Seven-Spice Jollof Rice

My earliest memories of jollof rice were from holiday parties at my childhood home in Reisterstown, Maryland. My mother was a pediatrician and my father was a civil engineer who worked in Nigeria for most of the year, so we saved Nigerian dishes like jollof rice for special occasions like holidays. On one notable Thanksgiving, for instance, I remember gazing dreamily at the table laid out with all the delicious food. My mom had roasted a turkey, and our extended family had brought lasagna, grilled veggies, barbecued meats, rich and velvety mashed potatoes, a ceramic dish filled to the brim with efo riro (a Nigerian spinach and palm oil stew), plus a perfectly golden brown apple pie, puff puffs (handmade Nigerian doughnut holes) and ice cream for dessert. As everybody settled around the table, my mom entered the room with the final dish—her jollof rice, served in a large crystal dish and garnished with slices of tomato and onion.

Jollof rice was a constant figure in my life. We moved to Nigeria when I was 7 years old, and most of our Sunday afternoons were spent at my grandparents' house in the Isolo neighborhood of Lagos. My father was the first of nine children, and all of my aunts and uncles and cousins came by for Sunday lunch at the Pepto-Bismol-pink family home. The meal was often a rice dish with a stewed protein and fried plantains.

When my grandmother served jollof rice, her helpers would bring a giant brown cooler of rice into the dining room and lay it on the buffet table alongside her big black wooden dining set, followed by another cooler filled with the stewed meats and then a ceramic dish of fried sweet plantains—the crowning glory of the spread. She always had the most delicious fried plantains and later in life revealed to me that her secret was infusing the oil with onions before frying the plantains. My paternal grandmother's Sunday suppers were the inspiration for my pop-up event series which eventually evolved into Eko Kitchen, San Francisco's first Nigerian restaurant and catering company.

Although jollof rice is a Nigerian fan favorite, it actually originated in the 19th century with the Wolof people in Senegal where it's referred to as thiéboudienne or chebu jen. The dish, celebrated throughout Western Africa, is made by cooking rice with aromatics, plenty of spices and a richly flavored tomato-bell pepper sauce.

My fascination with jollof rice grew as it became a bestselling dish at the restaurant. How could I give people the best jollof rice possible, given what was locally available to me in San Francisco? I started with the inspiration of both of my grandmother's and mother's recipes, experimenting with different spice combinations, different types of rice and playing around with the liquid-to-rice ratio. Eventually, at the end of 2019, my recipe for Seven Spice Jollof Rice was born, fusing flavors from Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal and India (my tandoori masala touch) to bring this celebrated rice dish to a global audience.

By the end of 2020, I had sold over 10,000 plates of this dish and taught 300 virtual and in-person cooking classes that showed people how to make my unique take on jollof rice at home. My connection to jollof rice was so strong at that point that most of my dreams involved eating it, cooking it and packing up boxes for delivery!

Jollof rice had traveled all through West Africa, adapting and changing forms in each country that it went to. And through me, the Nigerian American, it had made its way to California and taken on a brand new form inspired by a global palate. Jollof rice 2.0.