In Jamaica, "run down" – or rondón, run dun or rundung as it's also known – is a meltingly tender seafood stew or sauce made by cooking down coconut milk with spices and fish like salt cod or mackerel. It's traditionally served with Jamaican staples like yams, bananas and plantains. The dish is called run down because the fish is cooked down until it essentially falls apart. It's comfort food that chef Andrew Black grew up eating in his hometown of Barracks River, St Mary in Jamaica.
Today, run down forms the foundation for a stunning dish of scallops in coconut sauce that is featured on the tasting menu at Black's Grey Sweater restaurant in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This is a city long overlooked as a dining destination, but this perception is changing thanks to chefs like Black, who was awarded Best Chef: Southwest from the James Beard Foundation this past June.
Chef Black says that his refined version of run down is a dish that parallels his rise from his modest Jamaican roots to one of the biggest restaurant awards ceremonies in the US.
"I didn't know what foraging and organic was, but I only ate that way [growing up], we just didn't know what it was called," said Black, who got into cooking via his grandmother. She taught him about foraging and cooking and even tasked Black with building an outdoor clay oven so the family could grill over open flames.
After discovering how much he enjoyed cooking, Black moved to an adjacent village at the age of 14, where he worked in a hotel resort for two years as a kitchen porter, sleeping in the staff changing room. Black started by doing jobs like cleaning refrigerators and juicing more than 3,000 oranges per day. He eventually progressed to working in the resort kitchen, and his success there ultimately landed him at a culinary school in Ohio.
A far cry from his initial resort cooking stint, Black then embarked on a culinary tour de force, clocking time at a Sandals Resort in Turks and Caicos, The Ritz in Paris and The Peabody in Memphis, Tennessee. He started working at The Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City in 2007.
Chef Andrew Black of Grey Sweater is a master at elevating humble dishes (Credit: Culinary Edge Group)
Oklahoma City had never really been regarded as a culinary destination, mostly relegated to meat-and-potato stereotypes of the American Midwest. But Black was compelled by the reopening of the restaurant in the historic hotel and agreed to give it a year. He soon fell in love with the city and now after 16 years in different Oklahoma City kitchens, Black is proud to call Oklahoma home. "It's the people that keep me here," he said, touting their embrace of him and his food as a key to his success.
Black opened Grey Sweater in 2019, creating elaborate tasting menus with dishes like his scallops with coconut sauce, a menu mainstay that harkens to his heritage while showcasing his singular skills for culinary artistry. "It's a dish that I grew up with and we took to the next level," he said. "The one we do at home [in Jamaica] is more country cooking."
To turn a humble dish like run down into a high-end restaurant dish, Black slow-simmers coconut milk with salt cod, cream, annatto seeds (a seed derived from the achiote tree) and spices like makrut lime leaf, thyme and ginger. If the sauce looks broken, that means it looks just like his grandmother's recipe. Black said, "Growing up in Jamaica, we cooked sauces to death, and they often looked broken, but that's just part of it."
But after years training in professional kitchens, Black now avoids broken sauces and suggests blending the sauce at home, should it break.
The silky sauce becomes the base for a plump, butter-seared day-boat scallop topped with Kaluga caviar. The caviar is a flourish that celebrates his success as a chef. It's a big shift from run down's homelier origins, but as Black said, "the DNA remains the same."
The run down 2.0 has been on Black's menu since opening, and it remains a stalwart. "I wanted to have one dish that just takes me home," said Black. "That's what this sauce and seafood does for me."
Fresh off a crowning achievement unlike anything his adopted hometown has seen before, the scallops with coconut sauce is a dish that toes the line between frills-free nostalgia and contemporary craft, showing how even the humblest country cooking can evolve into something extraordinary and tell a story of success, of a city on the rise, and of home.
A plump, butter-seared day-boat scallop has an optional topping of caviar (Credit: Culinary Edge Group)
Butter-poached scallops with coconut sauce recipe
By Andrew Black
Serves 4
Ingredients
For the sauce:
two 400ml (13.5oz) cans coconut milk
1 cup heavy cream
28g (1oz) salted cod
4 makrut lime leaves
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 shallots, sliced
2 tbsp whole annatto seeds
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp fresh ginger, sliced thin
1 fresh lemongrass stalk, sliced in half lengthwise
salt and pepper
fresh lime juice
For the beurre monte:
1 cup water
110g (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
For the scallops:
canola or vegetable oil
4 very large scallops
Kaluga caviar, optional
Method
Step 1
To make the sauce, combine all the ingredients (except the salt, pepper and lime juice) in a large saucepan and simmer over medium heat until reduced to 1 cup, 30 minutes to 1 hour. Strain the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve. If the sauce looks broken, you can puree it in a blender, but this is optional. Return the sauce to the saucepan, season with salt and pepper and squeeze the juice from about ½ lime into it. Keep warm over low heat.
Step 2
Make the beurre monté. Bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a saucepan. Reduce the heat to low and whisk in the butter a few small pieces at a time, until emulsified, about 3 to 5 minutes. Once emulsified, whisk in the rest of the butter until fully incorporated. Keep warm over very low heat.
Step 3
Heat a medium frying pan over very high heat. Add just enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan, just before the smoke point. Sear the scallops until golden brown on one side only, about 40 seconds. Transfer the scallops to the saucepan with the beurre monté, seared-side down. Let poach for about 2½ minutes, until just cooked through. Season the scallops lightly with salt.
Step 4
Spoon about 2 tbsp of sauce on each of four plates. Place one scallop on each plate, then dollop with Kaluga caviar, if using.
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