Ackee and saltfish. The yellowish bits that look like fish, are actually the ackee.
Ackee on the vine
Mackerel Rundown, another Jamaican breakfast specialty One of the themes of this blog is salt cod (bacalao). I'd heard of course about Jamaica's national dish, ackee and saltfish, but I just assumed it was dried local bream or river fish. So imagine my pleasure when we pulled into Dolly's Café in Montego Bay, and I was served a plate of unmistakable bacalao.
The fish, like all salt cod, comes from the North Sea, Scotland and Norway and thereabouts, and is dried by wealthy Europeans before being processed in EU-standard factories and shipped to the New World for consumption by the simple folk here. So understandably, the amount of saltfish in the dish was pretty low, maybe just an ounce or two.
That's where the Ackee comes in -- a handsome purplish fruit, when boiled it yields a firm yey flaky texture which closely resembles that of the saltfish. It's rather flavourless, and so easily adopts and the tastes of salt and the see when its sauteed with the cod. I actually thought it was fish until the second or third bite. A practical filler.
Dolly, a septuagenarian restaurateur, seems to operate mostly for the benefit of expatriate Jamaicans returning home from the US for a vacation. She was a bit surprised to see the two of us white folks, remarking, "you're escaped!" (form our hotel).
The fish, like all salt cod, comes from the North Sea, Scotland and Norway and thereabouts, and is dried by wealthy Europeans before being processed in EU-standard factories and shipped to the New World for consumption by the simple folk here. So understandably, the amount of saltfish in the dish was pretty low, maybe just an ounce or two.
That's where the Ackee comes in -- a handsome purplish fruit, when boiled it yields a firm yey flaky texture which closely resembles that of the saltfish. It's rather flavourless, and so easily adopts and the tastes of salt and the see when its sauteed with the cod. I actually thought it was fish until the second or third bite. A practical filler.
Dolly, a septuagenarian restaurateur, seems to operate mostly for the benefit of expatriate Jamaicans returning home from the US for a vacation. She was a bit surprised to see the two of us white folks, remarking, "you're escaped!" (form our hotel).
5 comments:
hmf, I wish I read about this place while in MoBay. We totally didn't know where to eat for breakfast for the last 2 days.
A little history...cod was caught and salted on stages in Newfoundland by islanders who worked hard, suffered and survived by fishing for cod. Those days are over due to over-fishing.
Newfoundland was on the trade route to the caribbean, and to this day the tv news has the weather report for the caribbean.
We love our salt fish and the island life.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that ackee is from Africa, so this dish has a real history behind it.
Craig
I live in an area of Manchester UK, with a big Jamaican population, where Ackee and Saltfish is readily available in many sit-down and takeaway places - I've been eating it for the last 20 years, and could happily survive on an A&S diet 3 times a day - it's that good.
A little history: in the seventeeth century, Jamaica was dominated by plantations using slave labour to produce sugar for the burgeoining marketplaces of Western Europe - and the business-focused plantation-owners had a problem. Their slaves, forced to do heavy physical labour (cutting sugar-cane 14 hours a day,and simimilarly demanding tasks) tended to die of overwork after a few months of this regime.
The slave-owners found that the best way of keeping these slaves alive and productive, was to give them a high-proitein, high-carbohydrate diet.
However, raising sheep or cattle for the protein took up too much valuable sugar-land, so that wasn't a good option for them - actually, the best available source of protein around that time was the super-rich cod fishing grounds of the coasts of NE America and Newfoundland.
With no refrigeration, the only way to get this cheap protein to the exhausted slaves in an edible condition, was to dry it and salt it for the weeks-long journey to the Caribbean. The protein-rich saltfish was combined with locally-grown rice, and ackee that had arrived from West Africa along with the slaves.....
....and thus, ackee and saltfish was born - as the food nutritious enough to be capable of sustaining brutally overworked slaves in those sugar plantations. Eventually, it was to become the national favourite of Jamaica.
And rightly so - it's little-recognised, but one of the all-time super-classics of world cuisine.
History and politics..... they've got a lot to answer for.....
Regards Chris
Great info Chris.
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