20 November 2011

in which i attempt to post a recipe

The jollof rice turned out surprisingly delicious, considering that I somehow managed to ruin the rice-cooking portion of the endeavor, and it took an hour and half to cook the rice. So it was slightly mushy jollof rice. It still tasted really good, and I enjoyed it for lunch yesterday and today.

Here is how to make jollof rice (I am doing this as much for me as for you, in case it is four more years before I make it again):

Cut up an onion, a green pepper, 4-5 cloves of garlic, and a chili pepper. (More peppers if you are guaranteed an audience who can stand them. One gives a nice flavor without being hot.)

Fry them in some oil. The internet claims that you can add other vegetables: carrots, green beans, cabbage. Up to you.

Fry some meat in the same pan with the vegetables or in a different pan. Whatever. I used Gimme Lean vegetarian sausage, and it had a really nice flavor, but you can use real sausage or chicken or fish or really anything. I think the package I used was the equivalent of one pound of meat.

Add some water and a couple of cut up tomatoes and some tomato paste (I used a little can of Hunts, but whatever. Whatever is a common theme here. This is a very flexible recipe).

Add some salt and pepper and some Maggi Cubes. I can't find Maggi Cubes in the US so I used, as previously mentioned, some vegetarian bouillon cubes and some Maggi Seasoning in a bottle. This mixture should taste pretty salty and bouillon-like.

At this point, you probably want everything in a big pot, because this is a family-sized recipe I am talking here.

Add some more water. If I were smart, I would have kept track of how much water I added in total and added a little bit more than half as much rice (i.e., 5 cups of water, 2.5 or 2.75 cups of rice). I didn't. Well, I kind of did, but extremely inexactly.

Add some rice. See above. Whatever. Stir.

Turn stove down, but not as far down as you would have turned it to cook rice alone. (This was my mistake. A mixture this thick simmers at a higher temperature than rice + water.) It should be just high enough to simmer.

Cook until you no longer get steam billowing out when you wiggle the lid. I have no idea how long this will take, because I had mine at sub-simmering temperatures for quite a while.

You can probably freeze lunch-sized portions and let them defrost during the day. I kept the pan in the fridge for a couple of days, and it re-heated really well in the microwave.

There you go. A completely incoherent recipe that somehow turns out delicious. Even I cannot ruin this recipe.


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