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• Portapies' fried sweet plantains and Jamaican patty

Jamal Johnson-Anderson grew up in the north London neighborhood of Hackney learning to cook from his Jamaican grandmother. Every Sunday after church, he recalled, she'd cook up a storm, moving fluidly between British and Jamaican recipes and ingredients, singing along to the BBC's "Songs of Praise" while her grandson peeled potatoes or whipped cake batter.

"Grandma put curry powder in the mash for shepherd's pie. She would go from making an English fry-up to cooking ackee and saltfish," Johnson-Anderson said, referring to the classic Jamaican dish combining the starchy, savory fruit with dried, salted white fish. She loved to see people enjoying her food and often declared: "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, put down the fork and use your hand!"

• Melissa Pasanen
• Jamal and Sakile Johnson-Anderson

Johnson-Anderson's grandmother has passed away, but her influence endures at Portapies, the Shelburne-based food business he launched last October with his wife, Sakile. On the delivery-only menu, Jamaican patties share billing with English pasties (all $7), flanked by fried sweet plantains ($2.50), chunky Brit-style chips (aka fries; $5) and Jamaican fried dumplings ($2.50).

Patties and pasties belong to the large international family of handheld, dough-encased, portable meals. Under Portapies' current model, the business name is doubly relevant because the Johnson-Andersons ferry each order to customers throughout Chittenden County at no charge.

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• Portapies beef patty

I received a heads-up text about 10 minutes before the couple arrived at the door with my order, which included two patties (beef and curry chicken), two pasties (chicken-and-mushroom and cheese-and-onion) plus one peach hand pie. The pastries were still warm in their wax paper bags.

The half-moon-shaped patties boasted imperfectly perfect, tender, mustard-yellow crusts and richly spiced fillings with a satisfying (but not intimidating) punch of heat. The rectangular pasties were crafted with homemade puff pastry holding mild and creamy fillings reminiscent of classic New England pot pies. The pasties and the round, icing-drenched fruit pie were good, but the patties were standout craveable and unusual around here.

The couple works in the commercially licensed Shelburne home kitchen of Sakile's parents, Marcelle Bunbury-Whitcomb and Robert Whitcomb, who previously used it to prep for their mobile Caribbean food business called Bunbury EAT.

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• Chicken-and-mushroom pasty

Sakile, 29, grew up in Vermont and London. She and Jamal, 30, met in university in London. The pair married in Vermont in 2015, returned to England to live in a town called Colchester, and now reside, coincidentally, in Colchester, Vt. They came back in 2017 seeking a quieter and more peaceful place "to settle down and have a family," Jamal said.

Both were working for Howard Center, but as Jamal approached his 30th birthday, he felt compelled to follow his passion. Thanks in large part to his late grandmother, Jamal loves to cook. "He's always showing me up in the kitchen," his wife joked. The couple hopes to eventually open a small corner bakery.

• Melissa Pasanen
• Jamal Johnson-Anderson demonstrating pastry technique

Jamal has invested a lot of time in perfecting his recipes with traditional and nontraditional ingredients. On a well-floured surface in the Shelburne kitchen, he demonstrated the method that yields his flaky curry- and turmeric-infused patty crust. "There's a lot of thought to it," he said.

Some of Jamal's touches are top secret, including the magic twist in the beef patty beyond the usual allspice, clove, Scotch bonnet chiles and tomato paste. The ingredient is so nontraditional, in fact, that it must remain confidential "for his own safety," Sakile confided with a chuckle.

Purists, stand down: The result is an irresistible patty you should get your hands on.