Last weekend, two of my new co-workers came over to the house, which I currently share with the woman who I am replacing, and the four of us took part in a time-honored, cross-cultural tradition of sharing food and recipes.
We taught each other how to make a couple of dishes that we enjoyed from our respective cultures and I got to know a couple of the people that I will be working with in a more informal setting, which was really nice.
On the part of the Americans, we made refried beans, salsa, guacamole, eggplant parmesan and a tomato sauce. The Ghanaians made palava sauce, yams, fried fish and jollof rice. Seeing as how a friend of mine recommended that I eat as much jollof rice as I could when she found out I’d be heading to Ghana, I figured I would share the recipe that I learned with you here, and a little bit about jollof. Mind you, much of this did not use exact measurements and a lot of it can change depending on your tastes.
A Little About Jollof
Jollof is perhaps the most widely known African dish outside of the continent because of the West African diaspora. It’s eaten in the countries that stretch from Senegal and the Gambia through Mali and Ghana down through Nigeria and Cameroon.
Its name comes from the Wolof people of Senegal and the Gambia, but its origins are often debated. Some attribute it to the Jolof Empire from the Senegambian region, which is plausible, but also considered unlikely considering how languages and people dispersed through the region in the past.
It is more likely a dish from the Mali empire who had many tradespeople who traveled widely, bringing with them blacksmithing, small-scale marketing, rice agronomy and Islam. Many people in the United States may be able to see and taste the connection that jollof has to jambalaya, of which it is possibly a progenitor.
Akua’s Jollof Rice
Ingredients
- 3 small onions
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 1 small green pepper
- 1 handful of spicy peppers (maybe two habeneros) (more or less depending on taste)
- oil
- 1 large can of tomato paste or 5 large tomatoes
- water
- 5 cups of rice
- salt to taste
- spices to taste
Instructions
Loosely chop the onions, garlic, green pepper and spicy pepper and then blend. (If no blender is available, chop all ingredients finely.) Add oil to a large pot and sauté the vegetables until the onions have been browned. Add the tomato paste and simmer. Add salt and spices to taste. Simmer the tomato and vegetable mixture for 5-10 minutes, or until whole tomatoes have been broken down (if whole tomatoes were used). Add water equal to the amount of tomato paste, or about a cup if you used tomatoes. Add the rice to the mixture and simmer until the water has been absorbed, making sure to stir frequently. Serve and enjoy!