“Is it too early for Scotchie’s?” pinged a text on my phone from longtime friend Blaise Hart, as the plane taxied through the bright morning light on the runway at Norman Sangster Airport. As long as the barbecue pits are fired up, and the pimento-smoked meat known as “jerk” has cooked long enough, Scotchie’s Jerk Centre is our first stop on the road from Montego Bay to Falmouth before heading up into the hills toward Cockpit Country in Trelawney Parish—through the majestic, sweeping Queen of Spain Valley, edged by the shrimp-filled Martha Brae River—and on to our destination, Blaise’s family home near the Good Hope Estate’s great house, which I first visited decades earlier while tagging along on with our moms, Sheila and Rose.
Back then the only meat this little Midwestern Canadian girl had ever eaten for breakfast was bacon, let alone whole fried Red Snapper, Escovietch-style doused in Scotch Bonnet pepper and cane vinegar sauce, variations on this condiment are as ubiquitous in Jamaica as ketchup is on the American table or, to be more precise, nuoc cham is on the Vietnamese table.