Food gifts from Jamaica

My wife returned from the island of Jamaica late Friday night, bearing gifts of food.

Most prominent were two bags of 100% Jamaica Blue Mountain roasted coffee beans she bought in the Wallenford Blue shop at the Montego Bay airport. These bags have shrunk to three-quarters of a pound, but at $19 each, they are a great buy when compared to nearly $40 for one pound of Blue Mountain coffee beans at Fairway Market in Paramus. (Photo: Three Finger Falls in the Blue Mountains.)

This morning, my wife served steamed bread fruit she had baked in Jamaica and put in her luggage, along with four or five small fish she bought from the fishermen at Harvey Beach, seasoned, dipped in flour and fried (I visited their shacks during my August vacation on the island). Jamaicans who live in the U.S. say they can't find fish that tastes as good as the ones back home.

But the one thing she could not find was fresh ackee, that odd Jamaican fruit that serves as a foil to salted cod and hot peppers in what many call the Jamaican national dish: ackee and saltfish (photo, with fried dumplings). So we had that for breakfast, using canned ackee in brine from Hackensack Market.