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The Jamaican Ackee-A Caribbean Delicacy Revealed- All You Ever Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask
from:The colorful national fruit of Jamaica, the ackee, is as interesting as it is delicious when prepared in a spicy saute of salted codfish, onions and tomatoes, the color and consistency of which reminds visitors to the island of scrambled eggs.
HISTORY
Ackee fruits are borne on a large evergreen tree which grows to 30-60 feet and is related to the lychee and longan. The tree was brought to Jamaica from West Africa aboard slave ships in the 1770's. The name is derived from the Twi language in which it is known as "akye fufu". The botanical name of the ackee is Blighia sapida, a reference to Captain William Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame who brought the ackee plant from Jamaica to Kew Gardens, London in 1793 and introduced it to the scientific community.
DESCRIPTION AND COMPOSITION
The ackee consists of a bright red leathery pod roughly the size and shape of a pear, within which are 3-4 fleshy, yellow pegs called arils-the edible portion of the ackee. Each aril bears a shiny black seed at its tip. When mature the pods open to reveal the arils, which are about 55% lipid in dry weight, all unsaturated fats (omega 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids) and rich in the essential fatty acid linoleic acid. There has been absolutely no substantiation that omega 6 fatty acids have a role in the causation of prostate cancer as was reported from the University of Chicago earlier this year.
ECONOMIC IMPACT AND PROPER PREPARATION
No Jamaican Sunday breakfast is complete without 'ackee and saltfish', and every Jamaican expatriate yearns for this taste of home. As a result, the export of ackee canned in brine to North America and the UK has become a JA$400 million dollar per year export market for Jamaica, a valuable source of revenue for this third world country still deeply in arrears to its international debtors. The availability of canned ackee in the US has been subject to intermittent import restrictions by the US Department of Agriculture because when improperly harvested and prepared, ackee can also be lethal: the unripe fruit contains the poison hypoglycin which causes a precipitous drop in blood sugar levels and produces coma, seizures and death if untreated. The ackee pods must be mature and open naturally on the tree to allow for disappearance of the toxin from the arils upon exposure to sunlight. The arils must be cleaned, washed and boiled and the water discarded to remove remnants of hypoglycin. Follow these simple rules and ackee is no problem, mon! In addition, ackee processing plants in Jamaica are subject to strict analytic controls to satisfy requirements of hypoglycin levels less than 100-150 parts per million in the canned product.
OTHER USES OF THE ACKEE
In Africa and other Caribbean islands the ackee has many non-edible uses: In Cuba, an extract of the ackee flower is used to make cologne; along Africas Gold Coast the green pods are used for washing clothes as they produce a rich lather. Also in West Africa, the bark of the tree is ground with hot peppers and applied to the body as a stimulant. The bark may also be used to make a medicinal tea, and the young leaves applied to the forehead for headaches.
Now your tootsies can get intimate with this emblem of Jamaica: colorful cartoonized ackees grace the soles of the flip flop sandals of the new Miami-based sandal company JAMFLIPS.
JAMFLIPS is a family-owned company based in Miami, Florida, USA, specializing in unique, comfortable Caribbean flip flop sandals. Visit us on-line at http://www.jamflips.com
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