Jamaican · Main
Rundown
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with a silken, spoon-slow texture, richness that coats and comforts, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 500 g salted mackerel
- 800 ml coconut milk, first pressing if you have it
- 1 onion, 150 g, sliced
- 3 scallions, 45 g, chopped
- 6 sprigs thyme
- 2 cloves garlic, sliced
- 8 g pimento berries
- 2 tomatoes, 200 g, chopped
- 1 whole scotch bonnet, stem on and unpunctured
- 1 tsp cracked black pepper
- 6 green bananas, boiled in their skins, to serve
The skills inside
Tempering a custardThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil
Allergen screen
Found: fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the mackerel to draw out the salt, then drain, flake into large pieces and pull out the pin bones with your fingers.
- Pour the coconut milk into a wide uncovered pan and simmer, stirring often, until it thickens and then breaks: the smooth white surface goes curdled and clear oil rises and pools. That break is the run down.
- Fry the onion, scallion, garlic, thyme and pimento in the separated oil until slack and fragrant, then add the tomatoes and cook until they collapse into the custard.
- Fold in the fish and lay the whole scotch bonnet on top; hold at a bare simmer 5 minutes so the flakes warm through without shredding. 5 min
- Lift out the pepper, grind over black pepper, and spoon it over the hot green bananas.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tempering a custard 59 recipes
- The hot liquid went into the eggs a little at a time with constant whisking, and only then did everything go back to the pot.
- The heat under it stayed gentle throughout and it was never allowed to boil.
- Stirred continuously and right into the corners of the pan, where it thickens first and sets unnoticed.
- Judged by behaviour: it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and hold a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- Taken off before it looks finished, and strained. Residual heat carries it the rest of the way, and a custard held on the heat until it looks right arrives past right.
Where it goes wrong The hot liquid went in too fast, or the pot went back over full heat to save time. The yolks set into threads before they could thicken smoothly, and a scrambled custard does not come back; straining hides a little of it and nothing hides the rest.
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes
- The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
- It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
- The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
- Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
- The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.
Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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