Growing up I never really enjoyed hot and spicy food. Whilst my friends and family all enjoyed their chillies, I was always too scared to try them out. Let’s just say the idea of a burnt tongue and taste buds was not appealing. However living in the UK gave me the chance to meet a variety of people from different cultures; so naturally I started to explore different foods and flavours. I quickly realised that by incorporating small amounts of chilli to my meals, I would gradually become more and more tolerant of the heat and the sting. Although I am yet to eat an entire Scotch Bonnet; I am able to enjoy meals such as this – Jollof rice with Chicken. So here is one of my favourite recipes, if you are like me start with a small amount of chilli, and as you become “braver” increase the amount gradually. Enjoy.
Ingredients
- 8 chicken thighs, cut into large pieces (with the skin on for extra flavour)
- 3 tbsp vegetable or sunflower oil
- 1 large onion, halved and sliced
- 3 tbsp tomato purée
- 1 chicken stock cube
- 400g basmati rice
- 1 red pepper, deseeded and thickly sliced
- 1 yellow pepper, deseeded and thickly sliced
- 100g okra, halved (optional)
- Salt
- Pepper
- Garlic powder
For the ginger and chilli base
- 2 garlic cloves
- 2 x 400g cans plum tomatoes
- Thumb-size piece fresh root ginger
- 1 scotch bonnet chilli, deseeded
- Coriander leaves, roughly cut (for decoration, optional)
Method
Season the chicken with salt, pepper and garlic powder.
On a high heat; heat 2 tbsps of the oil in a large frying pan, add the chicken and fry for about 5 mins until it turns golden all over. Remove it from the pan and set aside.
Add the rest of the oil to the pan and fry the onions until translucent, about 5 mins. While the onions cook, make the ginger and chilli base. Put the garlic, tomatoes, ginger and chilli into a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.
Add tomato purée to the onions, fry for another 2 mins then add the ginger and chilli mixture. Crumble in the stock cube and stir well; pour in 600ml boiling water, add the chicken, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 mins.
Put the rice into a large bowl, and wash the grains. Repeat the process twice until the water runs clear. Add the rice to the pan; turn the heat down to a simmer then cover with foil and a lid (so no steam can escape). Cook for 20 mins.
Take the lid off (the rice won’t be cooked yet) then scatter the peppers and okra over the rice. Cover again and cook until the vegetables have softened and the rice is tender, about 10 minutes. Mix the chicken back in, and allow all the flavours to set for 10 minutes.
Serving
Serve whilst piping hot, with your choice of beverage. Be careful, this will be hot and spicy. Enjoy!
Kanta Temba is a cake maker and decorator. She is also the owner and founder of Kanta Kakes – cake shop.
You can find her work on www.kantakakes.com. Follow her on twitter @KantaKakes and Instagram @KantaTemba.
Ba Nostra,
Your comments please on this West African Dish. Oer are you too busy digesting the election results. Looks yummy.
Gosh thats some good stuff. Didn’t know you could add okra tho. Thanks as always kanta
Waste of space! We all know where to find All Food Recipes….just GOOGLE!
kanta steals them from there and pretends to be the one who created them…. malabishi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t take chilli but this is something I think I should try . I just hope my stomach will forgive me .
We need more of these African foods kanta
See below for recipe. Enjoy!
?#?GraceJerkEverything? ?#?BBQPorkChops? ?#?GraceJerk?
You’ll need:
3 lbs Pork loin or Pork chops
3 tbsp Grace Jerk Barbecue Sauce
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tsp chopped thyme
1 tsp salt ,1 tsp black pepper, 2 tbsp soy sauce,
3 tbsp vegetable oil
DIRECTIONS:
Combine all ingredients together in a bowl, mix well and let marinate in fridge for 4 hours.
Cook pork in oven at 375°F for 30 minutes, turning once.
Pork can also be cooked on the grill with medium heat turning often until done.
Chicken is used a lot when preparing Nigerian recipes, especially the Rice recipes and stew recipes. Chicken can also be eaten as a snack and washed down with a chilled drink.
How to Season & Grill (Broil) Chicken [Video]
Ingredients
You want to season your chicken so that it will be very tasty and you also want to prepare it such that it will be presentable and appetizing.
Seasoning chicken is very easy and you only need a few ingredients. Most often, people think that you have to add all the spices and stock cubes in the world to make the chicken tasty. But what all these excess seasoning does to the chicken is to take away the natural flavour of the chicken. To season chicken, you only need these major spices and ingredients:
Chicken: Hen (female chicken) is tougher…
Directions for Seasoning and Grilling Chicken
Cut up the whole chicken to desired pieces. Most grocers or meat sellers will do this for you and save you the job.
Put the chicken pieces in a pot; add diced onions, thyme and stock cubes.
Pour enough water to just cover the contents of the pot and start cooking.
Since the hen is tough, it takes quite some time to get it well cooked. It usually takes me one hour 15 minutes on medium heat with a normal cooking pot to get it done to the way I like it. Depending on the heating capacity of your cooker, this may take less. Also if you use a pressure cooker, it will take even much less time so keep an eye on it so that it does not get too soft.
When the chicken is done, add some salt, cover the pot and leave to simmer for…
How to Cook Nigerian Jollof Rice [Video]
The following are other variations of Jollof Rice:
Coconut Rice
Mixed Vegetable Jollof Rice
Rice and Beans
Ingredients
3 cigar cups | 750g long grain parboiled rice
Tomato Stew 500 mls
Chicken (whole chicken, drumsticks or chicken breast)
Pepper and salt (to taste)
2 medium onions
3 Knorr cubes
2 teaspoons thyme
2 teaspoons curry powder (Nigerian curry powder)
Before you cook Jollof Rice
Prepare the tomato stew. Visit the Tomato Stew page for details on how to do that. It is advisable to prepare tomato stew before hand and keep in the freezer. This is so that whenever you want to cook any jollof rice related dish, it is just a matter of adding it to your cooking.
If you will use…
Cooking Directions
Pour the chicken stock and the tomato stew into a sizeable pot and leave to boil.
Add the drained parboiled rice, curry powder, salt and pepper to taste. The water level should be the same level of the rice. This is to ensure that all the water dries up by the time the rice is cooked.
Cover the pot and leave to cook on low to medium heat. This way the rice does not burn before the water dries up.
If you parboiled the rice as described at parboiling rice for cooking jollof rice, the rice should be done by the time the water is dry. Taste to confirm. If not, you will need to add more water and reduce the heat to prevent burning. Keep cooking till done.
Serve with Fried Plantain, Nigerian Moi Moi, Nigerian Salad or Coleslaw.
You can spice up this…
Nigerian Agidi Jollof is mostly eaten as a snack but you can also serve it as a light lunch or dinner.
How to Make Agidi Jollof [Video]
Agidi Jollof is derived from its white counterpart Agidi/Eko but with some added ingredients. It is just like when we compare White rice and stew to Jollof Rice.
Ingredients for Agidi Jollof
300g Soft chewable bones a.k.a. Biscuit bones
200g Corn flour or Akamu/Ogi
250ml Tomato Stew
1 big stock cube
1 onion
½ teaspoon curry powder
Pepper & Salt to taste
200ml cold water
Hot water
You’ll also need:
Uma leaves (Thaumatococcus Daniellii) for wrapping the Agidi Jollof when done. You can also put them in plastic containers or even aluminium foil.
Notes about the ingredients
If you are in…
Cooking Nigerian Moi Moi with beans flour can be challenging because during mixing, the dry beans flour does not give a true consistency, unlike when freshly peeled beans is used.
Cook Nigerian Moi Moi with Beans Flour [Video]
How to Cook Nigerian Moi Moi Peeled Beans
How to Cook Nigerian Moi Moi with Leaves
Ingredients
For 7 big wraps of Nigerian Moi Moi, you will need:
250g beans flour
2 tablespoons ground crayfish
3 big stock cubes
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 onions
Salt and Habanero pepper (to taste)
2 Tatashe peppers (deseeded)
or 200g watery tomato puree (sold outside Nigeria)
3 cooking spoons vegetable oil
1.2 litres cool water
Moi Moi Accessories
They are optional but you can add any of the following to…
Ingredients For Ugali
Maize Flour
Water
Mwiko ( A wooden cooking stick with a flat end).
KANTA TRY SOMETHING ELSE OTHER THAN STEALING OTHER PEOPLES WORK!
Come on guys the lady is just giving out a recipe and how to cook the meal. Nowhere did she say it was her own recipe.