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FOOD AND DRINK |
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From fiery jerk meat to inventive seafood dishes and ubiquitous rice
and peas, the Jamaican diet is surprisingly varied, and the Rasta
preference for natural cooking means you can get good vegetarian food
fairly easily. Snacking is good, too, with beef, vegetable or chicken
patties the staple fare, and there is a vast selection of fresh fruit
and vegetables. Outside Kingston and the north-coast resorts,
international eating options are limited.
The classic - and addictive - Jamaican breakfast is ackee and saltfish .
The soft yellow flesh of the otherwise bland ackee fruit is fried with
onions, sweet and hot peppers, fresh tomatoes and boiled, flaked salted
cod. It's usually served with the delicious spinach-like callaloo ,
boiled green bananas and fried or boiled dumplings.
At most of Jamaica's cheaper restaurants and hotels, chicken and fish
are the mainstays of lunch and dinner. Chicken is typically fried in a
seasoned batter, jerked or curried, while fish can be grilled, steamed
with okra and pimento pods, brown-stewed in a tasty sauce or "
escovitched " - served in a spicy sauce of onions, hot peppers and
vinegar. " Jerking " is the island's most distinctive cooking style.
Meat - usually chicken or pork, but occasionally fish - is seasoned in a
mixture of island-grown spices, including pimento, hot peppers, cinnamon
and nutmeg, and then grilled slowly, often for hours, over a fire of
pimento wood and under a cover of wooden slats or corrugated zinc sheets
in a customized oil drum.
Rice and peas (rice cooked with coconut, spices and red kidney beans) is
the accompaniment to most meals, though you'll sometimes get bammy (a
substantial bread made from cassava flour), festival (a light, sweet,
fried dumpling), sweet or regular potatoes (the latter known as Irish
potatoes), yam, dasheen (like a yam, but chewier), Johnny cakes or fried
or boiled dumplings .
Jamaica's water is safe to drink, and locally bottled spring water is
widely available. For a tastier non-alcoholic drink , look no further
than the roadside piles of coconuts in every town and village, often
advertised with a sign saying " ice-cold jelly ". Other soft drinks
include Jamaica's own Ting (a refreshing sparkling grapefruit drink),
Malta (a fortifying malt drink), throat-tingling ginger beers and fresh
limeade. Fresh fruit juices - tamarind, June plum, guava, soursop,
strawberry and cucumber - are always delicious if occasionally
over-sweet. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is among the best and most
expensive in the world, though the other local brews, such as High
Mountain, Low Mountain or Mountain Blend, are also good.
The national beer is the excellent Red Stripe. Heineken is widely
available, as is locally brewed Guinness, which competes with the
sweeter Dragon as the island's stout of choice. Wray and Nephew make the
classic white overproof rum : cheap, potent, available everywhere and
best knocked back with a mixer of Ting. There are plenty of less caustic
brands of white rum, the smoothest being C.J. Wray Dry. If you're after
taste rather than effect, try gold rums and the older, aged varieties
such as Appleton Estate 12-year-old.
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