J is for Jollof Rice!!!

so, you know how they say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? Lol. Well, me I don’t believe that BS though. If a man wants to misbehave, he will surely misbehave. You get me? Anyway, moving on…

But just to be on the safe side, I’ve been making an effort to learn how to cook better. We learn new things everyday trust me. oF course I can cook up a storm in the kitchen and I actually do love cooking but dealing with a Masters in Law is not as easy as it sounds so I actually have no time whatsoever; I mean, I could live on Indomie for a month just beacause of my very hectic schedule.Up until a few months back, I always thought making jollof rice was rather very long and complicated because what I’ve seen most people do is that they start off as if they are making stew, I think they let it cook for a bit and then they also sort of half cook the rice and then put it in the stew and let it all cook together. So basically you end up cooking with two different pots.This is what most people do yeh? Correct me if I’m wrong. So because of this ‘longness’, I always just stick to my fried rice. Less complicated. with fried rice, once you have rice and mixed vegetables, you are good to go!

so recently I was hanging out with my older cousin and it was lunchtime and she announced that she was going to be making jollof rice so i decided to hang out with her in the kitchen while she made it. At first, what I noticed was that she started off as if she was cooking plain white rice and I couldn’t see any other pot of stew or pepper in sight and she made it look oh so so easy. I was totally amazed. What she basically did was she started cooking the rice, and then after about 15mins, she put some tomato puree (I asked her what this was for and she said that it is basically what gives the jollof rice its colour) and then she seasoned as usual with the basics, onions, thyme, curry, pepper, knorr cubes.) and her final step was adding some chopped tomato plum  and she let it all cook together. In one pot!

Hmm so I tried her method today and wanted to see if it was easy for real, first step is to start off as if you just want to make your plain ol’ white rice,

After it has cooked for about 15minutes, add some tomato puree, just enough to make the rice slightly change colour,(please forgive my silly camera for this halfpicture)

And this is where you season it, I usually don’t use much, just salt, onions, knorr cubes, thyme, curry, paprika, cinnamon and some dry pepper. And that’s about it really,

Allow it cook for another 10-15minnutes or so, and then add some chopped tomato plum. Don’t add too much though, I didn’t even use up to half of the can!,

And then I let the rice cook till it was done. Towards the end, I added some frozen mixed vegetables. (this is up to you, I only used about a handful of frozen mixed vegetables, just to make the rice look nicer really),

When its cooked, it should look something like this….,

So there you have it…easy peazy Jollof rice. All in one pot!!!. Oh, and served with some nice home made coleslaw and grilled chicken wings. please does this mean I'm now ready to move into my husband's house? na so!lol

feel free to share if you know easier ways of making J-rice!

*oh boy, I really do need to invest in a good camera!!!*

Later y'all,

FNLP, xoxo

p.s: why do some people pronounce it as 'jellof rice'?o_o, and also is it just me that finds it difficult to cook in a dirty kitchen? When my friends come around, they can't understand why my kitchen tops/table tops are always so empty and it looks as though no-one's ever cooked in there, I think it's just me with the problem...hmmm