Yup, Thornton Heath. Look it up.

While the rest of the food world had their eyes on which restaurants would make it into the World’s 50 Best last night, I was schlepping down to a crumbling takeaway in Zone 4 to get me some jerk chicken. I spend much of my time schlepping around London to taste jerk pork or chicken, come to think of it; either that, or I’m sitting in the corner of a darkened room, rocking and weeping gently, mourning the loss of some of London’s greats. The Jerk Cookout  for example (RIP) was one of the best food events ever created, in my eyes, but it stopped a couple of years ago when they (apparently) couldn’t get any sponsorship; to be honest the event was getting too big by that point anyway and thus the quality of stalls diluted until it ended up as just a representation of the state of jerk in London in one place (loads of shit places, very few good ones), rather than a gathering of the very best. The other great loss was Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre next to Peckham Rye station (RIP). That place got taken over by new management who clearly couldn’t care less; when I walked past last night the place was empty. I cry.

And so the search continues. Now I knew Tasty Jerk was going to be good because they won the Jerk Cookout two (or was it three?) times in a row, before they were told they couldn’t win any more because it wasn’t fair to the other contestants. I say: if you’re the best, you’re the best, end of. Anyway, they have branches in spectacularly inconvenient places, those places being: Thornton Heath, Croydon and er, Ghana. So Thornton Heath it was.

We could smell the food cooking from a significant distance. I’d been warned that the place was ‘grotty’ which of course meant that when I entered I immediately fell in love with it. The back wall is basically lined with jerk drums and a massive extractor fan which does try to suck up some of the smoke but fails for the most part, leaving our clothes and hair infused. I’m not wearing the same coat I wore last night. Cooking good jerk is very much about getting a lot of smoke going on, you see. Of course the spicing is important, but a lot of places fall down on the cooking method. Tasty Jerk have it nailed. Here’s a really crap photo that’s out of focus but nevertheless gives an idea of the smoke levels…

A jerk meal will typically come with your chosen meat, plus rice and peas and hot sauce (you should always add the hot sauce). The meal is all about balance; this might sound obvious but the components should not be judged separately. It’s also very much about the build. I want a steady increase of heat and allspice, not a punch in the mouth. I want moisture from the rice and peas. Always ask for gravy on those. Tasty Jerk offered gravy without me having to ask which impressed me and in fact, their rice and peas were excellent; good gooey texture hanging on the right side of stodgy, bit of yellow pepper going on in there for sweetness. Generous with the beans. Their hot sauce deserves special mention too as it was pure searing bonnet fruit balanced with a shedload of sugar that made for a terribly addictive cycle of consumption which ended up with me in tears. The method of dealing with this by the way is, in case you don’t know, Guinness punch.

Tasty Jerk are making some of the best jerk in London right now, along with Smokey Jerkey in New Cross. It’s always the glamorous locations, see? Okay so perhaps none of you care enough about a good jerk pork meal to rattle down to Thornton Heath on an empty train for which you actually have to buy a special ticket. I can understand. For me, that’s what I’m calling a good Monday night. While chefs and food glitterati were sipping champagne and waiting to hear whether or not Noma had won the title of world’s best restaurant yet again (it did), I was drinking warm gin and tonic from a can, on a train. I was uncomfortably full, I stank of jerk smoke and I was in the middle of effing nowhere. I also couldn’t have been happier.

Tasty Jerk Centre (for other locations website here)
88 Whitehorse Lane
London
SE25 6RG
Tel: 0208 653 3222

Brown stew chicken is a common Caribbean dish, yet I don’t see it too often on restaurant menus in Peckham. Well, not compared to jerk anyway. The stew takes its name from the colour of the sauce, which is made by caramelising the marinated chicken in brown sugar before adding the reserved marinade. This caramel flavour is essential to make a good brown stew and it’s important to spend time ensuring the chicken is properly sticky and golden before moving on. The sauce is then cooked down to an intense gravy; it’s sweet and damn spicy, depending of course on how liberal your hand is with the fierce yet fruity scotch bonnet pepper.

It’s a proper carnival of Caribbean flavours, with depth from the caramelised sugar and soy, plus fragrance from the thyme, ginger, spring onions and  lime. The smell carries like nothing else and will make your neighbours insane with jealousy. This is proper winter comfort food, Peckham style.

Brown Stew Chicken (serves 2-3, depending on how many chicken thighs you fancy)

1kg bone-in chicken thighs (about 6), skin removed
Juice of 1  lime
4 spring onions, finely shredded, plus one extra to garnish
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 scotch bonnet chilli, de-seeded and finely sliced
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 regular onion, finely chopped
1 red pepper, finely chopped
4 sprigs thyme
1 thumb sized piece ginger, peeled and grated
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
Half a tin chopped tomatoes (I used the cherry ones)
Water to just cover the chicken pieces

Place the chicken pieces in a dish and add all the ingredients except the sugar, chopped tomatoes and water. Mix well and leave to marinate for an hour or overnight if possible.

When you’re ready to cook the chicken, remove them from the marinade, reserving the marinade to add to the stew. Pat the chicken dry with kitchen paper. Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a high-sided pan and add the sugar. When it begins to turn dark brown and caramelised, add the chicken pieces, taking care because it will splatter a lot. Fry them until you have nice caramelised bits on both sides, then remove from the pan and set to one side.

Add the reserved marinade to the pot and fry for a few minutes to soften. Add the chicken pieces back plus the tinned tomatoes and just enough water to cover the meat. Season, then simmer for 20 minutes until the sauce is thickened and the chicken cooked through. Serve with rice and peas, or plain rice, garnished with the a little chopped spring onion.

I was going to call these ‘Spiced Snail Buns’ but when I tweeted about it I had a load of replies from people who were, quite rightly, confused about the link between snails and buns. It’s the shape, people, the shape!

Anyway. I don’t cook a huge amount of sweet things (ice cream excepted) and puds are not my area of expertise by a long stretch. When I do venture into the World of  Wallace however, I like a savoury note, be it salt in caramel or in this case, spices in cake. I started out with a basic bun and showed it a bit of Peckham love by adding allspice, ground ginger and citrus zests in with the cinnamon, thinking along the lines of a Jamaica ginger cake.

I left them in the oven a few minutes too long but I’d just been dealing with a gas leak (my oven is electric for those detectives amongst you) so you’ll forgive me for feeling a little distracted. I had to use a fan heater to melt the butter for the buns for goodness’ sake. Now that’s dedication.

And come on, they do look like snails, right?

Spiced sticky buns

I started off with a Chelsea Bun recipe from the BBC website then added my own spices and citrus zests. I’ve tried them with the glaze and also with a very thin icing made of just icing sugar and water. I prefer the glaze.

500g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
1 teaspoon salt
1 x 7g sachet fact-action dried yeast
300ml milk
40g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg
Vegetable oil, for greasing

For the filling

25g unsalted butter, melted
75g soft brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 orange
100g currants

For the glaze

2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp caster sugar

Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl, then make a well in the middle and add the yeast from the sachet. Warm the milk and butter in a saucepan until the butter is melted and the mixture is tepid.

Add the milk and butter mix to the flour and stir until it comes together in a soft dough. Tip the dough out onto a generously floured work surface. Knead for five minutes, adding more flour if necessary, until the dough is smooth and elastic and no longer feels sticky. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave until doubled in size. Knock the dough back then roll out on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle about 20 x 40 cams in size.

Brush with the melted butter, then sprinkle over the currants. Mix the ground spices with the sugar and sprinkle all over. Starting from the longest edge, roll the dough into a long cylinder. Cut 10-15 slices from it and place them on a greased baking tray, leaving a gap between each one. Let rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 190C. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown. For the glaze, heat the milk and sugar gently in a saucepan. Let simmer for a few minutes then remove from the heat.

Place the buns on a wire rack to cool. Brush over the glaze and let cool completely. Serve with a good spreading of butter, if you dare.

We’re two thirds into December and I’m feeling the need to vary my beer snacks. I turned to Peckham for inspiration.

Bright yellow patties stack up high in shop windows but most of them have been pre-made and frozen. They always look jaded and sad to me but I could see the potential so I had a bash myself. The primary stuffing is minced beef (fish and vegetable fillings are also common) wrapped in the easiest flaky crust, stained yellow with turmeric and curry powder.

Jamaican patties are a product of English colonialism and East Indian migration into the Caribbean: the former brought the idea of pastry while Indian slaves brought cumin. Both mix well with the Caribbean flavours: thyme, spring onion, scotch bonnet pepper and allspice.

The patties are highly savoury and perfect if you’re growing tired of snacking on mince pies, deep fried brown things and crisps, as I am. The way to eat a Jamaican patty is to pick it up and dunk it gleefully into your favourite hot sauce. Wash it down with a Red Stripe.

Jamaican Patties (makes 8-10)

For the crust

250g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
125g fridge cold butter, cubed
5-6 tablespoons cold water
1 egg, beaten

For the filling (I have a bee in my bonnet about doing a slow-cooked goat filling next time).

250g minced beef
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 inch piece ginger, finely chopped
1 heaped teaspoon thyme leaves
5 spring onions, finely chopped
1/2 scotch bonnet chilli, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 tin chopped tomatoes

Preheat the oven to 170C

Heat 1 tablespoon vegetable or groundnut oil in a pan and add the ginger, garlic and chilli for 30 seconds. Add the beef and cook until brown. Add the spices and stir for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, spring onions and thyme and let simmer for 10 minutes or so, stirring every so often, until nearly all the liquid has evaporated.

While the beef is simmering, make the crust. Sift the flour, turmeric, curry powder and salt into a bowl. Add the cubes of butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mix resembles fine crumbs. Add 5 tablespoons of cold water (add another if it’s too stiff) until you have a stiff dough then turn it out onto a lightly oiled surface and knead until smooth. Do not over work the dough, knead it just enough until it is smooth.

Grease two large baking trays. Roll out the dough until a few millimetres thick and use a saucer to cut circles from it – as many as you can. You can re-roll the trimmings to get more circles. Lay the circles on the baking tray (they will be too hard to move once filled) and brush the edges of each with the beaten egg. Dollop some of the filling in the centre of each then fold over to form a patty. Seal the edges by crimping with a fork.

Brush the patties all over with more beaten egg and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve with hot sauce and beer.

The crust recipe is adapted from the Waitrose website.

[Al's has sadly closed. I don't know why].

There is a group called Peckham Vision which is dedicated to improving Peckham town centre. One of the ways they propose to do this is by advising local shops on appearance – product arrangement, signs, layout etc. Walking into Peckham is like walking into a giant jumble sale; stock is stacked in precarious towers – yams on popcorn machines on washing baskets on yams on bags of rice on yams on yams, with a phone unlocking shop wedged in at the side. While I agree there is a lot traders could do to smarten up and make themselves more appealing to the masses, I want to plead that we keep the higgledy piggledy arrangement and delegation of space. You can find brilliant things in unlikely places and personally, I relish the adventure; the lady I buy most of my decorated plates from, for example, trades from an old garage; bars, artists’ studios and restaurants squeeze under railway arches and now there’s Al, selling his Caribbean food from a tiny cramped passageway.

Alvin and his partner Zeena opened their business just a couple of weeks ago and they could be easily missed amongst the bustle of Rye Lane but my jerk-dar is highly sensitive, and I was in there faster than you can say ‘curry goat with rice and peas, plantain and a side of ackee, please’.

It’s amazing what people can do with a little fire in their belly – into that space Al has arranged a gas ring, a grill, a prep table, a fridge and by the time he and Zeena are in there too, there’s room for a person to stand and place and order, or you can call ahead and he’ll have it ready. Signs are strung up over the front, because there’s no door or window to speak of.

At the moment you can buy jerk lamb, chicken, rice and peas and salad but soon Al will start making curry goat and other traditional dishes. Zeena makes gorgeous fresh fruit juices at the ‘juice station’ (a shelf in the corner) and soon she’ll be selling her cakes, too. They tell me they’ve decided to start small and build up slowly, but twice I went down there and they’d sold out of everything. A good sign.

Jerk chicken was moist and coated with a thick, well-spiced marinade rather than wet-glazed like that of nearby competitor Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre. My favourite thing about Al’s though, is the gravy. A rich, brown stewed onion mixture which he ladles over your rice and peas before topping it with the meat. It’s sweet and addictive, tasting of the bottom of roasting pans and caramelised things. My only criticism is that the jerk isn’t very spicy, but then not everyone wants it so; variety is good and there’s always hot sauce.

Al and Zeena are so welcoming, that you’ll go away feeling like you’ve made new friends. He greeted me with outstretched arms and a beaming smile last time I was there, asking after my boyfriend too, who wasn’t. Al’s sums up everything I love about Peckham: the randomness, the sense of fun, the food and more often than not, the people. There’s a raw energy in the air here, which comes from characters like Al and Zeena, who believe in the value of the area and work with its idiosyncrasies, not against them. Let’s keep the heart of Peckham pumping.

[Edit: Al's has now closed, I do not know why. I hope he has moved premises as he was doing so well and selling out daily].

Al’s Caribbean Food
Umm, well it’s about two doors down from Khan’s Bargain Ltd. on Rye Lane, near the station. If you come out of the station, turn right and cross over the road, you will find it.
I’ll update this with a phone number when I next see Al.

[IMPORTANT EDIT DECEMBER 2011: Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre has now been taken over by new management and I'm sorry to say, is no longer worth visiting. They once served the best jerk in South East London but it's now dry, lacking in heat, flavour and all around love. I couldn't be more sad/angry!]

Just a little heads up. I’ve posted about Peckham’s new Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre before but at that point I’d only tried the chicken. The pork is out of this world.  It’s pure joy to work over every last piece, teasing meat from bone and nibbling on the fat perhaps a little more than necessary.

I’m loving their dry rub and glaze technique; it’s making me think about re-working my recipe. Again. A smokier, stickier jerk pork surely can’t be found in SE London? I’ll soon be finding out as I’m organising a Jerk Tour of the area. No rib or wing shall remain unturned.

In preparation, I’ve buggered off to Spain for a week for a bit of stomach-stretching. Adiós!

Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre
Station Arcade, Rye Lane
Peckham
(It’s in the alleyway that is the side entrance to the station)
Tel: 0207 358 8491

[IMPORTANT EDIT DECEMBER 2011: Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre has now been taken over by new management and I'm sorry to say, is no longer worth visiting. They once served the best jerk in South East London but it's now dry, lacking in heat, flavour and all around love. I couldn't be more sad/angry!]

I’ve been working my way around the jerk shops of Peckham. Some have been soul destroyingly pants. Spice and Nice Bakery, I’m looking at you. Gabby’s takeaway, you made me sad. It has not been a good couple of weeks on the SE London jerk scene and then, to top it all, I received the earth-shattering news from a friend that the chef at my favourite place, Smokey Jerkey in New Cross, doesn’t use scotch bonnets in his jerk marinade. I mean, what?! I’m still reeling.

It’s enough to plunge a woman into dark mental places but I’ve found salvation in Caribbean Spice, which has sprung up all happy and yellow under an arch near Peckham Rye station. As with most jerk shops and to be fair, most places in Peckham, it’s a no-frills outfit. There’s a kitchen where they cook stuff, a counter for serving it on and a few stools should you wish to hang about to eat it. No messing.

I was down there the day after they opened, default-ordering jerk chicken. It was very good indeed. Wet marinated and suitably sticky with sugar, it necessitated a good bout of finger-licking afterwards. The chilli heat made me sniffle. I wondered if it needed more allspice but when I looked down for my next bite to make sure, it was all gone. Caribbean Spice, welcome to Peckham. You’ll do a roaring trade in such a perfect location. So many times, I’ve come out of that station and before I know it, I’m standing in front of the counter placing an order. At this rate, I’ll need to start taking a different route home.

Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre
Station Arcade, Rye Lane
Peckham
(It’s in the alleyway that is the side entrance to the station)
Tel: 0207 358 8491

Apparently they have another place around Bellenden somewhere but I’ve not seen it.