Another food treasure I got from my housemate was a can of ackees.
Ackees are a Jamaican fruit or something. If you google that word get a stack of SEO Jamaican tourism pages with recipes for "Saltfish and Ackees." I also found this choice tidbit of information about the ackee:
But they already had a recall over that, so everything’s cool now.
Also in the birthday box of food was a bag of dried pollack, which I figured was close enough to being dried cod for purposes of making ackees and saltfish.
The dried pollack was soaked overnight and then boiled for twenty minutes.
And then shredded with a fork.
Meanwhile, I made some fried plantains for the side. It’s always hard to get over the fact that they look like bananas but taste like potatoes.
You know what helps me get over that? Frying them in bacon fat.
Then the whole wad got stewed in a frying pan with onions, tomatoes, peppers, and spices like thyme and pepper. Essentially everything that you would normally put in a breakfast hash, except instead of scrambled eggs it’s a pile of bright yellow, possibly fatal fruit.
I suspect that it’s not a coincidence that the national dish of Jamaica has the same colors as the Rastafarians.
The resulting dish tasted mostly of onions and peppers. But the pollack gave it a meaty, chewy satisfaction.
The ackee itself was hardly noticeable. Imagine an avocado, but with a quarter of the density and taste.
