It's from Jamaica, Mon!

     One good way to tell the authenticity of a restaurant's cuisine is to take a look at the people who frequent the place.  It's a good sign, for example, to find tables filled with Asians enjoying their meal at a Chinese restaurant.

     On my culinary tour of Nassau I was encouraged to discover that many of the Jamaican ex-pats residing in that island nation sit down to eat at the Pepper Pot Grill.  Many native Jamaicans have come to the Bahamas in search of steady employment and have brought with them their love of jerk style of cooking. 

 

     While popularized by the people of that small British island, Jamaican jerk cooking is actually rooted in African history as slaves from West Africa were transported to Jamaica in 1655.  With them they brought recipes for preserving meat by long slow cooking using a variety of spices.  The method has been adapted and modified over hundreds of years, but the principle remains the same.  A marinade of a spicy paste is created to cover not only chicken, but also beef, pork, goat, fish and even vegetables and fruit.  It is believed that the term we use for this process, "jerk," comes from the Spanish work charqui referring to dried strips of meat.  It is the origin of our English word "jerky," for dried meat.  The word can be both a noun and a verb as "jerking" describes the way the meat is poked full of holes to allow the spice mixture to permeate while it marinates.  It is then usually baked briefly before being grilled, or smoked, over pimento wood.

     The two essential spices in the jerk rub are allspice and scotch bonnet or habenaro peppers.  Then it's pretty much empty out the spice cabinet for the remainder of the seasonings.  Various recipes include thyme, garlic, onion, sugar, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and pimenton.  These variant ingredients are then mixed into a combination of olive oil, soy sauce, lime juice, vinegar and orange juice for the marinade.

     While I did not see the characteristic halved oil drum often used for grilling out behind the Pepper Pot, I did enjoy a flavorful meal of jerked chicken with red beans and rice and fried plantains.  And so did a lot of other patrons that day, most all Jamaicans.