Happy New Year everybody! I wish you another great year with plenty of good food and tasty memories.
This is my first posting in the new year. Since I just came back from Jamaica, and I was very impressed with their local dishes, I will start the year with several posts about local Jamaican food. Unfortunately I don't have the recipes for those, but I can't wait to share the tasty photos with you all!
This is my first posting in the new year. Since I just came back from Jamaica, and I was very impressed with their local dishes, I will start the year with several posts about local Jamaican food. Unfortunately I don't have the recipes for those, but I can't wait to share the tasty photos with you all!
I arrived to Negril on Christmas day after the whole day of traveling. My friend Svetlana was already there, and she waited for me to have dinner together. I was tired and hungry. As soon as I got changed we called a taxi to take us to get some food. Our taxi driver, Jackie, left us at restaurant called Push Cart. I had no expectations. This was my first encounter with delicious Jamaican food.
First, the drink menu was very exotic. Since rum and coconuts are big in the Caribbean, I ordered a drink called "drunk coconut". Drunk coconut contains rum and pineapple juice in coconut water. It was good, but so huge, I could not finish it.
It was difficult to pick anything on the food menu, since I've never hear of any of those dishes (specialties were steamed fish, curried goat, jerk pork, braised oxtail, curry conck). I ordered steamed fish. Much to my surprise, I got the whole fish on my plate with okra, bammy and veggies on the side in a delicious slimy sauce. Bammy is a vegetable, similar to a yam, however if no one told me, I would have thought that I was eating corn bread. It is kind of dry, but in this slimy spice, it was very tasty.
I was too tired to deal with picking out tiny bones out of my whole snapper in a candle light, but it was so delicious, I decided to was well worth the effort. When I was finished, the waiter came to take my plate and gave me a compliment. He said: "You did great, you ate this like a gentleman!" I was proud to be complimented on my eating skills, but I was never before called a gentleman. So, I asked him to repeat himself and so he said: "Ya mon, you ate this like a gentleman, you did well."
I was stuffed and I already couldn't wait to taste my next Jamaican dish!
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OH we love snapper and I almost bought some today too!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had a great vacation! One thing we always enjoy is going to the grocery stores while on vacation. So many different foods and so fun!
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ReplyDeleteThis blog is really taking up. w00t!
ReplyDeleteLooks like you had a fabulous time in Jamaica:-) Small correction bummy is actually 'bammy'. It's not a vegetable at all but a bread made from the root vegetable cassava (manioc. In this case it looks like it was stewed together with the fish making it more like a dumpling. You did well I hate picking the bones out.
ReplyDeleteHi Wizzy,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction, I will fix the spelling of "bummy" now, that is too funny.
I bought some frozen bammy while I was there, and tried to cook it, but it came out too tough and tasteless. I tried to make everyone eat it since I brought it "all the way from Jamaica", but we just ended up throwing it away. I still have some in the freezer, but next time I will consult a real recipe before I attempt to cook it again.