Ackee and saltfish

Ingredients

• Tinned ackee — drained550 g
• Salt cod — soaked overnight300 g
• Onion1
• Sweet pepper1
• Tomato2
• Spring onion3
• Thyme4 sprig
• Scotch bonnet — whole, uncut1
• Neutral oil3 tbsp
• Black pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Boil the soaked cod for twenty minutes, drain, cool it and flake it, discarding skin and bones.

   25 min

2. 2

   Fry the onion and pepper in the oil for eight minutes, add the thyme and the whole scotch bonnet: uncut, it gives aroma without heat.

   10 min

3. 3

   Add the cod and tomatoes and cook through for five minutes.

   5 min

4. 4

   Tip in the ackee, add black pepper and warm it two minutes, swirling the pan only. No spatula.

   3 min

5. 5

   Lift out the chilli and serve with fried plantain, bread or boiled ground provisions.

About the dish

Ackee is a fruit that behaves like an egg: the yellow lobes stay soft and crumbly when fried. Unripe ackee is toxic, which is why outside the Caribbean it is only sold tinned, and rightly so.

Tinned ackee is already cooked. It goes in at the very end and is never stirred with a spatula — only swirled in the pan, or the lobes break down into mush.

The salt cod is soaked overnight and then boiled twenty minutes. Neither step can be skipped: the dish becomes inedibly salty.

Worth knowing

• — No salt at all. The cod supplies exactly as much as is needed, and over-salting cannot be undone.
• — Keep the scotch bonnet whole and remove it before serving. Cut, it makes the dish inedibly hot for most people.
• — Do not go looking for fresh ackee outside Jamaica. Unripe fruit contains hypoglycin and poisonings are real.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

380 kcal

Protein

28 g

Fat

24 g

Carbs

14 g

More from Jamaica

• Jerk chicken — Chicken in a marinade of scotch bonnet and allspice, smoked over pimento wood.