Everything about the occasion broke the mould of the thirty odd weddings we’d attended between us over the previous few years, and the fact that we’d in effect eloped to the tropics was only the half of it. We may not have had a wedding planner to manufacture a picture perfect day, but it all came together on the fly in an unforgettable fashion.
Sabrina had her hair and make up done with a bunch of highly entertaining locals at a tiny little beauty salon in Port Antonio and the hotel provided the priest, witnesses and our Rastafarian wedding photographer. My PA Jane, who was one of the very few we’d entrusted with our secret, had bought us a miniature wedding cake from Harrods Food Hall that measured just six inches across, which we’d carefully transported in our hand luggage, and the cliff top gazebo where the ceremony was held at sunset provided a stunningly simple and beautiful backdrop. It was the height of the rainy season so I remember my knees of all things, perspiring through my linen suit trousers in the early evening humidity, as we made our vows.
Port Antonio is happily well off the all-inclusive resort dominated Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Negril tourist track. Back in the day, Noel Coward and Ian Fleming both had homes close by and Errol Flynn used to moor his yacht ‘Zaca’ at Navy Island across the bay, after allegedly winning the islet in a local card game.
Fortunately none of that false glitter seems to have affected this little port town that much and Sabrina and I happily spent the first week of our honeymoon dodging the frequent tropical downpours and grazing the local food scene at the beach shacks and food vendors across town, with the odd white tablecloth dinner in a plantation-shuttered dining room, thrown in for good measure.
The island’s many occupiers have created a rich food heritage with a mixture of cooking techniques, flavours, spices and influences from the indigenous inhabitants to the Spanish, British, African, Indian and Chinese who came later, but it was the beef patties, which are about as far from fine dining as you can get, which have stayed with us. Delicious downed with a Red Stripe, patties are reputed to have been first brought to the region in the eighteenth century by French émigrés to the neighbouring island of Haiti and are just a small part of the polyglot cultural stew created by Jamaica’s turbulent history.
Jamaican Beef Patties: Makes about twenty
Pastry:
2 cups pastry flour
1 tbsp Jamaican curry powder or turmeric
1/2 tsp salt
4 oz butter
Ice water
Put all the ingredients except the water in the food processor, pulse a few times, then add the water 1 tablespoon at a time until the dough comes together. Make it into a disk and wrap in plastic, place in the fridge overnight. Roll out on a floured surface, 1/8″ thick, cut into 4″ disks, flour them before you stack to prevent sticking, cover with tea towel.
Filling:
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2 green onions, roughly chopped
1 habanero chili, seeded
1 lb ground beef
1 cup of breadcrumbs
1 tsp thyme leaves
1 heaped tbsp curry powder
Salt
1/2 a cup of water
Put the onion, green onions and the Chili in the food processor and process until it is a paste. Heat a large skillet with 2 tablespoons of oil, add the onion mixture, then the beef, stir to combine, breaking up the meat as it is cooking for about 10 minutes. Add the bread, thyme and the curry powder, stir to combine; then season with salt. Add the water and gently cook for 10 minutes stirring all the time. The mixture should be moist but not runny and not dry. Leave it to cool before filling the pastries. To fill the pastries, place 1 soup spoon in the middle of the pastry then brush the edges with egg wash and fold in half, pressing the edges together and crimping them with a fork. Bake in a 350ºf oven for about 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Makes about 20.
We only left town once to take a bamboo raft down a lazy river, so after a perfect week of sunburned indolence, we crossed the breathtaking Blue Mountains heading for the musical magnificence of Kingston and the small matter of our appointment with the Consular section at the British High Commission to sort out Sabrina’s visa for our return to London.
Things did not go quite as predicted, but that is a story for another day!
Beautifully written, and such a romantic story.
So that's why I didn't get an invite 😂