Jamaican

Where it comes from

The Taíno, who lived on the island before Europeans came, grew cassava and cooked over wooden frames — the barbacoa, which gave the world the word barbecue. Spain claimed Jamaica first, and England took it in the seventeenth century and turned it into a sugar colony.

The plantations were worked by enslaved Africans, many of them from West Africa, and their cooking is at the root of Jamaica's: yams, okra, ackee, callaloo, one-pot stews. Salt fish was shipped in from North America as cheap food for the enslaved. The Maroons — people who escaped slavery and made free communities in the mountains — are widely credited with developing jerk, drawing on Taíno and African ways of smoking and preserving meat.

After emancipation, indentured workers came from India, bringing curry and roti, and later from China, bringing their own shops and dishes. In the twentieth century Jamaicans took all of it abroad — to Britain, Canada and the United States — and patties, jerk and rice and peas became part of those countries' food too.

Where in it

1. KingstonThe capital's patty shops and cookshops, and on the beaches nearby — Hellshire, Port Royal — fried fish with festival and bammy by the water.Jamaican beef pattyEscovitch fishFestival
2. Boston Bay, PortlandA small bay on the lush north-east coast, where Maroon country runs down to the sea — often called the home of jerk, with pits smoking by the road.Jerk chicken
3. St ElizabethThe dry south-west, known as the breadbasket parish: cassava for bammy, and at Middle Quarters, bags of peppered shrimp from the Black River.Jamaican pepper shrimpBammy
4. Faith's PenA row of roadside food stalls on the old main road over the hills between Kingston and the north coast — known for roast yam and saltfish, jerk, and soups for travellers.

How it cooks

Jerking

Meat rubbed with scotch bonnet, allspice, spring onion and thyme, then cooked slowly over pimento wood or in a cut-down oil drum.

Escovitch

Fish fried hard, then drenched in hot vinegar with onion, carrot and peppers — a pickle that seasons as it sits.

Seasoning ahead

Meat washed with lime or vinegar, then left overnight in garlic, onion, thyme, spring onion and pepper.

Running down coconut

Coconut milk cooked down until it thickens and its oil starts to show — the base for rundown and stews.

The whole pepper

A scotch bonnet dropped in unbroken, for its fruity smell; burst it only if you want the heat.

Always in the kitchen