Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Newfie food: Jigg's dinner

Jigg's dinner is  a hearty meal of pink salted beef still on the bone, boiled together with chunks of root vegetables including carrot, turnip and potato. This meal is said to be typically served on Thursday nights in Newfoundland homes and family style restaurants. My dinner was accompanied with mashed yellow peas, and a lightly sweetened bread pudding on the side. It is common to have gravy poured over the entire dish. Since most Newfoundland dishes are only flavoured with salt, you can usually expect to find various picked condiments at the table to go with the meal. My table had a small bowl of intense deep magenta pickled beets and bright yellow, mustard pickled cabbages, both of which I found as an absolutely wonderful addition to the meal. I had originally thought that my blueberry bread pudding was part of my dessert, and had found it weird that the server had drenched it in gravy, but later when a server had come to ask what I had wanted for dessert, I had then realized that in fact I was mistaken about the bread pudding. I ended up trying the partridge berry bread pudding which was drenched this time not in gravy, but in a transparent golden custard.   

Clockwise from top centre: Mashed peas, salted beef, turnip, potato, carrot, cabbage, pickled cabbage, pickled beet, blueberry bread pudding covered in gravy.

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