National dish: Ackee & Saltfisch
Click here for the recipe for the Jamaican national dish
provided by our Vice President and Chef George Llewellyn, who runs the Koala mini Catering in Wuppertal with his wife Andrea, where Jamaican culinary specialties are offered.
Callaloo
The leafs of the amaranth plant are called Callaloo in Jamaica and are used like spinach. Look and taste are similar to spinach but not identical. Traditional dishes are the Jamaican Pepper Pot with Callaloo and Cray Fish or a side dish from steamed Callaloo, onions and garlic. A typical hearty breakfast in Jamaica is steamed Callaloo with roasted bread fruit.
Callaloo can be even easily cultivated here. The young plants grown from the seeds can be planted in an outside garden bed from mid May onwards when night frost is not expected anymore. Harvesting is possible from July until autumn. The leaves will grow back repeated times. Bloomings should be cut off for ongoing collection of harvest. If you let a few single plants blooming you can gather seeds for the next season but these plants are no longer good for harvesting.
Scotch Bonnet Pepper
The Scotch Bonnet Pepper is one of the hottest peppers in the world and a major ingredient to Jamaican Jerk Seasonings and Pepper Sauces. The pepper is not only very hot but also very aromatic with a sweet flavor. The ripe peppers look like a miniature sweet pepper and range from yellow to red. Before becoming ripe all peppers look green.
Scotch Bonnet Peppers can be cultivated here on a sunny windowsill. If temperatures keep warm the plant can be placed outside as well. As many other plants the peppers are mainly affected by lice. Best practiced protection is putting garlic seeds right from start into the dirt of the seeds and later on to each small plant. In case of initial lice contamination you should take off the nests manually, buzz off the plants with water and spray them with a decoction of either garlic or nettles.
