Island Cooking: The Fantasy & The Reality : Home cooking in the tropics means pepperpots, plantains and oxtail stew.

The cuisine many Caribbean restaurants in Los Angeles hawk is beautiful, exotic, eclectic. Menus feature a rainbow of colorful fruity cocktails laced with rum, coconut-coated shrimp, avocado-ginger soup, salsas of mango, pineapple and lime. It is the Caribbean cooking of our island fantasies.

Meanwhile, across town, pepperpots simmer with humble meats such as oxtails and mutton. There are fried plantains, salted codfish, conch, meat patties and jerk chicken. A chilled glass of homemade sorrel or soursop juice quenches the palate. A slice of dark, sweet fruit cake finishes off the meal.

Sound noticeably more heavy? It should. This food was meant to be filling. In Jamaica, the average year-round climate hovers around 85 degrees. “We need this,” says Jamaican cook Beryl Robinson, “in order to cope with the sun.”

This is native food, just the way you find it in homes in Jamaica. But now with so many transplants from the island in Los Angeles, it can be found in restaurants here too. And, despite its starchiness, Jamaican food, real Jamaican food, is some of the best food in the city.

Robinson is one reason why.

She is co-owner of Coley’s Jamaican Restaurant in Los Angeles, a popular place among both Jamaicans and Americans known for its authentically earthy comfort food. And for the traditional black fruit cakes she’d been providing by the hundreds each Christmas season even before she became a partner.

For these cakes, she soaks the fruit--raisins, currants, dates and cashews--in port for six months, although two weeks to three months is customary. For her curry chicken, she rinses the bird in water spiked with a squeeze of lemon for special flavor. And she removes the skin, to reduce the fat. She never throws away the tiny brown bits left at the bottom of the skillet. “The dregs from the pot are the best part for your gravy,” she says.

At Coley’s you find the kind of food that keeps U.S.-born Jamaican kids home for dinner, the kind of food that island compatriots reminisce about. “It’s food the way you find it back home,” one customer said. But it’s also the kind of food that lures Americans who have visited Jamaica to the restaurant.

On the island, the traditional dishes one experiences reflect many cultural influences: Spanish, Indian and African descendants created uses for the foods on the island that were widely available. Most grew their own herbs and spices. Mutton, pork and fish--especially conch and shellfish, snapper and salt-preserved cod were cheap. And the produce that seems so exotic to American tastes--treasures such as mangoes, cassava, breadfruit, plantain and some pumpkins--proliferated. Poor natives blended these foods into soups and stews, drinks and desserts to economize.

Robinson’s dishes also reflect the ingenuity of her ancestors, but her cookery is accented by the influence of her parents who were cooks in the homes of wealthy British families on the island. The food they cooked was a far cry from poverty food. Occasionally Robinson would tag along while her parents worked. Her mother often gave her tiny child sized tasks: “ ‘Mash me two stalks of scallion,’ my mother would say,” Robinson recalls. Eventually, she developed an expertise in Jamaican cooking that even her teen-age children--despite their American upbringing--appreciate. “Mom, why are you doing this to me?” her 14-year-old son asks, “Your cooking is so good.”

Take Robinson’s Jamaican patties (similar to Mexican empanadas or British Cornish pasties without the potatoes). Unlike many other dry, tough versions, her pastry is flaky and light. Curry powder gives the pattie dough subtle flavor and a distinctive golden hue. The ground meat or chicken filling bursts with peppery spice. In her vegetarian patties, the delicate dough encrusts sauteed mustard and turnip greens, fresh spinach and zucchini, spiked with a hint of fire from Jamaican Scotch Bonnet peppers. Almost daily, a line of anxious diners waits patiently for the next batch of veggie patties to emerge from the oven.

Gone too are the days when she would piece together a meal from pantry leftovers: “a small piece of meat and whatever was available, tomatoes, onions, rice.” Today, she uses only good quality meats and fresh vegetables. Vegetable oil is used for frying. She prefers fresh onions and garlic to industrial dehydrated forms. Lima beans are tossed in with her oxtail stew instead of the heavier dumplings favored by some island cooks. In fact, the aroma of curried and smothered meats that fills the air in the restaurant is simply arresting. The majority of the customers, she explains, request the oxtails.

The seasoned grilled meat jerk is popular too, although it is by American standards fast-food. Traditionally jerk was developed by islanders to preserve meat for lengthy storage. Today in Jamaica a jerk shack and thatched-roof bar stand side-by-side at roadside. Robinson follows an age-old family recipe for her jerk. She marinates chicken in a spicy mixture of herbs and spices Maroon style, then, lacking a pimento (Jamaican for allspice) wood fire, she broils it.

Overall, in spite of its history as a poor people’s food, Robinson has sought to improve the image of Jamaican fare while maintaining its authenticity. Aesthetic appeal is very important, and she insists that the food she serves whether at home or in the restaurant is as fresh as possible.

Robinson boasts: “I think my food is better because culturally, I’m Jamaican at heart . . . in my dress, my looks, my eating and my music. I’m a Jamaican . . . and proud of it. “

VEGETABLE PATTIES

4 cups flour

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup shortening, chilled

1/4 cup margarine, chilled

Ice water

Vegetable Filling

Sift together flour, curry powder and salt. Mix well in bowl. Cut in shortening and margarine with fork until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Mix in water by tablespoon just until mixture pulls away from sides of bowl. Wrap in foil and refrigerate 12 hours or overnight. Remove dough 15 minutes before use.

Pinch off 24 pieces dough. Roll out each piece to 4-inch circle. Sprinkle with small amount flour and cover with damp cloth. Repeat with remaining dough, stacking circles until all dough is used.

Place about 1/4 cup Vegetable Filling on half of each dough circle. Fold over to enclose filling. Brush edges with water to seal and crimp with fork or pastry wheel. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees 30 to 35 minutes until puffed and golden. Makes about 24 patties.

Note: For smaller patties, pinch off 48 pieces dough and rol out each piece to 2-inch circle.

Vegetable Filling

2 tablespoons margarine

1 large onion, chopped

2 green onions, chopped

1 to 2 large Scotch Bonnet or serrano chiles, chopped

1 large tomato, chopped

2 pounds zucchini, chopped

1 pound mustard greens, finely chopped

1 pound turnip greens, finely chopped

1 pound spinach leaves, chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon seasoned salt

3 cloves garlic, pressed

1 teaspoon black pepper

Melt margarine in skillet until bubbly. Add onion, green onions, chiles, tomato and zucchini and saute until tender. Add greens, spinach, salt, seasoned salt, garlic and black pepper. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, 20 minutes. Let stand to cool.

Note: Scotch Bonnet peppers are available at Latin markets.

CURRY CHICKEN

1 (3 1/2- to 4-pound) chicken, skin removed and cut up

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons curry powder

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 medium onion, chopped

1/4 cup oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small piece ginger root, finely chopped

2 green onions, finely chopped

1 Scotch Bonnet or 2 serrano chiles, chopped

Rinse chicken pieces and dry thoroughly. Rub with lemon juice. Season with salt, curry powder and pepper. Place in shallow dish with chopped onion. Refrigerate up to 4 hours.

Heat oil in large skillet or Dutch oven. Add garlic, ginger, green onions and chile. Saute until browned. Add chicken and stir well to cover with seasonings. Cover and simmer over low heat 30 minutes, adding small amount hot water if needed. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Note: Scotch Bonnet chiles are available at Latin markets.

JAMAICAN OXTAILS

3 pounds oxtails, trimmed

1 medium onion, sliced

1/4 cup mushroom soy sauce

1/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 cup oil

1 large tomato, chopped

1 small green pepper, chopped

1 Scotch Bonnet or 2 serrano chiles, chopped

1 clove garlic, pressed

6 cups hot water

3 tablespoons molasses

1 (10-ounce) package frozen lima beans

1 sprig thyme

Place oxtails in large bowl. Add sliced onion and soy sauce. Mix well. Refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Combine flour, salt and pepper. Dredge oxtails in mixture making sure all sides are covered. Reserve onion. Heat oil in large Dutch oven or heavy skillet until hot. Brown oxtails.

Remove meat from pan, drain off all but 1 to 2 tablespoons oil. Add reserved onion, tomato, green pepper, chile and garlic to pan and saute lightly, scraping up brown bits. Add hot water and molasses and stir well. Return oxtails to pan and cook over low heat 1 1/2 hours. Add lima beans and thyme and continue to cook 30 minutes longer. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Note: Scotch Bonnet chiles are available at Latin markets.

Food styling by Minnie Bernardino and Donna Deane