Jamaica is an island nation located in the Caribbean Sea, to the south of Cuba and west of the island of Hispaniola (which contains Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The island nation was a British colony from 1655 (when General Robert Venables seized the island from the Spanish) until 1962, and is today the most populous English-speaking island in the Caribbean. Jamaica is well known for its culture especially popular music and literature, and also has developed a highly distinctive (and tasty!) style of cuisine.
Jamaican cuisine is perhaps known for its use of spices. In particular, pimento (also known as "pimenta", "allspice" or "Jamaica pepper"), and annatto (a spice that tastes like pepper with a hint of nutmeg and comes from pulp surrounding the fruit of achiote trees), play an important part in many dishes.
Another unusual ingredient in Jamaican cuisine is ackee (also sometimes spelled "akee" or "achee") which is a kind of fruit, which is boiled and then sautéed with salted fish (cod), tomatoes, onions and peppers. Great care must be taken to prepare ackee properly, because if this is not done correctly there is actually a risk of poisoning!
There are a great variety of other interesting Jamaican recipes, some of which you may have heard of, including:
- Jerk dishes for example are meats prepared in by rubbing with a spicy marinade and then cooked over a grill or in an oven (traditionally they were smoked by nowadays this is less common that it once was).
- Curried goat is goat meat cooked in a spicy sauce.
- Rice and peas consists of rice cooked with coconut milk, herbs and flavorings and mixed with legumes such as kidney beans.
Does that sound appetizing? If so, why not get yourself a Jamaican cookbook and give these dishes a try - they could make a refreshing change at meal times!
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