When I first contacted today's contributor Meshach to write something about his Jerk recipe it was Memorial day and Minneapolis was not yet on fire. The hottest May on record had me thinking about Jerk chicken- barbecue, the logical option for Friday night dinner, and knowing Meshach was passionate about the process I went to him for advice. Impressed, I asked him to write something for Marigold. We were going to use his piece in a future summer issue, but when he replied, with an account of a history of the dish; in light of current events, we felt it was appropriate to share today.
Throughout my adolescence in the Midlands, Jamaican culture was a huge part of my life. From the second, third and first generation kids I went to school with I picked up slang, a love of oxtail stew and a tic tac toe bounce in my hips which I accessed through Beenie Man and Sean Paul. Somehow, its roots and painful history eluded me, it was easy to paint Jamaica as a Caribbean paradise and I didn’t question it. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I stopped to think about its bloody history; both the enslaved people transported to its shores and the indigenous Arawak and Taino people butchered there. This so often is what it is to be white and British, to benefit from our multicultural society, but to never have to pause and think about how our own bloodlines are implicated in such violent history.
A voice I have returned to frequently over the last few weeks has been George the Poet. He appeared on Newsnight, to discuss the murder of George Floyd and police brutality against Black people. He has a beautiful verbal eloquence, but when it was suggested that the legacy of slavery was not the same here in Britain as it is in America, he closed his eyes and hung his head; an act which acknowledged a weariness I imagine many people in the African diaspora feel. After a long pause, he noted that if that was how Britain felt, it had completely neglected to recognise it's overseeing role in the transatlantic slave trade.
The way to make good Jerk, is to be patient and take your time. I got round to trying out this recipe after the hot spell ended and the rain came; still worth it- even if I was crouched under a golf umbrella blowing on my coals. It gave me two hours to read some Benjamin Zephaniah to my cat between bastes.
Happy Solstice,
Rebecca and the Marigolds
Suggested Pairing:
This is one to cure the Sunday Evening Blues. Play it at least five times in a row for full effect.
Everyone sees something different on their first watch; that voice, the purple two piece (who knew), his arms, the way it swings out at the end and you get the band, that chunky bracelet, the dance halfway through…
A couple of years ago it was taken off YouTube for a little bit, shout out to the people keeping it alive. Truly a public service.
Scotchies, Jamaica (Meshach does not approve their message, Jerk pork at your own peril).
The Jerk
Meshach Falconer Roberts
To start off I think the most important thing to point out is that JERK is not a type of seasoning or sauce but a style of cooking. The dish has evolved in its long history, and the present day version has a definite flavour profile, but you cannot call something Jerk if it is not cooked over a fire, covered and using indirect heat.
Jerk comes from Jamaica and is the food of the Maroons. The Maroons were Africans that made early escapes from the plantations during the time of British colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade. They were a community that resisted bondage and lived mostly in the mountains of West Jamaica. Known for invading plantations and freeing enslaved people and occasionally setting fire to crops the British were not that into them and there was an imperial and domestic force that hunted them. To stay hidden in the evenings when it was dark the Maroons cooked their food in the ground under cover so no light from a fire was visible, it is said they were taught this technique by the Arawak, who are the original native people of Jamaica. Funnily enough this way of cooking has the opposite effect at carnival, where in the day towers of smoke and the smell of Jerk act like a magnet to British people, creating big queues for food at the stalls. I always found the queues funny because in Jamaica you rarely queue (apart from in the bank and Western Union) you wait and you wait a lot but queuing is not the done thing. If you want something you shout loudly above everyone else and get to the front of the pack. To anyone who has moaned about getting pushed in front of at a Caribbean takeaway, hush, the world isn’t fair and we’re not all treated equally. Jamaicans know this and it is reflected in how you get your food.
So I’ve said ‘Jerk’ a lot rather than ‘Jerk chicken’; this is because you can Jerk anything: chicken, lobster, goat, pork (Babylon) and even rabbit. It’s also worth noting that Jerk is not the easiest food to find in Jamaica, and I wouldn’t say it’s the most popular. You don’t make Jerk at home, it’s a take away food, and most Jamaicans I know will preach to you about various soups and are more particular about how rice and peas are made then they are about Jerk. You will find Jerk places as roadside restaurants, and outside big parties there will be street vendors selling chicken and occasionally pork out of smoky barrels. Few places really honour the dish, most times you will have it served with a slice of hard dough bread and covered in cheap ketchup. The places that do it properly, with the meat marinating for 24hrs + and grilled over pimento wood, are rare enough to count on your fingers- when it is done right it is a thing of beauty. The meat is tender but not juicy and the pepper will leave your mouth warm and your lips tingling.
Background done, time for the cooking - we’re doing chicken. First if you don’t have a lid for your BBQ you need to stop, you can still use the marinade but don’t you dare call it Jerk chicken. Secondly if you want to BBQ at the weekend you need to be buying your meat on Thursday. Other things to think about are, this dish should be cooked over wood, I won’t challenge you to find pimento wood but good wood charcoal rather than briquettes or instant, as a compromise you can buy some wood chips. You want to cook the meat past the juicy stage, when you chop the leg up you want to see brown grainy substance in the bones - definitely not red. It takes time to make this, you should be taking the chicken off after about 1.5 hours.
Oh, and for the flavour profile, originally it was all about the pimento flavour and the pepper elder that blanketed the meat as you cooked. Now the main focus is on pimento, scotch bonnet and smoke. Personally I always work with a citrus element, sweet element as well as the pimento and scotch bonnet. Another thing to note is I use no oil in my marinade, debate surrounds this you can add some if you like, I have a non-stick grill so I’m not bothered about it sticking and I sometimes spray oil on the meat when cooking.
Ingredients
4 chicken legs
Marinade:
1.5 tablespoons of pimento/allspice – (grind yourself)
3 tablespoons of tamarind paste
1 tablespoon of tomato puree
1 tablespoon of molasses or honey
1 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
zest and juice of half a grapefruit
zest and juice of half a lime
2 scallions (spring onions) finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic minced
3 scotch bonnets finely chopped
thick inch worth of ginger grated
half a handful of thyme, leaves stripped off
Method
Salt your chicken legs and leave for 3 hours, you’re doing quite a long marinade so you want to get some of that excess water out otherwise it will dilute the marinade and look horrible.
Grind the allspice, finely chop up the scotch bonnets and scallion, grate the ginger and garlic and then add everything together
Once you have wiped excess salt off the chicken mix together with your marinade (using hands) and then put in freezer bags, squeeze air out then seal and leave for minimum 24hrs in the fridge.
I cook my chicken on the BBQ off the coals for 75-90 minutes and keep the lid closed and the temperature just under 150c. I keep it smokey too.
For a sauce I reduce down the marinade with 200ml of Guiness and a shot of Rum just before I turn the heat off.
Thanks for reading today’s issue of Marigold, we hope you get to try the recipe out. Send us pics if you do!
Other things we have been interested in these past few weeks include:
Augustown - Kei Miller : A contemporary fable set in a working class Jamaican community. The main protagonist is spirited blind elder Ma Taffy, through her life we learn of a levitating preacher man, the birth of Rastafarianism, slavery and the struggle for her grandson to express himself.
West Indies vs England (selected episodes) : The BBC are programming all of the greatest matches between England and the West Indies. Fantastic to watch if cricket is your jam, if it’s not stick it on in the background while you cook anyway; it’s an interesting social record of 80/90s fashions from the sportsmen and fans. The soft thwacking noises of ball against bat followed by the cheering of the crowd are a soothing soundscape.
Belly Full - Riaz Philips : a great resource for Caribbean restaurants all around the UK. Pictures are great, the cover is iconic and always grabs my attention when I’m searching the cookbook shelf. Riaz is also a maestro on Instagram (@riazphilips), I must admit I’ve watched this post, an ode to UK Black culture, about 50 times. I could watch Yolanda slap Pat in the face all day long.
Leah Penniman talking about and reading from her book ‘Farming While Black’ : A longer video than usual but truly fascinating- couldn’t recommend Leah Penniman’s writing, speaking and vision for the future enough. We are very interested in learning more about food sovereignty and food justice. It’s something we hope to get involved with in future incarnations of Marigold. Check out this: Black Land & Spatial Justice Fund, based in the West Mids, and give us a shout if you know of anything else we should check out in the UK!