chrishansenhome

One of the great advantages of living in a cosmopolitan world city is that your fellow inhabitants tend to hail from all over the world. In my parish church there are people from England, Africa, Asia, and North America. In the past we've also had people from South America and Australia/New Zealand as well. This means that when we have a parish bring and share lunch, we get dishes from all over, from English sausage rolls to my pasta salads.

Some of the Nigerian ladies make a dish called Chicken Jollof Rice. The Wikipedia article explains the background. When I was trolling through my online cookbook to find something to cook for dinner, my eyes landed on Jollof Rice. I checked, and the only ingredients I didn't have were peppers, chilies, and ginger. So here is what I cooked for dinner tonight.

Yes, it looks a bit mucky, but it is very tasty. It's perhaps a bit wetter than it should have been, but one of the advantages of cooking this is that there are a multitude of variations depending on where the chef comes from. I suppose we could say it's the North American variation.

Here's the recipe I followed, taken from Market Kitchen's Rachel Allen.

The Ghanaian seasoning mentioned in the recipe is available here in London as "Jollof Seasoning".

Years ago, at perhaps my first bring and share lunch, some of our fellow parishioners brought Beef Jollof Rice. I was very hungry, and took three or four hunks of beef along with the rice. But, one bite of the meat told me that the beef was actually beef liver, which is something I don't willingly eat. Of course, in order to honour those who brought the dish I had to eat four large hunks of it and say how much I liked it.

HWMBO enjoyed this as much as I did, and we have lots left. I'm certain it'll taste even better tomorrow.