The Rice Bowl · Main
Party Jollof Rice
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with real fire that builds and stays, savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, on a drift of smoke.
Ingredients
- 500 g long grain parboiled rice
- 600 g ripe plum tomatoes, or 400 g tinned plum tomatoes
- 250 g red bell pepper
- 1 or 2 scotch bonnet chillies
- 250 g onion
- 120 ml groundnut oil
- 60 g tomato paste
- 8 g curry powder
- 3 g dried thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- 700 ml hot chicken stock
- 8 g salt
The skills inside
Jollof & party smokeFrying the paste until the oil splits
The words inside
Bell PepperPlum TomatoPlumScotch Bonnet
Allergen screen
Found: peanuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Blend the tomatoes, bell pepper, scotch bonnet and half the onion smooth, then boil the puree hard in a wide pan for 15 to 20 minutes until it turns from scarlet to brick and stops smelling raw and green. 20 min
- In a heavy pot fry the remaining onion in the oil until soft, add the tomato paste and fry it 5 minutes until it darkens to rust and the oil floats free around it. 5 min
- Add the reduced puree, curry powder, thyme, bay and salt and fry, stirring, for 10 to 15 minutes more, until the oil separates at the edges again and the base tastes sweet rather than sharp. 15 min
- Rinse the rice and stir it through until every grain is coated red, then add the hot stock so the liquid sits exactly level with the rice. Cover with foil, then the lid, and cook on the lowest heat for 30 minutes without stirring or peeking. 30 min
- Lift the lid, raise the heat for 2 to 3 minutes until the base smells faintly of smoke, then kill the heat, fork the rice through from the sides and leave it covered 10 minutes. 3 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes
- It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
- The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
- The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
- The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
- Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.
Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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