Researching breakfast can sometimes be a difficult task - not a lot is often written on the subject. Not so for Jamaica where their typical Sunday breakfast is actually the national dish of the country!
I've long been interested in Caribbean cuisine, it has such a great mix of cultures (English, Portuguese, Chinese, Indian, Central American) brought together with each islands' unique style.
Ackee and Saltfish is a dish I'd definitely heard of before, but only really understood in the abstract. I mean what the heck is an Ackee? Is it meat, vegetable, mineral? The little picture on the cans I've seen at the grocery store did nothing to help solve this mystery. Here's what wikipedia had to say:
It is related to the lychee and the longan, and is an evergreen tree that grows about 10 metres tall, with a short trunk and a dense crown. The fruit is pear-shaped. When it ripens, it turns from green to a bright red to yellow-orange, and splits open to reveal three large, shiny black seeds, surrounded by soft, creamy or spongy, white to yellow flesh—arilli.
So it's a fruit....that's served with Saltfish....for breakfast. Sounds like a great
Sunday morning adventure.
Making up Ackee and Saltfish was actually quite labour intensive. The Saltfish had to be boiled and carefully shredded (avoiding any nasty little bones); the myriad of ingredients (ackee, tomato, onion, bell pepper, scotch bonnet pepper, thyme, scallions, garlic) had to be chopped and prepared; and finally everything had to be lovingly stir-fried in an exacting order. Add to all of this the prep of the side dishes (fried plantains and fried dumplings called Johnny cakes) and you've got quite a lot going on. But when it was all complete, it created quite the colourful breakfast.
I have a confession - I hate fish. For my family and friends that's not much of a secret, in fact Jon was astounded when I announced we would be having saltfish for breakfast. So, I didn't like Ackee and Saltfish at all. (Fish doesn't get much fishier than saltfish). But that doesn't mean I couldn't appreciate it. It was certainly flavourful - spicy, fishy, with that very Caribbean hit of thyme. And the ackee turns out to be almost like an avocado in taste and texture. It was creamy and soft and great at taking on the flavours of the rest of the dish. For all those fish-lovers out there I'd recommend this breakfast - Jon gave it a thumbs up.
For Ease of Preparation:
Boiling fish first thing in the morning is not so fun.
For Degree of Separation:
It's sort of like eggs and bacon, I guess....
For Guestability:
I'm going to try to put aside my dislike of fish here for breakfast-science.
For Sustainability:
For Overall Appeal:
While not my favourite taste-wise, this was a fun breakfast to make and delightful to look at.
For something completely different, next week we'll be heading to Egypt!
No comments:
Post a Comment