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How did a dish so humble earn so many names? First amongst them is “rundown,” which describes the way it’s cooked: an earthy Jamaican stew of fish and greens in coconut milk, simmered till a lot of the liquid steams off and what’s left is pure richness. The identical phrase as an adjective would recommend one thing gone to seed and close to damage. Is it a sly wink, then, that right here we discover the alternative, abundance on the desk, with each ingredient coaxed into a greater model of itself?
Recipe: Smoked Mackerel Rundown
And that is simply the dish’s most typical title. Rundown “has extra aliases than another meals I’ve encountered,” the British author Riaz Phillips notes in his cookbook “West Winds: Recipes, History and Tales from Jamaica.” These embrace, as listed in Frederic G. Cassidy and Robert Brock Le Page’s Dictionary of Jamaican English, “dip-dip,” “dip-and-come-back” and “duck-and-shake-back,” since historically diners scoop up the stew with numerous sides (boiled dumplings, inexperienced bananas); “lengthy street,” “round-the-road” and “elbow-grease,” for the way a lot stirring it calls for; and the pleasant “swimmer-down,” maybe in homage to the fish, wallowing within the pan.
What is that this profusion of names however a approach to make artwork of the on a regular basis, revealing how fantastic the road is between poet and prepare dinner?
If rundown’s identities are a number of, its origins, too, can not fairly be pinned down. In researching the 2022 cookbook “Motherland,” the British author Melissa Thompson, whose grandparents emigrated from Jamaica to England in 1956, studied accounts from the 18th century of the island’s enslaved inhabitants consuming rations of salt fish in “pepper pots,” a time period for spiced stews. (Salt fish, ubiquitous within the Caribbean, turned often called West India remedy.) Meat, thought of extra fascinating, was largely reserved for plantation homeowners.
“So a lot of Jamaican meals is resistance meals,” Thompson instructed me. “It’s like, ‘We’ll take what you’re providing as a result of we now have to. But we’re going to make it wonderful.’”
In this, the dish has kinship with American barbecue and French classics like coq au vin and boeuf bourguignon, all testaments to the ability of seasoning and regular, affected person simmering to appease and lull robust meats till they offer up their knots and enter glory.
Thompson begins by slackening onions in a pan, adopted by garlic and yellow yam, tomatoes and crimson bell pepper, contrasts of yield and crunch. Spices are half the transformation: ginger, allspice and cumin, constructed to heat; thyme, with its kiss of camphor; bay leaves for a piney depth. Coconut milk is poured over, and the warmth is left to do its work till the yam turns tender. Only then does the fish go in — “don’t add it too early,” she warned — and the coconut milk will get one other 10 minutes to “run down” and thicken to close cream.
In Thompson’s model, smoked mackerel takes the place of salted mackerel, as a result of it’s extra available in England. The smoke quietly imprints itself, like a reminiscence. She thinks of her grandparents, adjusting to the substances they discovered of their new house. They had been a part of the Windrush technology, named after the ship that in 1948 introduced passengers from the Caribbean — together with a number of hundred from Jamaica — to settle in England. Parliament was about to go a legislation granting Commonwealth topics the best to dwell and work in Britain, although some members complained to the prime minister, fearing that this “inflow” would “impair the concord, energy and cohesion of our public.” He replied by downplaying the occasion and pointing to the nation’s want for laborers, writing dryly, “The majority of them are trustworthy staff, who could make a real contribution.”
Today, Thompson stated, Jamaican meals stays on the fringes of the British eating scene. A couple of Jamaican cooks are experimenting in methods she finds thrilling, however “the second you begin elevating the costs and fancify, all of the aunties come saying, ‘Why is that this costing me 13 kilos after I might prepare dinner it for myself?” she stated. Part of her likes that Jamaican eating places are nonetheless a secret, although: “It implies that our areas are protected — that they’re for us.” At the identical time, “anybody who’s concerned about meals is concerned about sharing,” she added. “I need individuals to know the way good it’s.”
