Receta JB’s Soul Food and Jerk Chicken, Peckham
People find JB’s Soul Food and Jerk Chicken restaurant by “following the smoke trail” according to its owner, Jamaican-born Jennifer Hawes. This smoke is essential for good jerk – the Jamaican method of cooking meats, vegetables or seafood over a fire pit (ooooh) or grill (bit more convenient). Ingredients are marinated in a spiced, sweet and hot seasoning and then traditionally cooked over pimento wood in a hole in the ground. Nowadays people tend to use a jerk ‘drum’, a grill made from an oil drum mounted sideways. The cook lifts up the top half of the drum, fills it with coals and grills inside it. “Some people do it in the oven, says Jennifer, and some people do it BBQ but it’s not BBQ, it’s jerk, so it has to be on the drum.”
Jennifer’s husband does all the seasoning and grilling of the meat and I know to not bother asking for even a hint at his recipe, because a jerk cook will never share. The most important ingredients however, are no secret, “years ago” says Jennifer, “there wasn’t anything like all this chicken seasoning, all purpose seasoning…so in Jamaica, we used only natural seasonings: the spring onions, the onions, the thyme, the scotch bonnet chillies, the pimento seed (allspice berries), and garlic.” The quality of ingredients are very important to her still, and she has some of them brought from Jamaica, “we wanted to have the Jamaican taste…a lot of people {who} come in here, people who have been to Jamaica, even Jamaicans themselves say, this is it…and we want to keep it to that standard.”
Jennifer and Bill met in Jamaica, and came to Peckham in 1991, “you know you hear about places, that you want to come and see what it is like, for yourself” says Jennifer, “we had family here, so we came and we end up liking it.” The couple plan to open another restaurant in Peckham at some point, in a more central location, but they don’t want to be too hasty, “we’re not going to take on anything too big and elaborate we can’t manage, because it’s going well, so we don’t want to spoil it.” Her husband still works full time as a fabricator, so they see very little of each other. He comes and seasons the meat in the evening, while Jennifer works full time in the kitchen during the day. I just love cooking” she says, “I grew up with my mum cooking every day, and I used to watch what she does and you know, it’s just part of me.”
They serve all the classics: curry goat, brown stew, ackee and salt fish, oxtail, jerk chicken and also pork on weekends. The jerk tastes like the real deal: smoke, sweetness, spice. There’s the unmistakable pimento buzz and the scotch bonnet poker. Jerk chicken is always cut into lots of pieces, right through the bone, and each piece at JB’s is juicy, charred by flicks of flame and shining with a final coating of sweet, spicy sauce.
JB’s Soul Food and Jerk Chicken
27A Peckham High Street
SE15 5EB
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