Something Smells Fishy...
This is the final recipe for seafood month and my first attempt at real Jamaican
rundown. I say Authentic-ish because I used canned coconut milk at the suggestion
of my mother who said, had I blended fresh coconut milk the mixture would take
forever to reduce to the consistency that it should. So I took her advice and
here you have it.
So yes, I finally learnt how to make a real Jamaican rundown. All these
years I had been doing it backwards. My mother makes rundown maybe once a year,
and for some reason I’m never with her when she cooks it. So I always assumed
the saltfish or mackerel or whatever, was
cooked up first and then the coconut milk goes in next WRONG,(that’s what I did
in my shrimp sundown recipe..oops) You’re
actually supposed to cook the milk into a thick sauce first then add the
goodies…who knew? Had I been raised in the country with my grandmother (who
makes her own coconut oil and allspice berries from scratch) I probably would have
figured it out earlier.
Last year while we visited her I saw a pot of a thick yellowish white
custardy substance with a little oil on top. Upon further inquiry I was told it
was the latter stages of rundown with turns into a thick custard. My first
question was where is the meat? My grandmother said she does not cook it with
meat. She cooked down the fresh coconut milk into a thick custard seasoned it
with onions, salt, black pepper, (I think) and that’s it. The excess oil that
is develops on top she re-uses to cook other food (I guess it’s the dish that just
keeps on giving). She had it with dumplings and boiled bananas. It was the weirdest
thing ever. It was however, extremely flavorful and tasted pretty good, but the
texture just didn’t work for me. It felt like I was eating some kind of butter.
In any case with that memory locked away in the filing cabinet of my
brain. I asked my mother how to make rundown. She explained to me how to do it,
then left me in the kitchen to fend for myself. The only thing I did wrong was boil
the milk down too thick, so my rundown wasn’t as runny as it should have been.
However my mom said it taste just as how rundown should, her exact words were “the
flavor is perfect, just like I remember”.
So all you need to do is make sure to keep your rundown runny.
Ingredients (Printable recipe)
2 whole pickled mackerel
2 cans rich coconut milk
1 small onion
2 large tear drop tomatoes
3 sprigs thyme
1 scallion stalk
2 to 3 slices of scotch bonnet pepper
1 teaspoon coconut oil
Salt (to taste)
¼ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon ground all spice
Instructions
- Boil the pickled mackerel in water several times until you have removed the excess salt and the Mackerel’s salt level is to your liking.
- Flake the mackerel and remove all the bones, fins and other undesirables
- Place two cans of coconut milk in a pan to boil and reduce to a thick sauce (the aim is to remove all the water from the coconut milk)
- Cut up the onions, tomatoes, thyme, scallion, scotch bonnet pepper
- In a sauté pan add some of the reduced custard, with coconut oil, sauté the onions, tomatoes, scallion, thyme and scotch bonnet pepper, season with two pinches of salt saute until onions become fragrant and begin to soften.
- Add the flaked mackerel to the sauté veggies and ‘cook up’ to warm all the way through.
- Add the sauté mackerel and ground all allspice to the reduced coconut sauce, stir until its completely mixed. Season to taste with salt and black pepper (the sauce is naturally sweet)
- Serve with boiled ground provisions, tough crackers or tostones
Xoxo Greedygirl
No comments:
Post a Comment