Brixton Bwoy. Rocky Carr
and tipped it into the third pot.
Then Joe put a Dutch oven on the stove and poured oil on to the bottom. ‘Cut this onion up,’ he said, ‘and chop this garlic fine.’ When Pupatee had done this, the garlic and onions began to fry and a delicious smell rose from the pan. ‘Now you add butter and salt and a small onion to the rice,’ Joe said, ‘and leave it on a low fire to bubble away.’
By this time, the saltfish was soft and the salt had boiled away into the water. Joe took it out and pulled the flesh off the bone. Then he added it to the frying garlic and onions, and seasoned the dish with chilli peppers, curry powder, turmeric, thyme and salt. Soon the beautiful smell of Jamaican cooking was filling the kitchen, and Pupatee’s mind wandered happily. His reverie didn’t last long.
‘When the fish is ready, you can add it to the cabbage and let it all simmer up together. Now you got all that?’
‘Yes, bredda.’
‘Tell me how you start then.’
Pupatee’s mind raced, searching for the beginning, but all he could think about was how cross Joe suddenly looked and how he didn’t want him to get any crosser.
‘Wash the rice,’ he said.
Slap! Joe’s hand smacked the side of Pupatee’s head.
‘What about picking it?’ he boomed out.
‘Yes, and pick it,’ Pupatee said, recalling what he had done. ‘Put the rice in to cook, adding salt and onion.’
Slap! ‘What about butter?’
‘Yes, butter, bredda. Then put the saltfish on to boil.’
‘Good. Then what?’
Pupatee gathered his thoughts, not wanting to get it wrong, but he took too long to answer and another slap startled him.
‘Fry the onions and garlic after cutting them up and placing them in the Dutch pan with seasoning like curry and salt.’ He thought he was doing pretty well.
‘And?’
His mind was blank.
‘And? And? And?’ Slap! ‘Put the fish in with the cabbage!’
‘Yes, fish with cabbage.’
For all the slaps, Pupatee had to admit the smell was now delicious.
While the food was cooking, Joe told him to get a bottle of Guinness from the bar.
‘And now go and take the eyes out of three eggs.’
Pupatee felt completely lost. How did you take the eyes out of eggs? Out of chickens, yes. But eggs?
‘Why are you standing there holding the eggs like you are a statue, bwoy?’ Joe shouted, putting his head round the kitchen door. ‘Give them to me.’ He cracked the eggs in a bowl and pointed to the small white dots in the egg. ‘Those are the eyes,’ he said. ‘They are the beginning of what would have been the hatched chicken.’
Pupatee took out the eyes.
‘Now add vanilla and whip them up good,’ Joe said. When Pupatee had done this, Joe added half a tin of Nestlé’s milk and nutmeg and told him to whip the mixture up again. Finally, on Joe’s instruction, Pupatee poured the Guinness into the bowl and whipped it all up one more time.
‘That’s punch,’ Joe said. ‘Get a pen and paper and write it all down. You can cook this for dinner on Mondays.’ Pupatee found a pen and wrote some notes as best he could. He could still barely write, but the slaps had written the recipes into his memory. And by the end of the following weekend, Joe had taught him how to cook a different dinner for every day of the week.
Sunday was always the culinary climax. For breakfast, Pupatee would cook fried eggs, bacon, tomatoes and fried dumplings or plantain with porridge of either oats or corn meal. He would already have cleaned and seasoned some chicken, lamb or beef the previous day and soaked peas in water with thyme and garlic. Around noon he would put the peas on to cook and start browning the meat in the Dutch oven. When it was brown all over, he would add onion, pepper, garlic and water and leave it to simmer on a low fire until a tasty gravy formed. Dinner would finally be served with rice, sometimes washed down with a drink made from carrot juice, Nestlé’s milk, nutmeg, eggs and vanilla, mixed with ice.
And so Pupatee soon fell into the routine of keeping house for Joe. When he came home from school he would clean all the rooms and then start cooking the evening meal. On Saturdays he would go down to Brixton to get the ingredients for the week’s meals, as well as toiletries and other essentials. The West Indian shops there sold many of the foods Pupatee had eaten in Jamaica, and he came to love cooking as it took him back to his parents’ house and the smells of the meals his mother made. Although the place was quiet now with just the two of them in it, Pupatee preferred this tasty food to Miss Utel’s meals, and he enjoyed being master of the kitchen. Even Joe seemed to appreciate the food, though he would never say so.
Joe and Pupatee were never able to finish all of the Sunday dinner, so on Monday Pupatee would simply add a bit of fish or corn meal to the leftovers, with perhaps some green bananas and a few boiled dumplings rolled out of plain flour and water, with a touch of salt. On Tuesday he would cook a tin of mackerel, with onions, garlic and seasoning, accompanied by white rice and pineapple punch. Wednesday would be ackee and saltfish and West Indian vegetables – yams, green bananas, plantain, dumplings and pumpkin. On Thursdays, he generally made corned beef and cabbage with white rice and Mackeson punch, and on Friday it was strictly fried fish with hard dough bread. On returning from the shops on Saturday, Pupatee would put on a big pot for chicken, beef or mutton soup, first boiling the meat, adding salt, thyme, fresh peppers, garlic and onion, and later, when the meat was tender, also putting in yams, green bananas, coco, dasheen, dumplings, pumpkin and a touch of black pepper and butter. He would let it all simmer away on the stove for hours, until its mouth-watering smell permeated the whole house.
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