Ackee and Corned Pork

Salt-cured pork shoulder boiled tender, fried until browned in its own fat, and folded through boiled ackee with onion, thyme, scallion, and Scotch bonnet

Origin: Jamaica

From the journey of Ackee.

Saltfish is the ackee's famous partner, but it has never been the only one. The Jamaican government's account of the national fruit describes it as 'boiled and cooked with seasoning and salt fish or salt pork', and Julia Morton, writing on the fruit in 1987, found the parboiled arils added to a stew of beef, salt pork, and scallions as well as cooked with codfish. Corned pork is the Jamaican form of that salt pork: fresh pork rubbed with coarse salt and left to cure for a few days, 'corned' in the old sense of the word, meaning salted with grains of salt, as in corned beef. The method is the saltfish method with the meat changed. The cured pork is boiled to draw out the excess salt and make it tender, cut small, and fried in its own fat until the edges brown; then the seasoning goes in, and the boiled ackee is folded through at the end. The pork brings a richer, fattier savour than the fish, and the browned edges give the soft ackee something to push against. The ackee must be ripe. Gather only pods that have opened on the tree, remove every seed and every trace of pink membrane, and throw away the water in which the arils are boiled.

Ingredients

Corned pork

  • 600 g boneless pork shoulder or belly, in one piece
  • 3 tbsp coarse sea salt

Ackee

  • 24 fresh ackee pods that have opened fully on the tree, or one 540 g tin of ackee in brine, drained
  • 1 tsp salt, for boiling fresh ackee

To cook

  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil, if the pork is lean
  • 1 medium onion, sliced
  • 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 3 spring onions (scallion), chopped
  • 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
  • 0.5 Scotch bonnet chilli, seeded and finely chopped
  • 1 medium tomato, chopped
  • 0.25 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Method

  1. Rub the pork all over with the coarse salt, put it in a covered dish, and leave it in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 days, turning it once a day and pouring off any liquid.
  2. Rinse the pork, put it in a pan, cover it with cold water, and bring it to the boil. Drain, cover with fresh water, and simmer for 40 to 45 minutes, until tender.
  3. Meanwhile, if you are using fresh ackee, take the arils out of the opened pods, discard the seeds, pull away every trace of pink membrane, and rinse them. Simmer them in salted water for 10 to 15 minutes, until tender but whole, then drain and throw the water away. Tinned ackee needs only to be drained and rinsed.
  4. Drain the pork, leave it to cool a little, and cut it into 1 cm dice.
  5. Put the diced pork in a wide frying pan over a medium heat, with the oil if it is lean, and fry for 8 to 10 minutes, until the fat has run and the edges are browned.
  6. Add the onion, garlic, spring onions, thyme, and Scotch bonnet and fry for 4 minutes, then add the tomato and cook for 3 minutes more.
  7. Fold in the ackee gently, season with the black pepper, and heat through for 2 to 3 minutes without stirring hard. Remove the thyme stalks and serve.

Notes

Serve with fried dumplings, boiled green bananas, roast breadfruit, or yam, as for ackee and saltfish. Tinned ackee is already cooked; add it at the very end and only warm it through. The pork can be cured and boiled a day ahead and kept in the refrigerator, which makes this a quick breakfast on the day.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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