-leaf or blue drawers, made of sweetened spiced cornmeal boiled in a banana leaf.
The day after our return home a Caribbean festival was held in Poughkeepsie, but we were too busy to go. But somehow after all those Caribbean delights we didn’t feel cheated.
Jamaica offers much more than billowing palm trees, soft white sand and diamond-clear, bath-warm water, although those are the draw for many visitors. I think this Caribbean island’s big treat for the senses comes from its people, with their musical patois and cheerful, laid-back music, their pan-global heritage of Africa, Europe, India and beyond, and a cuisine that’s as much a reflection of that worldwide influence as their music and art. Jamaican food is a bounty of tropical fruit, fish and spices, its stewpots and grills sending up steam redolent of scallions, fresh thyme, allspice and a touch of hot pepper.
My family and I stayed at a tourist hotel on the beach in Negril this month, such an off-season trip being a less expensive vacation than many other options, including, it seemed, Maine or Cape Cod. While Negril has seen a lot of development since our 1990 honeymoon there, it’s still much smaller and calmer than the popular Montego Bay, where our plane landed. Nicknamed The Capital of Casual, Negril was “discovered” by hippies decades ago and retains, in places, some of that 60s and 70s vibe, with hippie accoutrements and accessories quite easy to find should you require them, all along its peaceful seven-mile beach.
Our hotel had a pool, a mess of kids, skinny wild/tame tabby cats to feed cheese to, tiny sand-hued crabs scuttling all over the white sand beach, all of which kept our kids happy, and a wide beach shaded by sea grape and almond bowers to keep their frazzled parents happy. There was plenty of eye-pleasing exotic flora and fauna like tiny lizards scuttling along pathways and up stucco walls, pausing to puff out tiny orange balls on their neck to catch girls, coconuts clustered around the tops of perilously swaying palms, bushes with waxy evergreen leaves and bright fat pink, yellow, red and purple blooms.
We had planned to go crocodile hunting, perhaps, or on a glass-bottom boat ride, water park visit, or to a seafood festival on the southern coast, but every activity was wildly expensive, so we contented ourselves with a bit of village exploring and a lot of relaxing. It was a joy to get to act on all those lazy, do-nothing, self-indulgent urges that I try to keep in check most of the time in real life.
Days began with a leisurely “continental” breakfast on a large patio on the beach: rich coffee, three chunks of fruit: usually watermelon, pineapple and papaya or cantaloupe, some moist not-too-sweet coconut muffins, slabs of banana bread and thick toast with New Zealand butter and guava jelly to spread on it. Sometimes we’d add side dishes, splurging on sides of bacon, boiled eggs, golden crispy-edged sauteed plantains or ackee and saltfish, a favorite Jamaican breakfast dish. Ackee was in season and a tree full of the ripe fruits grew next to the hotel’s outdoor showers. The ackee is Jamaica’s national fruit, a so-ugly-it’s-beautiful contrast of textures. It grows on a pretty little evergreen tree, as vaguely pear-shaped orbs in leathery red-tinged carapaces that split open the second the fruit is perfectly ripe, revealing a freaky-looking collection of three big shiny black seeds, each surrounded by yellow blobs that vaguely resemble scrambled eggs. Some say it tastes like scrambled eggs, too, but I disagree, it has a bit of bitterness and richness that contrasts perfectly with the salty fish and the sweetness of onions and pepper in ackee and saltfish, a dish that sometimes includes bacon and always plenty of fat of one kind or another. “Ackee lub fat, okra lub salt,” say the Jamaicans. It makes an excellent breakfast, albeit a dangerous one for reasons that go beyond high cholesterol. You must eat only ackee that’s been picked and cooked by experts, because it’s quite toxic if you eat it before its perfect stage of ripeness.
When breakfast wore off we were usually lazing about on the beach, so if we were lucky the Patty Man would wheel by with his insulated metal box full of crispy greasy little pies descended from Cornish pasties but said to have been invented in Haiti. The most common is filled with a rich beefy filling, but you can get curried chicken or a veggie mix with broccoli and corn. Our favorite filling was the callaloo, a hearty green that reminds me of sweet collard greens.
If the Patty Man or his competitor didn’t show up, we were consoled by a visit from Cardiss, the fruit seller, a stately but warm woman who carried a gigantic basket of luscious fruits on her head and would peel and cut them up to order: the sweetest, juiciest oranges, pineapples, mangoes and bananas of all sizes. The youngest vendor on the beach was barely bigger than my five- and six-year-olds and sold clusters of little green guineps, too sour for me but adored by my daughter.
Lunches and dinners were mostly fish and seafood, which tastes better with your toes in the sand. We didn’t have to travel far for lobster, shrimp, snapper, kingfish and conch. Sometimes the fish would be previously frozen and a bit dry, but more often it was fresh and sweet. We had it simply grilled and served with drawn butter (lobster or snapper), or piled with raw slivered vegetables (the dry but meaty kingfish) or curried (conch or shrimp), in creamy chilled salad (ditto), in a rich green fish soup, escoveitched (doused with a warm pickling sauce of lime, vinegar, allspice, ginger, mace, onions and hot pepper) or as “brown stew fish,” much more succulent than it sounds, with onions, garlic, green and hot peppers, tomatoes and thyme.
At Chill Awhile, my favorite restaurant, which was--happily--right next door, there were some out-of-the ordinary dishes. With rollicking live music a few feet from us, a very charming waiter, the caress of delicious sea breezes and the kids busy playing with beach toys in the sand nearby, we dove into unusually generous portions of curried shrimp with mango chutney, a “Rundown” (a dish normally made with mackerel) of heaps of shrimp with papaya and coconut cream stuffed in papaya halves-- tasty, rich and fun to eat. They served us cool shrimp salad with tiny dices of sweet pepper, a “fish burger” which could have been anything, but was a large slab of very fresh snapper, perfectly seasoned and cooked on a soft good bun with lettuce and tomato, and on the last night a marvelous callaloo-stuffed snapper.
Another favorite place was Sun Beach, with tablecloth-covered, candlelit tables right in the sand just a few crab-scuttlings from the water, resin chairs on ropes to keep the kids busy, excellent live music twice a week and very kind waiters who would twirl trays to amuse the kids or give us three intensely tasty split grilled lobsters for our “2 for 1” special. Their intense lobster bisque rivaled the best Provençal soupe de poisson, rich with thyme and the flavor from the spiny lobster shells.
It wasn’t all seafood, though. The favorite dish of many Jamaicans is “curry goat,” usually reserved for weddings and important parties but available on many menus for those for whom every day is a celebration. On the rare occasions I can find goat meat at home, I love to cook this dish, so we had to have it a few times in Negril. It was invariably great--mean, lean and green--and our waiters even seemed to approve happily when we ordered it.
Then there’s oxtail, my favorite Jamaican dish, succulent and gelatinous after simmering for hours with garlic, onion and allspice. I had to wait two hours for mine, at Irie down the beach, but it was spicy and tender.
Jerk is essential to try when in Jamaica, whether chicken or pork, a dish originated by the original occupants of the island, the Arawaks, who cooked wild pigs over allspice wood, and perfected by the Maroons, escaped slaves living in the mountains. Modern versions include in the marinade ground allspice and other spices, scotch bonnet peppers, fresh thyme and minced scallion. Fortunately a shack selling perfect jerk chicken was right across the road from our hotel. Jamaican chicken is bony and full of flavor, good plain fried but ethereal as moist and smoky jerk.
Served with nearly everything was “rice and peas,” the classic Jamaican coconut milk-infused rice with red beans. Supposedly bammy (fried grated cassava patties) and festival (fried dough) are common sides, but in our tourist town we saw none of that, just one tiny festival with our jerk pork at a small truck stop en route from the airport to the hotel.
On the side as well there is usually a heap of vegetables like cabbage, carrot and maybe chayote, either boiled and buttered or raw and lightly dressed or garnished with slivers of an almost spicy sweet green bell pepper.
My lips touched not a drop of wine the whole trip, just Red Stripe beer and rum punch or frozen fruit daiquiris (usually a mix of banana, papaya and pineapple, cut up to order). Milder Jamaican beverages include ginger beer, the grapefruit soda Ting or the scarlet gingery sorrel made from hibiscus petals.
Jamaica got its independence from Britain only in 1962 and still retains that English sweet tooth, with a huge variety of sweets and desserts, like coconut tarts called gizadas and all kinds of jams, pies and tarts made with local fruits. And the African heritage is still strong with dishes like dokono, a.k.a. tie-a-leaf or blue drawers, made of sweetened spiced cornmeal boiled in a banana leaf.
The day after our return home a Caribbean festival was held in Poughkeepsie, but we were too busy to go. But somehow after all those Caribbean delights we didn’t feel cheated.