How I fell in love with JERK

Parties, Punks and Rastas Jerked me around

How I fell in love with Jerk Chicken.

Ric Orlando

IYKYK.                                           

I am known for making some of the best Jerk Chicken in the Hudson Valley for a quarter century. I make really good Jerk, award winning Jerk, actually. Hot, salty, a little sweet, aromatic and spicy, no compromise Jerk as it should be. I have turned on thousands of ”white people” who may have never experienced it to Jerk cookery. And now I sell thousands of jars of my JERK seasoning mix annually to flavor-seeking home cooks around the US. How did it happen that a self taught Italian American kid came to love this mysterious Jamaican dish, and more so, learn to make it so well?

The first time I ate Jerk Chicken I fell in love. The setting was perfect for the launch of a lifetime romance. It was just about 1980. I was 20. I was living in downtown New Haven and was deeply enmeshed in the thriving Art/Punk/New Wave underground scene. Of course I was in a band. We arrogantly called ourselves Hot Bodies. We were one of the 3 or 4 New Haven underground music pioneers. Even though I led a high energy pop-punk band, I was really starting to get into skanky reggae music, thanks to the influence of the Clash and other Brit punk bands. Since Reggae music was synonymous with marijuana, (we called it pot) it was a draw for all kinds of alternative peeps, from hippies and yippies, to the punks, glams and gangsters. Even though pot was still very illegal, there was a quiet police tolerance for it in public parks and spaces, most of the time.  It was during the Reagan years that the "War on Drugs' really fucked up our country and filled up the prisons, but that’s another story about a different kind of jerk.  

It was a hot Dog Day Friday. I finished a busy lunch working the griddle, stuffing a couple hundred cheesesteaks and cheeseburgers into waiting sub rolls. I hit the bank and cashed my check, then shot home to the rooming home and paid the landlord, Mrs. Parr, my $50 weekly rent. Later that night, the Saucers were playing at Ron’s House of Punk and I had no pot. It was a still, summer dusk, the air was dense, aromas of car exhaust with a tinge of rotting garbage perfumed the air.  I ventured uptown into the labyrinth of two story apartments on the shady (not like lots of trees shady) end of Chapel street to find my friend Neil. He was a cinnamon colored Jamaican guy with short buckwheat style dreads who always wore a green army coat and certainly knew where I could cop a quick nickel bag. Neil played in the Shy Five, an on-again-off-again local rock reggae band. Just by luck, I encountered him strutting toward me up Chapel street with a scuffed up guitar case in hand.  

"Hey, buddy! I was coming to check you out! Glad I found you. I’m lookin..."

He cut me off.

He spoke while paused in the street while obviously itching to keep walking.

"I gotcha covered. Come out to this party with me. We’re gonna jam. I gotta get to the mall to catch the bus up Whitney Av. Some rich Yalie kid throwing it. I heard It’s a nice fancy house with a pool and he has real sensimilla and shit” (If you weren't there, let me enlighten you. Most bags of weed were just a wee bit of bud with mostly dried leaves and seeds. That is how we were able to smoke such fat joints all night without getting catatonic. Sensimilla, on the other hand, was one of the first hybrids; skunky and all bud. It was like the Kobe/Uni/White Truffle of weed. You just needed a tasting portion.)

“Is it cool if I come?” I asked, a little nervously. 

“Shit yea. You’re cool, Ricky. I'm playing with my band, they got kegs of Heinie, my woman will be cooking and there will be more herb than you can imagine".

“Damn, right on.” said I. Right place, right time. I could go see the Saucers play another time. 

Side note: Back in the day, my punk rock stage name was Ricky Rondo, hence I’ll be referred to Ricky instead of Ric in this story.

We were hustling  downtown to the New Haven green, where all the city buses loaded, unloaded and launched their routes. Neil slowed up a bit and pulled a little roach from his army jacket breast pocket and handed it to me. I paused, pulled out my lighter and held the roach to my puckered lips in the “OK” two finger pinch while lighting up. I took a deep, long hit, holding it in as long as I could. It did the trick really quick. I sped up to catch Neil and handed the little stubby to Neil without losing stride. We kept walking. The night was warm and still. He slowed his stride. examined the roach and saw that there were still a couple of hits left. He lit it and hit it until it was too small to hold, then he shook it from his hand and let the ashes spark and tumble through the air to crash on dirty cement below our feet. Then without a word, we resumed walking briskly to the bus. 

We got to the bus stop only a minute before the Whitney Av bus arrived. The door unfolded and I climbed the steps first. The thick bus driver was complacently looking straight ahead like a cow. I gazed back into the canal of shiny metal, adjusting my eyes. The interior lights were harsh enough to make me squint. Since the evening commute was over, there were only a dozen or so passengers on the bus. I dropped my 35 cents into the churning farebox. Neil did the same. As the bus lurched and began rolling we stumbled our way to the empty double seats behind the back door. We plopped down across the aisle from each other, sweating, breathing audibly, but otherwise silent.

We drove north through ivy wrapped Yale buildings, away from downtown into the upscale burbs. Neil knew the stop and after about 10 minutes of riding he yanked the cord to alert the driver that we needed to jump off at the next intersection. We spilled off the bus  and looked in all directions to get our bearings.

“This way,” Neil said. “Been here once last year.  This is the stop. I remember that big old house right there” as he pointed to a double sized Flagstone gray Victorian that, according to the panels next to the double doors, was home to a long roster of lawyers and accountants.  

I followed behind him, heading up a steep hill into a well-to-do neighborhood. We still had to walk another four blocks, mostly uphill, into the shady ( yes, lots of trees shady) New Englandy community to find the party house. 

After a 15 minute sweaty walk, we arrived at the party house. It was a  white clapboard Colonial with black shutters, a French pane sunroom, plenty of crowded trellises and greenery, an uneven brick driveway with a center row of buzzed dry grass, and at the back line of the house, a tall white picket fence concealing the backyard. 

(Wow, have I digressed. Wasn’t this supposed to be about my first Jerk Chicken?  Bear with me a few paragraphs more. I promise.)

  We walked down the driveway to the backyard fence. Neil pushed open the creaky fence door first and I followed him in. The backyard opened up like a big movie set. It was contained by tall white fencing lined with sunflowers and blooming Azaleas. In the center of the yard was a long inground pool wrapped with a cement deck and redwood corral fencing, dotted with a few wooden beach chairs and two redwood tables sheltered by calypso colored striped umbrellas.   There were more rose wrapped trellises, three huge hydrangeas, their puffy white snowballs in full bloom, a bird bath and a spattering of rainbow pansey patches along the fencing. A stone patio attached to the rear of the house had a red and white striped awning over it. Underneath there were some folding chairs set up around folding tables, three square and one long rectangle, all set with yellow paper tablecloths. Right outside the back door was a keg in a galvanized bucket nestled in ice water. It had a hand pump with a clear plastic pouring hose. A big stack of plastic cups were embossed with the Shaeffer beer logo. It wasn’t the one beer to have at this party because half submerged in the ice water tub were bottles of Heineken, Red Stripe and Dragon Stout, a bottle of Yukon Jack and two of Southern Comfort. 

At the far end of the patio there was a round charcoal grill smoking away and two sweating styrofoam coolers on the ground next to it. Two large women were setting up the food, their backs turned to the yard. One of the women was flopping half chickens on the grill while the other was setting out old school chafing racks on the rectangle table, not the cheap wire ones like we have now but good old fashioned, heavy chrome plated chafing dishes. 

I turned to take the rest of the vibe in. I wandered about the yard, nodding and smiling at people I didn’t know, or knew by face but not by name.There were about 50 or 60 people here already, guys in T-shirts and tank tops and gals in tube tops, halter tops, tight jeans and sparkly shoes. As at all summer parties, there were a few new wave slaves to fashion, those who, despite the weather, wore their little thrift store black suits, skinny ties and shiny, pointy shoes. There were a few people actually in the pool but not many though plenty were mingling around the pool. It wasn’t really a bathing suit kind of crowd. A gaggle of young art school type women in vintage party dresses, way too much hairspray, and extreme makeup were drinking and smoking by the pool, but there was no chance they were going in dressed like that. There were two particular women that I sort of knew from my gigs. They were both young and curvy, one strawberry blonde and he other sandy blonde, both cute and both barely dressed in calypso colored bikinis. Their hands were busy holding their beers, smoking both cigarettes and a joint by the corner of the pool. I did my best not to get caught looking at them. The redhead waved and offered me a hit of the joint. I obliged, first inhaling deeply, then coughing, and laughing. The blonde told me Hot Bodies was her favorite band and how she wished I was playing at the party. I shyly thanked her. This was a huge challenge for a young guy like me; trying not to get caught gawking at women in their bikinis, while still acting nonchalantly sociable. My 20 year old brain was crackling, perpetually aflame, yet I had to keep looking at their faces and what was happening around the yard so as not to look like a horny jerk admiring their tight, golden bodies. It’s quite a conundrum for young guys. It was then and is now exponentially more. And that’s another story I’ll get to at a later time.

The band was setting up on the other end of the house in a shaded corner at the end of the patio. A standard four piece band set up; sparkly silver drums, a tall Ampeg bass rig and a fender twin set on milk crates were the back line and a sole microphone stand was set up front. There were no monitors. The band setup was framed by two big PA column speakers with blue glittery covers. The guys were still running wires and adjusting drums. The Shy Five were the Shy Four today, as their keyboard polsyer, Malcolm had to be at a family wedding in Jersey.

  As I looked around, I noticed that the musicians were black, and the people making the food were black, Jamaican actually, and everyone else at the party was white, except for my good friend Ivan. Ivan was a regular scenester who usually overdressed in punk garb and was always one of the first on the dance floor at the clubs. We often partied in his little apartment on Olive street late nights after the bars closed. All of my best friends at this party were black. 

I was pretty high at this point. The smell of the barbecue made my stomach growl audibly. It beckoned me back to the grill. When the cook turned around I realized that it was Vanessa, Niels’s wife, who was setting up and tending the grill. She was a tall and thick mocha colored woman with golden green eyes and a bundle of beaded dreads tied up on her stately head. She also always knew where to get me a nickel bag when I needed one

“Hey my Ricky!” she said in her warm Jamaican accent. “Neil tol’ me you came on the bus wit him. You sittin in tonight?”

“Maybe, but probably not, I’m here by accident. I went looking for Neil but apparently he found me. I just followed like a puppy,”  I smiled. 

“It’s Neil’s show tonight.” I replied with deference.

“I’m too sure he’ll let you play somethin so he can break off and eat some of my cooking. He can’t get enough, as you can tell. That man sure could eat.”

Neil was by no means fat, but he had certainly grown from the lanky young punk I knew from school into a man body in the last few years since he got married.

  “No lie, but I know you like him that way” I said as I took in a big whiff of the chicken basting on the grill. 

“Mmm, mmmm, damn…Whatcha cooking?”

“I sure do” she said, commenting on my previous comment, and her eyes quickly flashed. 

“Oh, we got jerk chicken, rice and peas, smothered cabbage, greens, and some curry fish already to go. I’m just finishing the jerk chicken on the grill. Everything else is getting warmed up in the oven in the house. You better come back for some jerk chicken.  Nobody makes it like me,” she said proudly. 

“Deal. I love your curry chicken. Is it like that?”

She gave me a slightly bemused look and went back to turning the chicken on the grill.

“Look at that? That look like curry to you? This is in my secret marinade and is slow grilled and hot, spicy-ass hot.” 

“Well, I like chicken and I’m kind of a jerk so I’ll give it a shot.”

She rolled her big eyes, shook her head with a grin and kept cooking.

Suddenly I heard a loud flap, flap, thud, thud. Allen the drummer was testing his skins. That was followed by an alarming buzz as Neil clumsily plugged his guitar chord into his loud amp. He looked and shouted to no one and everyone,  “Just a sound check folks, don’t get excited, we’ll be playing in a half an hour.”

He turned and pulled a cassette from the front pocket of his worn army jacket. He inserted a cassette into the small tape deck connected to the PA and the first Police album started playing loudly…“Can’t stand it for another day, when you live so many miles away…”

I looked around the yard. Kids standing around with plastic cups of beer that were 50% beer and 50% foam started absent-mindedly moving to the music. The smell of old fashioned marijuana was wafting in the air. I didn’t smell hybrid,  like skunk. It was more sweet, like autumn leaves burning. 

The band was almost ready. The last sounds before the set; deep belly rumbles of bass guitar, the dang, twang, boing of guitar tuning, the swat banging of drums. The quintessential “check 1-2, check 1-2” distortedly blurted through the PA speakers. .

I strolled around the yard, looking for anyone to chat with. I ran into a couple of suburban looking guys I sort of knew from the band scene. They both had variations on the spiked top-mullet back hair thing, French cut T-shirts, skin tight jeans and high top sneakers. One guy had a pack of Marlboros rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve. They were smoking a fatty. I didn’t know their names but they knew mine.

  “It’s Ricky Rondo!” The taller, blondish guy called out.“You need a hit?” He seemed honored to offer me their joint. 

“I don’t mind if I do,” I said. I was already pretty high but a party is a party after all.  I took a long one, held it in deep and let it out slowly. Ahh. Now I finally began feeling cozy and comfortable. I thanked the guys and wandered off, looking for anyone else I might know.

Being at a big party more or less alone and completely baked without knowing many of the guests could be intense. Sometimes it’s smooth and lubed and I slide right in and find the right people to hang with, and sometimes I want to crawl under a rock if I get that paranoid feeling from the pot. My heart is ever present feeling twice as big as normal, thumping under my ribs.  My teeth feel alien, like they belong to someone else and my hands don’t know where to rest. 

After taking a slow and self conscious lap around the pool, I found myself back by the grill, lured by the familiarity and warmth of Vanessa and by the smell of her jerk chicken. By now I had a nagging case of munchies. There were bags of cheese doodles and tins of Pringles out on the table, but the smell of that grilling chicken had me by the ear. It pulled me over to the grill like cranky Sister Marion-Claire used to pull me up to the blackboard when I was a bad boy in Catholic school. “I will not talk out of turn” I would write with dusty chalk on the green board. One down, 99 more to go. 

 Vanessa and her friend were loosening the foil on the pans that were steaming in the chafing racks. Vanessa looked right at me and simply asked “Are you ready?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said clumsily, trying to sound enthusiastic, but sounding instead like an immature Elvis. 

As she peeled the foil back on the dishes, the exotic, intoxicating perfume of Caribbean cooking wafted into my sizzling brain. She made me a plate. A big scoop of rice and peas and smothered cabbage went down first. She then took a whole big leg and thigh of the jerk chicken and put it on a small cutting board she had set up in front of the chafing dish. With a small cleaver she hacked the chicken up, bones and all, into bite sized pieces. Then from the table behind her she grabbed two slices of Wonder bread and pressed them into the juices that accumulated on the cutting board, sponging up every drop. She put that bread on the plate next to the rice and, using the cleaver, scooped up the hacked pieces of chicken. With her other hand, she slid it all onto the stained bread. She handed me a pathetically small white plastic fork. 

“There ya go. You better like it or don’t come back,” She warned playfully.

It all smelled magical,  like Thanksgiving and a campfire at the same time. Since I was warned that it was going to be spicy I crossed the patio to the keg and grabbed a bottle of Dragon Stout. I moved back near the band and stood next to the PA board. I set the plate down on the table and just as I was about to spear a glistening chunk of chicken with that little fork, Neil yelled to me “Hey Ricky, How’s the sound? Can you hear my guitar good?”

“Uh…” I was almost drooling, staring at my plate of food. Before I could reply he banged an open E chord. It hurt my ears.  

“I can’t tell, I need to hear it in the mix. Why don't you guys play a little somethin and I’ll let you know,” I replied. I backed away from the stage about 15 feet to get a balanced listen. Neil got his mates’ attention and mouthed something to them. They all nodded in unison and launched into some Bob Marley and the Wailers.  

The skanky guitar was actually way too loud, almost jarringly so and after a few bars I waved him a hand gesture pointing down. He knew I meant for him to turn down, but from the expression on his face it was clear that he didn't want to. I shrugged and got the attention of Marvin, the short, chubby bass player. He wore his bass so high that it almost touched his chin. I pointed up. He nodded and cranked his bass rig considerably louder. Xavier the frontman stuck his middle finger in his left ear and began to sing. “Sun is shinin, the weather is sweet, yeah. Makes ya wanna move those dancin feet, yeah.”

The PA sounded like hell, boomy and distorted as if the sound was coming from two shoe boxes, but it was definitely audible above the loud band. Good enough,  I thought. I gave him an approving nod. 

As the band continued their soundcheck song, people began to move closer to the stage and surround the band. Ivan almost ran, dancing to the front with the two bikini clad girls I smoked with earlier. He slyly winked at me. More people rolled up and followed his lead.  Heads were bobbing, arms swinging, asses swaying and the dancing began. Soundcheck became their first song. I caught Neil’s eye and gave him a thumbs up. This soundman did his duty. Now it’s time to eat. 

(OK, relax. I am getting to it; my first Jerk Chicken experience.)

I speared a piece of that chicken and held it under my nose. I inhaled deeply, trying to identify the spices. Cinnamon, cloves? I put the whole big chunk in my mouth.  It was thigh meat with a broken piece of bone attached.  I strategically maneuvered it in my mouth, using my tongue to separate the bone from the flesh.  I pushed the bone out of my mouth and into my waiting palm. I looked around and secretly dropped it by my feet, discreetly kicking it under the table. 

Suddenly, the Jerk hit me. It was so salty, so succulent, so aromatic, just spicy enough,  all at once. I chewed carefully and gulped it down. Then I lifted the plate and inhaled the bouquet of spices again. I went in for another piece but this time I removed any bone while it was still on my plate. I let the juicy dark meat dance in my mouth for a few seconds before biting down on it, releasing even more flavor. The layers of taste filled my mouth, my nostrils, my lungs and my brain. What the fuck was I eating? I had never tasted anything like it. I swallowed slowly, savoring. I was mesmerized, analyzing the flavors that were overloading my senses. I must have been standing with my eyes closed because Vanessa slapped my arm and simply asked “Well?”

“Holy Shit, it’s so good I can’t stand it!,” I cried. “What is it? I can’t figure it out? Is it cinnamon?”

She shook her head. “Keep tryin,” she said, amused. 

“Umm, nutmeg?” I asked hesitantly. 

“Nah, nah, nah. That’s pimento,” She replied assuredly.

Pimento? No way, I thought. Those little bitter red peppers in the jar? She must be bullshitting me, scared that I’m gonna steal her recipe.

“No, really, c’mon. There’s no pimento in here. You’re fucking with me.”  I wasn’t nearly a chef yet, but I was a cook and knew pimento when I tasted it.

“That’s JaMAIcan Pimento,’ she insisted with a hard emphasis on the middle syllable of Jamaican. “It’s a spice we grow all over Jamaica. White people call it allspice”

“Oh man, I’ve heard of it but I don't think I've ever used it. I will say that even though you warned me about it being spicy, I didn’t think it was too spicy,” I said to her.

She surprised me by turning and walking away but she returned in about five seconds with two bottles in her hands. 

“Damn, Ricky, you are really becoming a Jamaican now. These are what we use to heat things up in my house.” and she put a bottle of Matouk’s Sauce Forte and one of Grace Red Hot pepper sauce on the table next to my dish. I was just getting comfortable with hot sauce. I learned to use Tabasco a couple of years earlier by mixing it with ketchup for my fries, then I got braver by adding more Tabasco and less ketchup, until I was finally going straight with the sauce. The Grace red hot looked like Tabasco. It was in a tall narrow bottle with a small hole pouring regulator so I had to give it a few shakes to get some sauce on my food. I dashed it onto my rice and peas. I scooped up a mouthful of the seasoned rice and shoveled it in my mouth. It was good; tangy and definitely hotter than Tabasco, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I went next for the Matouks. Matouks is a classic pepper sauce from Trinidad. It is a thick yellow scotch bonnet pepper sauce thickened with papaya. It comes in a big ketchup style bottle with a wide mouth. I twisted off the cap and tapped some right onto a chunk of jerk chicken. It was so thick that it came out in a big glob. As my fork approached my face I could smell the peppers. When the overly sauced chicken hit my tongue my entire mouth started to glow. What the fuck? It was so hot (for me at that time) and yet so unbelievably delicious that I poured more. 

My head was actually reeling. It was like hitting a slippery slope with no guard rails. 

Just then I looked up and saw Neil nodding and grinning at me. He knew what I was experiencing. The bliss of Caribbean hot sauce and of course Jerk Chicken.Then Vanessa and her helper came for the hot sauces. Before she could nab it, I grabbed the Matouks and dumped another big pool onto my plate. 

“Ooo, you gonna be on fire later,” she said almost mockingly. Her friend just nodded and looked at me like I was an idiot.

“I’m on fire now, and I want more,” I said, beginning to sweat. I downed my dark, creamy beer and went back in to finish that plate of magic that completely changed my life, culinarily and beyond.

After that night, whenever I stopped by Neil and Vanessa’s to score pot, she would often hand me a foil packet of jerk chicken to take home. I usually devoured it cold, on a nearby park bench. Like a junkie who just scored, I couldn't wait to get home to get a taste. Neil and Vanessa both loved that I was crazy for her cooking. 

It would be 8 years later when I was working as floor manager at Sugar Reef, a popular Caribbean theme restaurant in the East Village that specialized in Jerk, that I was able to really learn the recipe and technique for making jerk chicken. It was a year and a half after that, winter of 1990, when I first was able to put Jerk on my menu. I had moved to Albany and got my first Exec Chef job at Justin’s Jazz Club on Lark. For the first time I was the chef and had pretty much free reign on menu design. Though it scared and revolted about 10% of the unindoctrinated patrons who ordered it, the other 90% became my fans for life. My Jerk Chicken became one of the iconic dishes in the Hudson Valley food scene and still is. 

20 years later, on my first appearance on Food network’s Chopped, I had the perfect basket to show off my Jerk skills. Given quails, raisinettes, kale and a coconut, I whipped up “Rum Raisin Jerk Quail”, using raisinettes instead of the molasses in my jerk recipe. Of course I won handily and Chopped judge Mark Murphy declared that my Jerk Quail was the best dish he had had on Chopped to date. 

Thanks Neil and Vanessa.

RIP Neil.

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