The Best Thing to do with a Jerk: Eat It
A little more than a week ago, I was sunning myself on the beach on the north coast of Jamaica. I was there with Empanada Boy’s entire family to celebrate Tofutti Cutie and Popover’s 40th wedding anniversary. We stayed at the Beaches resort in the town of Boscobel. I had never stayed at an all-inclusive resort before, so the concept of a vacation solely devoted to swimming, eating, swimming and eating more took a little getting used to. It turned out to be supremely relaxing and a great way to spend time with the family. The downside was that a lot of the eating we did on the trip was typical, mass-produced resort food. But some of what we ate at the buffet and one of the lunch spots was authentic Jamaican cuisine, including ackee and saltfish, mackerel rundown, stewed cabbage, patties, festivals (fried dough), curried chicken and, of course, jerk chicken.
Jerk, Jamaican-style barbecue is undoubtedly the country’s most important contribution to world cuisine. It involves marinading meat overnight and rubbing it with a blend of allspice, Scotch bonnet peppers, cloves, cinnamon, scallions, nutmeg, thyme and garlic. It is then slowly barbecued over charcoal or aromatic wood like allspice. The resulting product is deeply browned from spice and completely imbued with flavor.
Our introduction to true Jamaican jerk actually came on the way to the resort. We were riding in a mini-bus that had picked us up at the airport in Montego Bay. Our rest stop had a wing that was labeled “Jerk Centre.” (I thought this was a unique name until I noticed “Jerk Centres” at nearly every other rest stop down the road.) We ordered and paid at a counter inside the building. The choices were jerk chicken or jerk pork. EB and I ordered the chicken because we figured we couldn’t go wrong. The woman there gave us a ticket to hand to the jerk master manning the grill outside. He then selected a chicken or some pork from the grill and turned it to make sure it was done to satisfaction. When he was happy with the looks of it, he pulled it off the grill, put it onto a cutting board and hacked it into manageable pieces with a cleaver. Into a cardboard container it went, along with a douse of sauce and a slice of airy white bread to soak it up.
I was glad we selected the chicken, which was moist (the pork was a little dry) and wildly flavorful under the cloud of spices. It had just the right degree of heat, maintaining a constant, faint burn in the back of our mouths. We took it out to the back patio with a nice view of the very blue ocean to eat. This was a great welcome to the country, and it gave us a quality benchmark by which to judge the jerk we tasted over the rest of the trip. Surprisingly, the jerk chicken at one of the resort restaurants was pretty much equal to the jerk we tried on that first day. It was one of the best meals we tried during our stay. Perhaps people who go through the extended jerk-making process are already committing to a certain standard of quality.
Chicken is obviously the primary protein in Jamaica. The country is very poor, and raising chickens seems to be the most economical way to get meat. EB, Cerealla (formerly Sushi Sister), Croque Monsieur and I left the resort one time and walked about three miles to the nearby town of Oracabessa. We stopped into a small restaurant on the side of the road and tried another Jamaican chicken preparation. The menu of the day was fried chicken, rice and a mayonnaise-y macaroni salad. Cerealla and Croque Monsieur each ordered a plate, and EB and I sampled bites of theirs. The food was generally hearty and satisfying. The chicken was particularly good with a crackly shell and a moist, tender interior. The batter tasted a little different from Southern-style fried chicken, perhaps a little lighter, although it was hard to put my finger on the difference.
During that same excursion, we went into a grocery store. The store was filled with condiments, spices, drinks and candy. There was no produce section, no meat section and no fish section. Further down the street a set of covered produce stands run by local women had some greens and vegetables. A man with a fruit stand had plantains, papayas and coconuts. There was still no meat or fish. The only conclusion I could come to was that the Jamaican people— who are desperately poor, for the most part— must grow many of their own fruits and vegetables or buy them from their neighbors. Many houses likely have chickens that are occasionally killed, which is probably supplemented from time to time by a meat shipment from a larger city. And whatever fish is eaten undoubtedly comes straight from the sea.
Jerk Centre and Local Town Restaurant
On the road from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios and on the main street of Oracabessa
Jamaica, W.I.
