I gave up bread -- not bread fruit

Steamed bread fruit from Jamaica has a pleasant, dough-like consistency.

In Jamaica last weekend, I made sure to order my favorite dish -- a breakfast of ackee and salt fish.

Unfortunately, the highly acclaimed kitchen at Round Hill Hotel & Villas was unable to serve us two of the traditional accompaniments -- boiled green bananas and bread fruit.

It's one or the other, so today at home, I enjoyed steamed bread fruit with breakfast. Next week, I'll have soft, boiled green bananas that mash easily under my fork.  

At Round Hill, ackee and salt fish are served without boiled green bananas.

With green bananas or bread fruit, the dish is a winning combination of flavors and textures: bland, soft ackee; salty dried cod or pollock; and sweet and hot peppers.

Bread fruit is baked first, then sliced and roasted, fried or steamed.

I gave up bread and pizza to lose weight, but enjoy an occasional breakfast of ackee, salt fish and unusual bread fruit.

Our garden is yielding tomatoes and hot peppers, above, and black figs, below.

Late-summer harvest

At the traditional end of summer, we're enjoying tomatoes, green and hot peppers, cucumbers and black figs from our garden.

I like the figs with cheese, such as shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano from Italy or slices of Manchego from Spain.

We haven't had too much success with okra plants, but the flower is gorgeous.

The flower of an okra plant.

If okra are allowed to grow too large, they become tough and fibrous.

We've started to get a lot of tomatoes, and we also have tomatoes I bought at Fairway Market in Paramus.

So I've started to add tomatoes to omelets and frittatas, and plan to buy fresh mozzarella cheese to have with them.

A frittata with Campari tomatoes, cheese and dried Italian herbs.

Campari tomato halves added to a simple egg-white omelet.

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