Photo of curry goat served with a salad, rice and peas, and fried plantains, a classic Jamaican dish with African influences for the Christmas season. Recipe below
Enslaved Africans in the Americas celebrated the Christmas holiday in an intuitive way that I argue scholars have not previously noted. For example, in his 1841 trip through the Niger River region William Allen found that the Brass people, associated in some way with the people of Benin, celebrated the “Marocho” at the completion of the sowing season “which occurs about our Christmas period of the year,” writes Allen. He adds it is the “greatest religious festival” with a weeklong of feasting on goat and poultry dishes as well as a steady succession of “dancing, singing, and firing of muskets.” In short, Africans from the Niger River region I insist came predisposed to celebrating with special occasion foods, music, and dance at the Christmas time of the year similar to their European masters. The description of the goat eaten during the Marocho in the Niger River region leads me to theorize perhaps that’s where creolized (something new made from two different older and separate components) dishes like curry goat became a part of special occasion food in the English speaking Caribbean. Africans introduced goat culinary culture to the region from Africa and the English introduced curry to the region from their colonial holdings in East Asia. The photo above is indicative of African influences from the fried plantains, rice and peas, and the curry goat which is a spicy one pot dish--this what one found and still finds in many parts of West and Central Africa. Here’s a curry goat recipe: http://recipes.caribseek.com/Jamaica/curry-goat.shtml
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