Baby-making cow skin soup

“This is like the KFC in soup,” a mini-bus driver said as he sat under a shed close to the train line at Stephens Run, St Elizabeth.

For the past 16 years, the spot has been labelled as the place to go for couples are having fertility problems. It is also the place to consume some of the finest soup ever served.

“A man tell me say him brethren couldn’t get him girl pregnant fi years and from the brethren start drink dung the soup a two youth him gone now,” Dawn Moxam said as she attends to one of her customers.

Moxam, who has been working at the popular roadside soup establishment for the past two years, says she barely has hands to sell the cow skin and peanut soup. Her daily customers include almost every taxi and bus driver that ply the route as well as students and tourists.

“My bosses are vacationing overseas but I cook the soup the way they do. Dem take pride in them food so them focus only on cow skin as the meat alone but on Saturdays and Sundays, persons flock here for sweet cassava dumplings, white rice and cow skin,” she said.

Moxam refuses to reveal all of her ingredients but stated that the spices and peanuts have a lot to do with the signature taste of the soup.  A male customer, between laughter, explained that on numerous occasions he had tried to copy the recipe without much success.

“Me all go home go try it and no matter how much time me cook it, me still can't get it taste nice like fi dem own. Dem really put them foot in it yaah man,” he said.