Jamaican vegetarian recipes
The Jamaican vegetarian dishes that are present in the Jamaican cuisine started with the Rastafarians. These were persons who followed the Rastafari movement and were popular from as far back as in the 1930’s. They believed in all natural products and so their food preparation method was different from the traditional Jamaican foods.
The Rastafarians would prepare their meals from the produce that were grown locally without preservatives, meat, coloring and salt; this is popularly known as “Ital”. “Ital” is said to be from the word vital, which is crucial to human existence.
The ital cooking style uses peas, ground provisions, nuts and beans and the food is usually grown without chemicals or fertilizers. In some cases where an animal protein would be included in this diet it would be dried fish or fish; shell fish would not be included. The ital cooking is for persons who are interested in the medicinal and the nutritional value of food.
There are a number of Rastafarians that would eat strictly vegetables and nuts, but some would occasionally include seafood. Their cooking style is normally cooked vegetable stews and stir fry, with limejuice, pepper and utilizing a blend of spices and herbs.
One of the big ingredient in the ital cooking is the use of coconut milk, this is used in almost all the dishes to give it a rich thick flavor; additional spices such as onions, thyme, scallion and pimento are strongly used as well.
One of the popular dishes that you will get in this type of cooking is the ital stew, which includes coconut milk, carrots, garlic, okra, beans, corns and rich flavoring of herbs and spices to bring out the taste.
In Jamaica today, many persons are eating more of this style of cooking, especially the health conscious persons. This is grown so popular that almost every corner that you visit on the island you find an Ital restaurant.
Nowadays you will have a number of additions to the vegetable and seafood dishes that would be available to you. There is introduction of variety of soy dishes in the form of veggie chunks, tofu and veggie mince.
You can get fresh vegetables in Jamaica every day; however it is not only utilized in the cooking. There are various juices that you can get as accompaniment to your dishes. Most of these juices will be served all natural with no form of additives. The juices would be extracted from vegetables such as beetroot, carrot and cucumber.
There are some that are for medicinal purposes such as herbs, cabbage, calaloo, sarsaparilla and numerous other juices. You will not get you regular tasting from some of these extracts, but you will be provided with a healthy alternative to the other popular traditional foods.
Some of the dishes that you can get from the vegetarian or ital cooking is the veggie stew peas, curried callaloo, veggie patty, callaloo patty, steam cabbage, ackee and salt fish patty, Jamaican potato salad, citrus curry rice salad, wheat dumpling, brown rice, veggie mince, veggie chunks, spicy eggplant, steam callaloo and many more wonderful dishes.
All of this just makes up the diverse culture of Jamaica and all the different cooking techniques, spices and flavors all combine; creating this wonderful mixture from the indigenous people that are on the island to the ones that came from other cultures.