Reinventing Jamaica

A few days before, Lanky, a fisherman in the village of Oracabessa on the north side of the island, insisted to me that black mangoes make you sweat. This enormous guango tree is the centerpiece of Blackwell’s 2, 500-acre Pantrepant Farm.

The charred bits of her grilled, piquant jerk lamb are the tastiest, and I gnaw her fricassee chicken, perfumed with thyme, to the bone. The thick savory gravy from the oxtail, stewed with onions and butter beans, pools under the rice and red beans sitting next to it on the plate—it’s an ideal match. It’s “street food,” as Blackwell respectfully calls it, but here I am eating it on a gorgeous estate, rolling pastures unfurling in front of me all the way to the horizon.

At the many roadside snack shacks throughout Jamaica, sugary bottled drinks are plentiful; homegrown bananas and oranges, not so much. “When I was growing up, there weren’t the foreign options there are now,” Blackwell says, with a forkful of rice. “It was all local food. Now Jamaican food is not as accessible to Jamaicans because of the inbound shipments, which in many cases are mass-produced. Cheaper.” Blackwell, a hospitality magnate with six hotels on the island, is doing his part to make Jamaican food a central piece of the Jamaican tourism story.

He is the cuisine’s booster—supplying the kitchens at his resorts with domestically grown harvests as best he can. Serving refined versions of Jamaican food without gentrifying it. “Jamaican food isn’t suited to be ‘designed’ food,” he states. “It’s kind of a workman’s lunch—some rice and peas, some plantain. When people give it a ‘designed’ aesthetic, it looks silly.” Mama J prepares classic Jamaican dishes, like Braised Oxtail with Butter Beans on Pantrepant Farm Matt Taylor-Gross Other farmers, such as Chris Binns, are turning back to the land not just to promote Jamaican food, but to reinvent it.

At his farm, an operation called Stush in the Bush (“stush” being Jamaican slang for chic), he and his wife, Lisa, grow standard Jamaican fare like ackee and okra, but also locally less familiar plantings like arugula. For their on-site farm-to-table dinners, Lisa, raised in Brooklyn, uses local tomatoes to make sauce, smears it on grilled bread. Adds caramelized onions, corn, pineapple, and cheese for a novel Jamaican pizza.

After lunch, Blackwell disappears in his house for some hours, re-emerging at intervals throughout the afternoon for a quick chat or to listen to the music constantly playing through a Bluetooth speaker—he is currently into Chronixx, a local Jamaican reggae artist whom Blackwell has signed. Lion, a Rastafarian whom Blackwell lets live on the property, unburdened and unencumbered, stops by to say hello. “Lion knows all the plants,” Blackwell explains. “If you have an ache or pain, he’ll go out and in thirty minutes have something to fix it. I hear the rumblings of stormy weather and ask Blackwell if it’s the rainy season.

He rejects the assumption of my question: “In the tropics, the seasons aren’t like they are up north,” he states. It’s very good for your brain.” Jamaican Recipes Braised Oxtail with Butter Beans Oxtail, a tough cut of meat, becomes meltingly tender when braised in this traditional Jamaican dish, served with Coconut Rice and Red Beans , which soak up all the flavorful pan juices.

Get the method for Braised Oxtail with Butter Beans » Coconut Rice and Red Beans If you prefer, you can use canned red kidney beans in this satisfying side dish, served alongside Braised Oxtail with Butter Beans . Simply skip the first step and rinse one 15-oz. can of beans before adding them to the pan in step two.

Get the method for Banana Fritters with Cinnamon-Sugar and Rum » Fricassee Chicken Pepper Pot Soup Rosemary-Jerk Lamp Chops Here, a classic jerk marinade is perfumed with rosemary and slathered over lamb loin chops for a surprising take on the iconic chicken preparation.