Jerk from the Caribbean
"I'd go as far as to say that this is the only chicken recipe you should bother with on the barbecue – there's not much else to touch it." Felicity Cloake
That's a very ringing endorsement up there. I am writing this because, David was not feeling all that good, so I was able to watch a couple of cooking shows on the tv - and one of them was Ainsley Harriott at Wilunga farmer's market in SA cooking jerk pork amongst other things. I knew of him, but hadn't seen him before and I have to say I found him marginally irritating, but anyway - the jerk pork that he cooked looked pretty nice. Shown here is his Ultimate jerk chicken which used the same spice mix. So I decided to do a post on jerk - being dimly aware that it was a 'thing'.
I found a few things of interest mostly connected to the usual 'authenticity' squabbles in the foodie world.
Jerk is a bit of a thing here, not huge, just a bit of a thing - I see the occasional recipe in the Coles Magazine - indeed if you look at Taste.com you will find around 30 something recipes for jerk inspired recipes. Just to demonstrate here are two recent ones from the
And interestingly these two demonstrate a more Australian approach I think, in that they are sort of fusion cuisine in which the Caribbean jerk has been combined with other cuisines.
In Britain and America however it really is quite big. In Britain it's obviously because of the huge number of immigrants from the former colonies in the West Indies, and in America it's because of the proximity to the Caribbean and the heritage of it's enormous black population. I gather that in Britain Caribbean food is taking over from other cuisines such as Italian and Middle-eastern in popularity. Everyone from Delia to Yotam Ottolenghi has a recipe for jerk chicken.
In its native Jamaica it's street food. Food from the poor. Indeed it originated back in the seventeenth century, according to Wikipedia and lots of others, when some slaves escaped to the hills in Jamaica where they survived on what they could find. What they found was wild boar, allspice trees, and scotch bonnet chillies. They smothered the meat in the spices they found, built a fire in the ground from the allspice wood, put in the meat and covered it over with the leaves so that the smoke could not escape and alert their old masters in the lowlands to their presence. Which has led many to say that:
“Jerk is not a seasoning; it’s a type of cooking,” Suzanne Rousseau
Be that as it may, these days it is not much cooked in the ground as the Pacific islanders do, but is cooked in steel drums on the street. The effect is the same though as there is always a lid.
"Peppered across the island, roadside jerk stands entice passersby with wafts of fragrant smoke rising from makeshift grills encased in sheets of tin siding. Supple, juicy, and crispy in spots where the meat has been charred by the fire, jerk is an integral part of Jamaica's economy" Karsha Wilson - Saveur
It has become the KFC of the poor in Jamaica.
Elsewhere other cooking devices are used from a standard wood barbecue, through kettle barbecues, wood ovens, and standard ovens to grills and griddles. The name is no longer the technique, it is the spice mix.
Those slaves became known as the Maroons as they intermarried with the native Tainos that they found in the hills. And the name jerk comes from the Spanish charqui which refers to a kind of dried beef or jerky. Not the same thing at all really.
In my library of cook books I have a 1973 Penguin paperback called Caribbean Cookery by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz. She seems to have thoroughly researched her subject and it was very well received. And yet there is no mention of jerk or anything resembling jerk in the book at all. There is a chapter on techniques - nothing about cooking in the earth or a steel drum. There is a chapter on marinades and spice mixes - nothing resembling jerk and allspice is only briefly mentioned in a glossary at the end. Which is all very mysterious. Why? It makes you wonder. Did she just ignore street food and/or the food of the poor? Or have the poor themselves only recently rediscovered it? She must have gone to Jamaica - it is one of the larger and more important islands of the region after all.
Robert Carrier, on the other hand, in his book New Great Dishes of the World, published just over two decades later in 1997 has a recipe for jerk in his New Basics section and a recipe for Jerk Chicken later in the book. He describes jerk as "one of the great flavour-mixes of all time", and suggests that "even a plain grilled hamburger - or fish cake - will benefit from this potent mix." And indeed it seems that every celebrity chef from Delia to Yotam Ottolenghi has at least one recipe for jerk something.
So what are the authentic ingredients in the mix? Well for a start - and here is one of the controversies - you have to decide whether it is a wet or a dry mix. I suspect dry is considered more authentic, but often liquids - always soy sauce and sometimes lime juice, or vinegar are added. Soy sauce! Surely not authentic. Yes there must have been Chinese there way back then, but even if there were it is doubtful whether their foods were much adopted - they weren't here in Australia until much later. Anyway some of the dry ingredients are actually wettish - spring onions, thyme, Scotch bonnet chillies. These are always present as is allspice - the main essential - and sometimes cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger. There is some variation between each cook's recipe but for something so open to interpretation there is surprising consensus as to what goes into the mix.
” The singular combination of ingredients found on the island, and the technique of smoking with the leaves and branches of the pimento tree (also known as the allspice tree), are what make “jerking” so deeply connected to the island—so much so that it’s become a part of Jamaicans’ shared heritage. It’s truly tied to our identity.” Michèle Rousseau
"You've got some meat, some vegetables, some wood—and you've got a way to make a living." Cheryl Smith
As to whether it should be wet or dry, well:
"the dry rub makes for "a crustier jerk; a wet rub produces juicier meat". New York Times
Another controversy that has surfaced of late is to do with poor old Jamie Oliver, who introduced a range of rice products called jerk rice. He was roundly criticised in the media not just because rice is never 'jerked' in Jamaica but also because he didn't even use 'authentic' ingredients. I don't know whether he rode this one out or whether the product was withdrawn. Maybe he should have included words like 'style', 'to accompany' or 'based on'. But it goes to show, does it not, that it seems one is only allowed to meddle with 'traditional' foods up to a point.
I did not find anything really outrageous in the way of recipes, just recipes that used non-traditional things like fish and vegetables and accompanied them with sometimes weird things. Here are the most tempting looking ones that I found. Felicity Cloake makes a Perfect jerk chicken, and in the process analyses the variations she found. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall simply calls his Jerk chicken. Jamie Oliver has Christmas jerk gravadlax and Jerk-dressed Bristol pork and has several other jerk inspired dishes too. Donna Hay has Spicy jerk chicken and pickled pineapple tacos and Adam Liaw shows you how to avoid burning the outside and undercooking the inside in his Two-step jerk chicken. For tradition dictates that the meat should be cooked on the bone which adds a level of difficulty. Of course it not always is - cooked on the bone that is. Even Ainsley Harriott had unboned pork.
I would like to try this but cannot under normal circumstances because David doesn't like chillies and one cook maintained that if you removed the chillies - or reduced them - then the whole point was lost. Maybe next time I have a big barbecue. then it can be just one of many offerings.
