Hot Plate: Add Salt To Taste

by Jenn Carbin

Ackee has been fed to pigs in West Africa, transported across the sea to the West Indies by Captain William Bligh, scorned as slave food and is now craved by Jamaicans as part of a classic comfort-food dish served on Sunday mornings. The red fruit of an evergreen tree, it was for almost 30 years banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), due to the (usually mild) toxicity it imparts if the fruit is not permitted to open on its own. The FDA began allowing some Jamaican processors to export canned ackee to the U.S. nearly three years ago.

When cooked, ackee’s velvety yellow flesh takes on the look, texture and, to a limited extent, taste of scrambled egg, becoming the perfect foil for saltfish (in this case, cod that has been salted, dried and reconstituted). Together, they make the national dish of Jamaica. "It’s like apple pie or hot dogs here -- very few people don’t like it," says Nicola Shirley, owner of Jamaican Jerk Hut.

Jamaican restaurants in Philly serve saltfish and ackee -- which is usually cooked with tomatoes, onions, thyme and a wee bit of scotch bonnet pepper -- for lunch or dinner, typically with sides of cabbage, stewed plantains and peas and rice. In Jamaica, though, saltfish and ackee is most often enjoyed as a breakfast entree, served with perhaps boiled yam and johnny cake (fried biscuit), according to Shirley. Bacon is occasionally substituted for the saltfish.

Shirley, who is Jamaican-born, says when she opened her establishment nine years ago, she couldn’t imagine not offering the dish, and often paid as much as $145 for a smuggled case of ackee. When the price shot to $190, she took it off the menu, putting it back on when the price dipped. Since the FDA lifted its ban, the cost here has gone down, but not enough: Jamaicans, accustomed to plucking ackee off trees in their backyards, often balk at the typical $10 price tag for a lunch or dinner platter. (Caribbean Delight offers a helpful "mini" size, priced at $5.)

It’s hard to believe that such mild-tasting fruit flesh has inspired everything from mutiny to smuggling, from FDA crackdowns to teary-eyed dreams of home.

Even Shirley, who should be long over the fruit, sounds romantic when trying to describe what it looks, feels and tastes like. "There’s nothing like that," she says, adding with a laugh, "It doesn’t taste like chicken."

Jamaican Jerk Hut, 1436 South St., 215-545-8644; Caribbean Delight, 1124 South St., 215-829-1030. Please send tips to Juliet Fletcher at juliet@citypaper.net.