Jamaica13

Bammy is a Jamaican cassava flatbread: grated cassava wrung dry, pressed into a disc and slow-cooked, then soaked in coconut milk and fried golden. It is one of the island's oldest foods, and the version most people meet is a bought disc that gets soaked and fried rather than made from the root. Ingredients Amounts here make four bammies. Two different jobs live in this recipe. Making bammy from cassava is one. Reviving a bammy, homemade or bought, is the other, and it is the one most kitchens actually do.…

Jamaican festival is a sweet fried dough of flour and cornmeal, rolled long and thin and fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays soft. It is the standard partner to jerk chicken and escovitch fish, and the cornmeal is what separates it from an ordinary fried dumpling. Ingredients Amounts here make about 10 festivals. The proportions are forgiving. What is not optional is the cornmeal. The dough 1 1/2 cups (190 g) flour: all-purpose with baking powder, or self-raising on its own. 1/2 cup (80 g) cornmeal. 1/4…

Jamaican stew peas is red kidney beans simmered with salted meat and coconut milk until the pot goes thick and deep red, with hand-rolled dumplings called spinners dropped in near the end. The name confuses people: red peas is what Jamaicans call red kidney beans, so stew peas is a bean stew. Ingredients Amounts here feed six. Dry peas, not canned, and salted meat that needs handling before it goes anywhere near the pot. The coconut milk is what separates this from every other bean stew in the region. The…

Jamaican escovitch fish is whole snapper fried crisp, then buried under hot pickled vegetables: onion, carrot, sweet pepper, and Scotch bonnet cooked briefly in vinegar with pimento. The vinegar does two jobs. It seasons the fish and it preserves it, which is why the dish tastes better the longer it sits. Ingredients Two halves: a fried whole fish and a vinegar pickle made separately, brought together at the last second while the pickle is still hot. For the fish 2 whole snapper, about 1 lb (450 g) each: red, yellowtail,…

Jamaican brown stew chicken is bone-in chicken washed with citrus, seasoned overnight, browned hard, then simmered down into a thick dark gravy. It is Sunday food in Jamaica and one of the island's staple dishes. The color is the whole point, and Jamaican cooks disagree about how to get it. Ingredients Amounts here are a worked starting point for 3 lb (1.4 kg) of chicken, feeding four to six. Dark meat on the bone is the starting point. The cooks this recipe follows are blunt about why: the seasoning should…

A Jamaican beef patty is a folded pastry with a yellow, laminated crust and a finely minced, well-seasoned beef filling. The crust is the harder half of the job. It gets its layers the way puff pastry does, from cold fat folded through the dough, and its color from turmeric or curry powder worked into the flour. Ingredients Amounts here make 12 patties. Two components, made separately and both cooled before they meet. Warm filling in cold dough ruins the crust, so the filling is made first and left to…

Jamaican oxtail is a long-braised stew of beef tail cooked until the meat slides off the bone, finished with butter beans in a thick brown gravy. It takes two to four hours depending on the method, and there is no version of it that goes faster. The cut is the reason: oxtail is tough and full of gelatin, and only time turns that into gravy. Ingredients Two things separate Jamaican oxtail from a generic beef stew: the meat gets washed with citrus and vinegar before it is seasoned, and the…

Ackee and saltfish is Jamaica's national dish: salted cod boiled free of its salt, then folded through cooked ackee with onion, scallion, thyme, and Scotch bonnet. The ackee cooks down soft and yellow and reads like scrambled eggs on the plate, though it is a fruit. It is a breakfast dish as often as a dinner one. Ingredients Two ingredients carry this dish and both need handling before they meet. The saltfish has to be boiled out, and the ackee has to be cooked without being stirred to pieces. Everything…

Jamaican jerk chicken is chicken marinated in a wet paste of Scotch bonnet, pimento, scallion, and thyme, then smoked slowly over pimento wood until the skin turns dark. Jerk is a cooking method before it is a flavor. The seasoning does half the work and the pimento smoke does the other half. Ingredients Jerk is built in two layers, a wet marinade blended to a paste and a dry seasoning, and cooks differ on which goes on first. The Jamaican cooks this recipe follows treat the wood as an ingredient…

Coco bread is a soft, slightly sweet Jamaican bread made with coconut milk, rolled flat, brushed with butter and folded into a half-moon before baking. The fold is the point: it bakes into two layers you can pull apart, which is what turns it into a pocket for a beef patty. Ingredients Amounts here make 8 breads. Coconut milk is the one ingredient that is not negotiable, because it is what the bread is named for. The dough 1 cup (240 ml) coconut milk, warmed. 3 cups (375 g) all-purpose…

Jerk pork is where jerk started. Pork shoulder or leg is washed with citrus, packed with a wet pimento seasoning worked into cuts in the meat, left overnight, then cooked slowly until the bone pulls free. Most Jamaican cooks outside the island now do it in an oven, and they are not apologising for it. Ingredients Amounts here are a worked starting point for 4 lb (1.8 kg) of pork, feeding six to eight. Pimento is the ingredient the cooks call the main one, so do not treat it as…

Jamaican fried dumplings are a plain flour dough, rubbed with butter, rested, rolled into rounds and fried until golden and hollow-light inside. They are the breakfast bread of Jamaica, and they are not festival: no cornmeal, no sweetness to speak of, and round rather than long. Ingredients Amounts here make about 10 dumplings. The list is short enough that technique carries the whole recipe. The dough 2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour. 2 tsp baking powder. 1/2 tsp salt, sea salt if you have it. 1 tsp sugar, optional and…

Jamaican roti is flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and fat, cooked on a dry hot pan in about three minutes. The ingredient list is unremarkable and that is the point: the cooks say outright that it is technique, not ingredients, that makes a roti a roti. The technique is the layering. Ingredients Amounts here make 6 roti. Nothing on this list is unusual, which is why the method section matters more than it normally would. The dough 3 cups (375 g) all-purpose flour. 2 tsp baking powder. 1 tsp salt.…