More than just jerk chicken and rum. Jasmine Mangalaseril explores Jamaican food in Waterloo region

Jamaican food often evokes thoughts of bold jerk chicken, rich oxtail or flavourful patties, along with Jamaican rum, whether it’s in cake, cocktails or neat.

But Jamaican cuisine has a rich history that is a lot more than those favourite go-tos.

For 500 years, as different groups arrived on the island, their traditions and food cultures melded into one.

Indigenous Taino cultivated fruits and vegetables and developed barbacoa, the roasting and smoking of foods on raised wooden grills.

The Spanish brought crops and livestock, as well as escabeche (the forerunner to escovitch, fried fish topped with hot, vinegary pickled vegetables).

Coffee and black pepper were some  of what the British brought, along with puddings and cakes.

Enslaved Africans brought foods from home and made one-pot dishes, combining ingredients available to them.

Indentured peoples brought curry from India and distilling expertise from China.  

Germans brought spiced baking and Dutch pots while waves of Portuguese refugees and indentured workers brought sweets and saltfish, and Middle Eastern migrants brought kebabs and pelau.

Every mikkle mek a muckle

For Kitchener’s chef Ofelia Clarke, Jamaican cuisine is a vibrant reflection of the national motto, “Out of many, one people.”

“Through all of the different walks of life and different people that have been to Jamaica …whether it’s Spanish or Chinese or Taino [one of Jamaica’s Indigenous groups] or British, there’s so much that left an imprint on Jamaica,” said Clarke.

She joined the team at the Lancaster Smokehouse and Back of House Pizza after years of experience in Toronto’s French and fine dining scenes.

What helped to prepare her for a life at the stove was many hours in her grandmother’s kitchen.

“I remember smelling demiglace reducing,” said Clarke. “That deep umami smell reminded me of when my grandma was cooking oxtail or cow foot soup. I could see where some of the flavours began or crossed over.”

She also learned how to transform inexpensive ingredients into tasty, nutritious meals in her the kitchens of her father and grandmother.

“I remember my grandma saying, ‘every mikkle mek a muckle,’” said Clarke. “Every tiny herb. Every stem. Every drop of oil counts … it kind of forces you to be creative and be resourceful in cooking.”

It’s seen in Jamaican cow foot soup, made by simmering the offcut with vegetables, thyme, pimento (allspice) and scotch bonnets, as well as in the island’s silky, rich braised oxtail.

Rundown, one of Clarke’s favourite dishes, also comes from this tradition. It’s made by cooking down coconut milk with mackerel (or salt cod), veggies and aromatics.

“I feel it’s a really important Jamaican dish,” said Clarke. “The way it’s cooked with the pepper and cooked down in the coconut milk, it tames the fishiness and it’s a very distinct flavour. It’s super memorable.”

Give your taste buds a jerk

Making good jerk is not quick, according to Clarke. After marinating the meat for at least a day, it’s then jerked through a slow cooking process ideally over pimento wood.

The cook bastes and turns the pieces sometimes adding an occasional splash of Red Stripe beer, until the meat is tender, smoky, and develops a reddish-brown tinge.

“You can’t ask when the jerk chicken’s ready. It’s ready when it shows you that it’s ready … it’s not a quick grilled meat. The flavour develops over time,” said Clarke.

Rum punch

The British brought rum production to Jamaica after they established sugar plantations in the 1600s. Molasses, a byproduct of sugar refining, was distilled by enslaved and local workers into a strong drink.

At first, it was for the local population, but it was also often part of enslaved workers daily rations. After emancipation, it became part of community life and celebrations.

While it was different to rums produced elsewhere in the Caribbean, Chinese labourers who remained on the island used their knowledge of spices and making whiskies and fermented cane juice that helped redefine spiced and overproof rums.

Clarke said rum is often used to preserve fruits used in rum cakes, Christmas cakes, and Easter Buns. And, of course, it’s a favourite drink.

“Drinking rum is an event in itself, but certain drinks that are prepared with rum symbolize events, like the holiday season,” said Clarke. “People will make sorrel. It comes from the dried hibiscus flower and we’ll add rum to it and it makes a delicious warming drink that just makes you feel happy.”