I Became My Mum’s Carer & Learned The Value Of Jamaican Cooking

I’d almost forgotten the first meal I hurriedly cooked for my mum on her first night home from the hospital. It was steamed basmati rice and corned beef, heated up with obligatory sautéd onions, but without the Jamaican accompaniment of sweetcorn or green cabbage (lightly spiced with black pepper, perhaps all-purpose seasoning, garlic powder, and knowing me, paprika). It had been an anxious wait all day wondering what time she’d be discharged after breaking her leg two weeks earlier. 

We reminisced about that night recently. The memory of it rushed back to me: how I struggled to open the stupid corned beef tin and how that was the first time I’d eaten ‘bully beef’, as Jamaicans often call it, since my teenage years. Firstly, I’m meant to be a pescetarian and secondly, I vowed never to eat it again because what actually is it?!

Once I had finished rambling excitedly about that first meal, I then remembered how all-consuming being my mum’s full-time carer was in those earlier months, particularly around food. I've always cooked at home but this was different. If I didn’t cook, my mum wouldn't eat. Some of the Jamaican dishes she craved, I hadn’t attempted to make in more than a decade. 

As we chatted, for a brief moment I stood outside of myself and scanned the scene: me, chopping onions for another tinned dinner (mackerel this time) and my mum by my side leant on her zimmer frame. I felt proud of how we’d coped.

I’m now in a rhythm and at ease with the responsibility of sorting most of her meals. When I need my mum’s wisdom, I pop my head into the doorway where she’ll be sitting two metres away on her hospital bed, just next door to the kitchen. 

The shadow of informal caring has followed me for much of my life but it’s changed shape over the years. Since being a child I've supported family members with chronic health conditions and disabilities but the severity and intensity of my responsibilities have changed depending on the situation, whether it's supporting them post-hospital stay or helping them manage their health and disability in daily life. 

The timing of my redundancy and my mum’s injury overlapped so I could take care of her. During this period, it often felt like I never left the kitchen and I scheduled my life around meal times, care workers’ visits and medication reminders. I had to strike a balance between preparing nutritionally balanced meals, and making sure she ate enough while fueling her energy with delicious dinners that would lessen the boredom of being stuck indoors. 

To do this I returned to the familiar: Jamaican dishes we both grew up on and loved. What had faded from memory, I Googled, relying on recipes from Caribbean websites and cooks, especially for curry goat, chicken soup and red pea soup. Like in ‘rice and peas’, the soup contains red kidney beans, not green peas. But it was my remixed salt fish with fried dumplings that my mum loved the most. 

Salt fish is white fish like cod or pollock that has been cured with salt and is popular in Caribbean cuisine. If I were making Jamaica’s national dish I would’ve served mine with the delightful scrambled egg-looking yellow vegetable called ackee or with my mum’s favourite, cabbage (I used leeks instead, an alternative my dad introduced me to). 

To lose the excess salt I was taught to soak the fish overnight but when I forgot, my mum’s advice to “just mek it boil over once in the pot” did the trick. I then let it steam on a low heat with lightly fried onions, garlic, bell peppers and a few sprinkles of seasoning, letting the sweetness of the vegetables seep out slowly to create moisture. 

Allowing vegetables’ natural flavours to take centre stage is a style of cooking I inherited from my mum. She grew up in Jamaica’s countryside and lived with her grandmother, who would pick what she cooked from the yard. A similar mix of brown onions, scallion (spring onions) and bell peppers softened in a little oil would be thrown over a plate of vegetables in the absence of meat. 

My cooking skills fall short when I attempt to make fried dumplings. Success means they have the moreish lightness of my mum’s and any chance of achieving that starts with the perfect dough, which shouldn’t be too sticky (a sign there’s too much water in it), and there shouldn’t be much flour left in the bowl. Once fried until golden on both sides, they should be a soft rounded shape. Instead, my first lot were sunken in the middle, too airy inside and too large. 

On my request, she explained, not for the first time, how to shape the sticky dumplings in the palms of my hands to keep them fluffy. There’s folding, pinching and flattening involved and the oil must be the right temperature — whatever that means. I carried on flirting with the gas fire, turning it up a bit, down a bit, and watching the edge of the smooth mixture bubble. Thankfully, they improved. 

The best in any batch of dumplings is always preserved for my mum and in return, she gave me a child-like grin and rated the dinner 10/10. As I hovered above her with my arm outstretched to take the empty plate, I watched her press every last piece of salt fish against her fork for a final mouthful. We laughed, our bellies full and souls satisfied.

More recently, it was my turn to praise my mum’s dumplings. I knew from the rise of the rested dough and its smooth complexion that those dumplings were going to melt in the mouth and they didn’t disappoint — they were also a sign of progress with my mum’s healing. 

Her volunteering to make the dumplings was as much about her feeling useful and independent again as it was about helping me. On reflection, I asked if her offer was still on the table after declining the help initially. The soup tasted sweeter for it too.

Before this period of informal caring, Jamaican food cooked by my hands was infrequent. I didn’t prioritise going to another supermarket to buy ‘yard food’ or to cook rice and peas when I could do plain rice in less steps. However, in the absence of family holidays to Jamaica and no living grandparents, being able to cook the food is one of my main connections to both the culture and my mum. I adored her food growing up; it was unrivalled. Now when I’m in the supermarket inspecting Caribbean vegetables, it reminds me of when she, my nan and I would do it together. 

It’s not easy being taken care of either, yet my mum has taken this major life event in her stride. I respect her highly for that because it has made the challenges of caring easier to withstand. 

Cooking for my mum has been an honour and a meditation. In helping her, I’ve helped myself. Part of me has been shaped into the Jamaican woman I always strived to be: one with pots of food bubbling on the stove and enough leftovers to fill a faded butter dish for someone to take home. I hope we’ve gained a newfound respect for one another and that my food continues to spark joy and surprise every day.