21It’s not spicy
hot but has
a magnifi cent
warmth that
spreads across
your chest
in a slow build.Jerk Chicken
Time: 1 hour, plus marinatingFor the marinade:
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
1½ teaspoons cumin seeds
1 cup soy sauce
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
8 ounces Guinness stout
1 medium red onion (about 9 ounces),
fi nely chopped
8 scallions, thinly sliced
¼ cup Tabasco sauce
1 large nutmeg seed, freshly grated
(about 4 teaspoons)
¼ cup whole allspice berries, ground
(about 3 tablespoons)
3 tablespoons minced garlic
(6 large cloves)camp, technology camp and sports
camp. Even half-day video-gaming camp
was violently refused. Summer camp is
just not for everybody.
I eventually spent several years enjoy-
ing summer camp, but only as an adult,
when I was hired as the chef of a spe-
cial beauty in the deep woods of western
Massachusetts. Blue-slate roof shingles
on the massive barn, wild turkeys in the
tall grasses. I got all the slamming screen
doors and the wooden benches of sleep-
away camp — while blissfully remaining
aloof to and ignorant of the high emo-
tional stakes of adolescence and bunk
life. With your own little cabin to tuck
into each night after tidying up the cafe-
teria bread and bagel cages or breaking
down the make-your-own-sundae station,
Senior Ranking Support Staff is the gold-
en way to go to camp, I realized.
I hired a cook one of those years, a
Jamaican guy named Shaun Lewis, who
stepped off the bus from New York City
clutching his duff el and sniffi ng nervous-
ly at the fresh air. He hated camp pretty
much upon arrival and spent his summer
surviving the insects and the 10-year-olds
and the counselors by hiding in the kitch-
en. I would come down early every morn-
ing to get the ovens and coff ee urns going
to fi nd unbelievable fruit carvings in the
walk-in refrigerator: Shaun, up all night in
the empty dining hall, would carve water-
melon dragons and Granny Smith apple
birds of paradise with his paring knife,
before submitting himself to a cocoon
of mosquito netting he fashioned around
his sleeping bag.
As the camp chef, I loved having some-
one on the team who would rather clean
chicken breasts or chop broccoli fl orets
and refi ll all the cereal bins than swim
or tell spooky stories at campfi res or run
the three-legged races. Shaun buried
himself in cookbooks, sharpened and
resharpened all the knives, practiced his
garde manger skills and lived for parents’
visiting days, when we had huge and
elaborate banquet meals to prep for.
His jerk chicken made it onto the buff et
both sessions that summer; parents came
back to the kitchen window and praised it
eff usively, and I’ve been making it every
summer for 25 years.
It’s not spicy hot but has a magnifi cent
warmth that spreads across your chest in
a slow build. I would like to insist that
there is no substitute for the low-and-slow
smolder of a live charcoal fi re — it’s the
smoke you can’t live without — but I’ve
cooked this in cast iron on a stovetop,
on the grates of my restaurant’s fl awed
indoor gas grill and on sheet pans in a
blasting convection oven, and still it slays.
If you were making a very large quantity,
like for a parents’ visiting day, I would
add back the couple of ingredients I felt
obliged to cut from his recipe here in an
eff ort to ease up on its lengthy shopping
list: a glug of lager in addition to the
stout called for and a loose handful of
fresh basil leaves, chopped. But for the
small-batch home cook, it’s safe to say you
won’t notice the absence of these minor
fl avor shadings when the other 21 come
together as one haunting, seriously inter-
esting and compelling chord. Unless you
are the kind of person who spent every
summer at band camp and can notice the
boost brought by a second bassoonist and
a third-chair violinist in a large orchestra.
In recent years, I’ve added an
odd-sounding but crazy delicious little
side condiment of quick-pickled fresh
ripe bananas — the creamy bland sweet-
ness of the fruit with the spike of vinegar
and habanero just blows the roof off the
whole enterprise, in my opinion. I only
wish I had thought of it back then, when
Shaun spent all those long nights avoid-
ing the bunk, the bugs and the funk of
unwashed socks by hiding in the kitch-
en. What wonder of intricate knife work
with the bananas would he have left for
me to fi nd in the morning, what elabo-
rately carved souvenir?2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon whole
black peppercorns, crushed
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 teaspoon fi nely chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 jalapeño, stemmed, seeded and
fi nely chopped
2 habanero chiles, stemmed,
seeded and fi nely chopped
3 dried bay leaves
12 boneless, skin-on chicken thighs
Pickled bananas (recipe online)- In a small skillet, toast the coriander and
cumin seeds over medium heat, shaking the
pan, until fragrant, 2 minutes. Let cool,
then grind in a spice grinder until pulverized. - Combine all marinade ingredients —
everything but the chicken — in a large bowl;
add 1 cup water, and whisk to combine.
Alternatively, working in two batches, place
all marinade ingredients in the bowl of a
food processor. Pulse 2 or 3 times to combine. - Place chicken in a large container big
enough for all pieces plus marinade.
Remove ¾ cup marinade for later use, and
pour remaining marinade over the chicken.
Refrigerate 1 or 2 days (chicken can be stored
for up to 5 days). - Heat grill to medium low. Remove
chicken from marinade, and temper at room
temperature for 15 minutes. Place chicken
skin side down on the grill. Every minute or so,
rotate the chicken a half turn so that the
skin develops a deep, dark mahogany char
and has been slightly crisped and rendered,
8-10 minutes total. - Turn chicken over to finish cooking, 6-8
minutes. Transfer to a serving platter, skin side
up. Brush the reserved marinade on the
skin side, and serve with pickled bananas.
Yield: 4 servings.Adapted from Shaun Lewis.