In the last five days of field work, we hit numerous firsts. Up on the north coast, near Annotto Bay if you’re following along, we were surveying a patch of forest beyond a field of bananas and invasive grasses three times my height. If the grass wasn’t so itchy, I would have delighted in burrowing tunnels and constructing mazes. As it was, the maze was unintentional and each hike at 11pm after surveys led to a chaotic new route.
On the first day of surveying this site, we were completely unprepared for the abundances of anoles. I hit a field season record of 100 individuals, which was broken 20 minutes later by Dan’s 104 individuals. That night, I found 60 more animals. The next day, my student found 107 individuals and I set another record by finding 116 individuals. At these densities, the rate limiting step is not spotting lizards, but rather recording all the data. I was collecting data on a lizard every 1.8 minutes. It was cool, exciting, and exhausting—when there are that many lizards, surveys take 3-4 hours of constant movement. There is no time to stand in stillness to admire the forest or observe anole behaviour. And then, of course, there’s the fight with the grasses on the walk back.
At this site, we were staying at an Airbnb where we were served breakfast the first two days. These breakfasts were full plates of, according to our hosts, proper Jamaican breakfasts. Each plate was piled high with boiled green bananas, fried plantain, breadfruit, various fried or boiled breads and dumplings, and a brassica stir fry. For those who ate meat, there was also chicken. These breakfasts fuelled us through the intense surveys and were a highlight of these days.
Jamaican cuisine is a distinct blend of West African, European, Southeast Asian, and Chinese flavours that have arisen through different waves of colonization, slavery, and indentured labourers. Known for a liberal use of allspice (pimento), jerk seasoning, saltfish, and curry with copious amounts of turmeric, Jamaican food is rich and flavourful. If you’re curious about which specific countries influenced which dishes and ingredients, I recommend this and this article.
We explored these foods with gusto—as the team grocery shopper and meal planner, I tried to find recipes and ingredients that let us learn these flavours and food traditions… while also being amenable to storage without refrigeration, camping, and a busy work schedule. This meant that once we found a recipe the team liked (e.g., fried sardines on toast or stewed mackerel), we tended to repeat it every week.
This also meant we ate a lot of saltfish cod. Saltfish is exactly what is sounds like—fish that has been preserved for long-term storage via salting and then drying. Saltfish has an important historical role in linking trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas, helping to fuel the twin ventures of colonialism and slavery. Cod that was fished off the shores of Newfoundland and the Canadian Maritime provinces was salted and preserved and then shipped onwards through the British trading routes. The highest quality fish would eventually find Europe, but not before low-grade fish was exchanged for rum, sugar and molasses in the British Caribbean colonies. Thus saltfish became an important food of enslaved people in the Caribbean, while also linking coastal Canada to the economics of the slave trade. Nowadays, due to overfishing and the collapse of the Canadian cod industry, saltfish in Jamaica is often Norwegian in origin.
A critical step in saltfish preparation is to remove the salt in which it is preserved. The internet (and Jamaican friends) offer several different methods that consist of variations on soaking overnight (or for a couple of hours) and then boiling (or not) to remove the salt. How long one soaks the fish, or boils it for, depends on how salty the finished dish should be. Often, recipes that involve saltfish don’t call for any extra salt to be added. Across our team, consensus varied about the how salty we wanted our dinner to be, such that it was simultaneously too salty and not salty enough, depending on the person. After soaking and/or boiling, the fish is deboned and deskinned by hand. The resulting flakes of fish can be fried as is, cooked into saltfish fritters, or mixed into stews and stir-fries. The saltfish fritters in particular were a highly anticipated repeat menu item.
Two classic saltfish dishes are saltfish and callaloo (often likened to spinach but is a type of amaranth) and saltfish and ackee—both often eaten for breakfast (see here and here for a better description than I can give on the significance and history of saltfish and ackee).
Ackee (Blighia sapida) is a tree in the soapberry family, that grows bright red fruit. When allowed to ripen and are prepared properly, these fruits are a national delicacy that reassemble the colour and consistency of lightly scrambled eggs. However, the fruit is poisonous if unripe and processed incorrectly. While roadside stands selling careful stacks of ackee are ubiquitous, it is also canned and is available in grocery stores both nationally and internationally. This is how we tried it, mixed with saltfish and served with festivals (lightly sweetened deep-fried bread), prepared by our Jamaican colleague Nick.
Another apparent staple of Jamaican cuisine are the patties, of which there are three main chains across the island (Mothers, Tastee, Juici). Patties were also a staple for our lunches on moving day (the day where we drive between sites). Luckily for me, there are often vegetarian options (filled with veggie mince, aka soy protein) that cater to Rastafarian dietary stipulations (for more information on an ital diet see here and here).
One of the privileges of doing this work is becoming familiar with new ingredients and having the opportunity to explore these flavours in my own cooking. I’m unsure if I can find saltfish in Toronto, but I will for sure be looking.
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