Buttery ackee flesh boiled, sautéed with desalted cod, onions, thyme, and a hint of scotch bonnet, served with boiled green bananas or a hunk of bread. The quintessential people's dish: hearty, salty, resourceful.

Why this dish? Breakfast dish of black Jamaican families, born of the encounter between ackee — a fruit from West Africa brought by the slave trade — and imported salted cod. Garvey, a child of St. Ann's Bay in a modest family, grew up with this popular breakfast; it was also found on the Caribbean tables of Harlem where his community lived.

Listen well, my friends: it is with this dish that our people began each day of labor, on the island as in Harlem. The cod came from the boats, the ackee from the tree in the yard — a fruit you must pick only when fully open, never before, for nature gives her gifts only to those who respect her. My mother would fry it with onion and thyme, and we ate standing, proud, belly full before work. A people that knows how to feed its children from its own soil is already halfway free.

How it was made : Ackee is prepared only from fruits that have naturally opened on the tree, using only the yellow flesh around the black seeds (the rest is toxic). In the past, it was boiled fresh; cod, abundant and cheap, was a legacy of Atlantic trade routes.

The contemporary twist : Served on toast like a Caribbean brunch, topped with a sprinkle of sliced escallion.

Marcus Garvey · Charactorium