Food gifts from Jamaica

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My wife returned from Jamaica on Saturday night with island specialties in her suitcase.

She unpacked a container of fried parrot fish, four plastic bags of fresh ackee from trees in the yard, breadfruit wrapped in aluminum foil, large avocados and two, 12-ounce bags of roasted Blue Mountain coffee beans ($19 for 12 ounces). 
 
But it wasn't Jamaican food she wanted before we drove home. With our son, we stopped at Wondee's Thai restaurant on Main Street in Hackensack for a wonderful dinner of vegetarian duck salad (made with tofu, not poultry), spicy Panang curry with large shrimp, a special of Chinese watercress and rice.

This morning, she prepared Jamaica's national dish: ackee and salt fish with sweet and hot peppers -- the bland fruit serving as a foil for salted codfish. On the side, she served the roasted breadfruit, which had been sliced and fried in canola oil. A great breakfast.
 

Why buy any other beef?

ShopRite has another sale on Nature's Reserve-brand beef, a product of Australia that is free range and grass fed. There is a minimum purchase of four pounds at $4.99 a pound with a Price Plus store card. 


The cut is whole beef tenderloin for filet mignon, which I've sliced thin for Korean barbecue or served as small steaks. When I bought this in the past, it required some trimming of fat.




The sale starts today and runs through Sept. 4. With such a low price for Australian beef , it doesn't make sense to buy beef raised conventionally with antibiotics and growth hormones, and fed who knows what.

The sunnier side of breakfast

For a change of pace, me and my wife enjoyed a rib-sticking Jamaican breakfast today at Mac West Indian Restaurant on Central Avenue, just a few blocks from Hackensack City Hall. It's now past noon and I'm still pleasantly full.

I had sauteed cabbage and saltfish (salted cod) with boiled green bananas and sweet plantains. My wife had liver in gravy with the same side dishes. My dumpling was boiled (dough, water and salt), hers was fried (dough, water and a little sugar). We also shared a bowl of collaloo and saltfish, which I should have chosen for my entree, because the leafy green contained more fish than the cabbage did.

Unfortunately, the restaurant didn't have ackee (a bland fruit) for the breakfast often called Jamaica's national dish, ackee and saltfish. It also was out of breadfruit, which is baked and then steamed or fried.

Each breakfast was $7, plus $1 for a small pot of coffee or herbal mint tea. The bowl of collaloo was $4.50. Even though I visited Jamaica in August, the all-inclusive RIU Montego Bay Hotel's limited menu of native dishes left me yearning for more. Today's breakfast really hit the spot.