SavorThis one-pot main dish is a comfort food in all its many iterations. Anney and Lauren dig into the history, cultures, and (mostly) good-natured wars behind jollof rice.
Hello, and welcome to Save your Predictive iHeart Radio.
I'm Annie Res and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode for you about Jela Frice. Yes.
Was there any particular reason this was on your mind? Lauren?
Yes, a couple months. The reason that my answer has been yes more often lately is that, like a month or so ago, I went through and like marked some tent pole date kind of things like holidays that we're coming up and stuff. So yes, Annie, so we're so We're in the month of Ramadan right now. This year, it started the evening of Friday, February twenty eighth and is running through March twenty ninth. In Islamic cultures and practices, this is a time of reflection and connection and compassion, both inward and outward, and part of that is a daily fast from sun up to sundown. Is not part of my family cultural traditions. I'm not very familiar with it, but from what I understand and hopefully pronouncing everything correctly coordinated around that fast, there are all kinds of different traditions for the pre dawn meal or soukker and the post sunset meal if tar. Both can be daily celebrations of family and community for the entire month, and everyone has their own foods and dishes and drinks that reflect that. Basically, I picked jola rice because we had already done an episode on dates, which are a very traditional fast breaking food, and jolifrice had been on my list like forever, and I saw it on a lot of Iftar menu ideas because it is like a celebrated dish that is iterated through a lot of cultures that observe Ramadan and beyond. Though, if you are observing Ramadan right now, we wish you a blessed one.
Yes, yes, I don't think I've ever had jelafries, but I looked it up. I found some places that make it, and I have some I've had something similar close, but never the real, the quote real thing.
Yeah, I don't think I have either, And unfortunately I think that at this point, knowing what I shouldn't really eat, it's not a great idea for me to eat it from most cultural traditions. Boiled again by my own guts.
Guts have it out for you, Lauren. They do they do? What do I ever do to them? A lot of things, To be honest, yeah, let's not tell too deep into that. Well, kind of speaking of you can see our episodes on Hop and John. Have we done Jambaia?
Yeah, we did an episode on it before we even went to ne Orleans, and then I think walked a little bit of it back through some of our interviews and episodes from that trip.
But we we mostly we did.
Our second episode from the New Orleans series was about gumbo and it touches a little bit on Jumbalaya.
But here we are, here, we are speaking of walking things back. The rain breaking rice episode. I don't know that I've ever come so close to I'm still sorry, melting Toad.
I'm so sorry.
That's all right. We've learned. We've learned since then. Also tomatoes, onions, chili peppers, payea, zoto, biryanni. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I guess this spring says to our question, Oh yeah it does. Mm hmm. Jella frice, what is it?
Well, jellifrice can be made in a lot of way, but what you're basically looking at is a one pot main dish composed of rice that's cooked in a tomato based sauce so that the grains are tender, but separate and just infused with whatever blend of warm and aromatic seasonings you're working with, and furthermore studded with chunks of whatever proteins and or vegetables you're using. It's the kind of thing that where it's popular, like every region and family has their own recipe and preferences, but frequent ingredients include sweet and or hot peppers, usually purad, some garlic and onion, ginger, bay leaves, and some kind of stock. So it's just savory all the way down, like layers of umami, at least a little bit spicy and rich without being too heavy. It's the kind of thing that just fills you up, like from the scent to your actual stomach, to preparing it for love ones or like knowing that it was prepared with love. Because it is a tiny bit fuzzy to make. It's often served in celebratory settings alongside other proteins or vegetable side dishes. It's like, again without having had it, what I from what I understand, it is like that moment that you sink into a warm bath and you're like, oh, yeah, maybe maybe everything's going to be okay.
M yeah, goodness. It sounds so delicious.
It was so mad that I wasn't eating it this entire day.
Oh m hm. Okay.
There are a lot of capital o opinions about how this dish should come together, especially around West Africa where the dish is from and the diaspora. As always, we are not here to litigate that hand up in the defensive position, backing away slowly from the argument. But like, okay, tomatoes and or tomato paste and alions like onions and garlics seem pretty undeniable as part of the recipes. After that, let's start with the rice. Is it a long grain rice, maybe an aromatic one like buzzmadi or jasmine. Do you parboil that rice? Or is it a type of short grain rice? Is it broken rice? I don't know. I can't tell you. The oil that you cook everything in. Is it a neutral oil or maybe butter or a red palm oil? Side note here, I know that palm oil as a category is vilified in the United States, and that's kind of rightly so, as we generally encounter it here as this industrially produced ingredient that has not been sustainably harvested and is often used for a place more like flavorful or expensive fats in various goods more carefully produced. Red palm oil is a traditional cooking oil in Many West African quiz and it also gives foods a red orange tint, which is thematic here. Yeah, yeah, okay. Peppers? Do you use fresh blended sweet peppers and or hot chilies like scotch bonnets? Maybe some sweet or smoky paprika, none of the above. Other seasonings you know, salt and pepper, perhaps obviously, but beyond that white pepper, fresh ginger, bay leaves, thyme, curry powder, nutmeg. Do you add plain water or stock of some kind? Are you using buoyon for your stock? If you are, do you have a preferred brand? Maybe some dried fish or dried shrimp is part of the seasoning you're mixins vegetables like carrots, eggplant, green beans, cabbage, okra, cassava, sweet potato, proteins like beans, beef, chicken, goat, fish, shrimp, smoked snails.
That sounds so good. Yes, there are iterations.
Where you cook it over a wood fire to get some smoke flavor in there. There are iterations where you're looking to let a crispy crust of rice form up on the bottom of the pan, which is one of my favorite things on the whole planet.
Me too.
Maybe you garnish it with some fresh tomato slices or herbs or hard boiled eggs.
Yeah, yeah, definitely, And.
It can be served alongside maybe a little bit of grilled protein of whatever kind, like fried sweet plantains, maybe some coalsla or some salad. It is very common at parties and other gatherings large and small. You know, it's a comfort food and like a secret family recipe and a source of local pride. Like other complex rice puloffs that we've talked about, like layering the flavors and getting everything to cook properly together takes some art and science, you know, like it shouldn't be particularly saucy or sticky, but you want everything to be well incorporated. So there are a lot of recipes.
Online, Oh my goodness, there are which Speaking of what about the nutrition, it depends on how you make it.
Generally a decent punch of protein and carbohydrates, a decent punch of fats in there, Drink water. That's basically it. You know that this is the kind of thing that helps fill you up and keep you going maybe get an extra vegetable.
Yeah, yeah, vegetables, water, look out for yourself, you.
Know, yeah yeah, helps make you feel good.
Yes, that is true. Well, we have the number for you.
I tried the so I've got one ish numbers for you. So the website for this is down as of the current moment. But there has been a touring festival in the United States for the past couple of years, at least for Jalla Frice called the Jalla Festival. And in each city they have different chefs representing different regional styles to compete for crowd favorite. And I love this idea, and everyone else loves this idea because it does get very competitive. Yes, they visited seven cities, I believe in twenty twenty four. Dates for twenty twenty five, they say, are to be determined.
Well, listeners, first of all, if you have attended, oh yeah, you read it.
Yeah yeah, oh there is no There was one in Atlanta last year, and so if it's coming back, I'm like, let's make this happen.
We must, we must make that happen.
I will stand by hungrily while you tell me about everyone.
I'll be terrible about it too. I'll be like Wow, Lauren, you're missing out.
And I can't tell you why.
It's gonna be it's so good. But that competitiveness has a long history and it's still thriving today.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, most mostly mostly joyous uh competitiveness.
But yes, we will.
We will get into that history as soon as we get back from a quick break for a word from.
Our sponsors, and we're back. Thank you, sponsors, Yes, thank you, okay, so yes. As always with dishes like these, a lot of countries and cultures claimed to have been the first to invent it. Oh, most of the top search results I got when I was typing in history of jallaf Rice, we're basically who did it first? So it's very contentious. A lot of it, as mentioned, is very good natured arguing. Some of it is less. So it is frequently referred to in publications as the Jalloff Wars because we have to amplify everything, I guess. On top of that, this dish has gone by a handful of different names and still does, which complicates things too. And on top of that, a lot of West African history, which is where this dish comes from, was passed down orally or erased, so history is a bit difficult to track down, but here we go. Let's break down the history of some of the key ingredients rice in West Africa, which is where yes, most people think the dish originated. African rice is one of the oldest varieties of rice in the world and most likely originated in modern day Nigeria and made its way through Africa after that. Rice growers selected for certain traits over hundreds of years, and as we've mentioned in Slavers, in US states like Georgia and South Carolina specifically sought out this expertise and rice, and some think that some southern dishes like copp and John may have been influenced by Jolla rice. Okay, tomatoes and peppers were probably introduced to Africa in the fifteen hundreds with trade and or colonization. Since they are not native to the continent. Due to the location in various ports, West Africa likely was introduced to these products earlier than other parts of Africa. These ingredients were then incorporated to some of the dishes of the region, which brings us to jollafrice. Historians suspect that the dish most likely originated in Sinegambia, a region that encompasses modern day Senegal and Gambia, sometime during the twelve hundreds to sixteen hundreds seventeen hundreds at the latest. The timeline is very in flux. It's a little whibbly wobbly. Yeah, it's very whibbley wobbly. The original dish that led to jellifrice in all its iterations was a spiced fish dish with rice stuffing and vegetables called sebou gin. Like most jellafrice, the rice of this dish has a red hue thanks to the tomatoes or several popular versions of it do. Not all of them do, and possibly in the early days, those versions didn't even have tomatoes to give it that hue, since again, tomatoes are not indigenous to Africa.
M yep, red palm oil may have contributed color to the dish before tomatoes were popularized, though.
Yes, okay. Another part of the reason people think that joliff rice is from this region is because of the name, which most likely is Senegaluese in origin from the Wolf or Joloff Empire, and this empire specialized in rice farming. The theory goes that the Wolf people created cebu Gin and then other nomadic people shared it throughout West Africa, calling it Woloff for jolof etymology, mysteries history. But the Wolf people were able to grow their own tomatoes by the fifteen hundred, so it could be. There is a legend around a woman chef named Pinda Imbaia located in Saint Louis, Senegal during French colonial rule. Allegedly she was making a one pot dish that called for barley, but she had run out of barley, so she used rice instead, So there you go, jellifrice. However, there isn't really anything to back that up. Whatever the case, the dish took on so many different forms and variations based on ingredients, taste, histories, and colonial influences. Seriously, there are so many recipes, and each of those recipes has their own history in the same countries. Even there are so many recipes, many of them come with traditions of making it communally too, and you can really you can look up a lot of articles and read about that. It's really interesting and just because you know, we always have to have one in episodes like this. In twenty fourteen, UK chef Jamie Oliver called controversy with his jallaff rice recipe. It included things like lemon and parsley, and it led to the hashtag jolliff Gate.
Oh my, I never realized before we did this show how hilariously controversial Jamie Oliver has gone over the course of his career. It feels like he put he sticks his foot in it like like once every three days. Like it seems seems like it's a lot. I'm like, buddy, what's going on?
He's come up in several episodes. Uh, for sure, for sure. Well you can read all about that in the way that a lot of African countries came together over Yes. Sinegal's version of Jelliff rice was on UNESCO's twenty twenty one Intangible Heritage of Humanity list, and.
In twenty twenty three, West African cuisine in general was the top trending cuisine according to Open Table. They said that interest in restaurants serving this kind of broad category of cuisines grew seventy two percent year over year.
Wow.
Yeah, and I believe that's around the world, not just in the US.
I could certainly go for it, I would say, right now, all of.
The pictures looked so good. Fried plantains are one of my favorite foods on the whole planet. Yes, I yeah, I love it. I love it when we do an episode about something that I'm pretty sure I've never consumed and I have the worst, really the worst craving for it.
Yes, that is that is our price as food podcasts. Well, listeners, let us know if you have any experiences with it or recipes.
Yeah, yeah, if you are observing Ramadan, let us know. If you have any family or personal traditions around your pre dawn or fast breaking meals.
Yes, please let us know. But for now, I think that's what we have to say about Jolla Forrice it is.
We do already have some listener mail for you, though, and we are going to get into that as soon as we get back from one more quick break for a word from our sponsors.
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, And we're back with the snun.
Oh. I was so out of tune on that one.
I'm sorry, tune. I like that tune is a question. It was just supposed to be a lovely, nice like when you have that rice dish it's so good.
It felt kind of like the fluttering of heat waves and scent waves coming off the top of it. Mm hmm yeah, yeah.
That excitement before you take your first bite. All right, so Christine wrote. She sent us a follow up because we just recently read an email Christine sent about Abaloney in Australia, and Christine came back in with a follow up about tourism and love it. Yeah, okay, so Christine wrote. I said in my last email I would let you know about Abaloni farms if I find any. The Abalony farms I was able to find are on the far south coast of Australia, which takes a bit of planning to get to. However, I found something even better. A few hours drive from me is the seaside town of Eden, where there is a tourism company that will take people out to forge their own seafood, including abalone. Then they show you how to best cook it. And along the way is a cheesemaker that makes lactose free Canon beer, and a bunch of food producing regions and food festivals. I see a road trip in my future. I am so jealous of your road trips. All of that sounds so cool. You have to keep us updated about this yes, all of this, Yes, so good. Oh my gosh, catching your own abalone and how to cook it cheese. No, you must go, you must go and report back. Yes, please please, You're our only hope. Yeah, you are.
H Anne wrote, I've been listening to your back catalog lately and just listened to the one about kool Aid. It's not really food related, but when you mentioned the man who hired the kool Aid voice to come to his kid's party, I knew I had to share the story. I sent in a video a year or two ago of my daughter going feral on a bowl of rice with soy sauce and Benito flakes. She has sadly become more picky, but is still fun in other ways. For example, she loves Bigfoot. She is obsessed with him for some reason and has a stuffed Bigfoot, a pillow with a pictured Bigfoot on it, Bigfoot books, etc. My brother, her uncle, is her absolute favorite person, and he heard her asking if we could invite Bigfoot to Christmas and decided that he would make it happen for her birthday in January. He found a Bigfoot costume online and called in a favor with a tall and apparently extremely cool friend, and the plan was set. My daughter wanted him to come to her birthday party, but my husband and I wisely decided maybe Bigfoot should just come to our house. Good thing, because in person that costume was utterly terrifying. She took about twenty minutes to warm up to him, but then he coughed, so she pulled out her doctor kit and gave him a full checkup and medicine. This was in January of twenty twenty four. She occasionally mentions Bigfoot's visit these days and still loves her memorabilia, but hasn't asked for him to visit again.
Never meet your heroes. That's so great. That's amazing.
I am so proud of y'all, like for making this happen. And also that is exactly the kind of fruits of your labor. I feel like it as a dedicated goofball adult you usually get You're like, what all.
This didn't go quite as play? It's so excellent. Oh no, I love this. I love this. That the fascination with Bigfoot, the Bigfoot memorabilia, we need that Christmas. Yeah, and then the costume. You've got to imagine. It was scary.
Oh yeah, I mean I find most like fully cost like like like fully covered mascot costumes a little creepy to begin with, and you don't know what's going on behind their eyes, you know anyway, And yeah, just a particularly tall one, and it's yeah, like I'm picturing knockoff wookie and wookies.
Are already a little bit creepy, so that'sh picturing too. Yeah. Also, I love how you're that your daughter was like, let me give you a checkup.
So yeah, no, that's you know, her buddy. She you know, at first she was reticent, but her buddy was sick and she needed to help him out. Yeah, that's really sweet. It's very lovely. That's going to be a memory that comes back. Oh yeah, she gets older for weird core memory for sure.
Yes.
And if if you're if you're unaware, there is a Bigfoot history museum here in the state of Georgia that I'm pretty sure the curator of the museum takes seriously. You can look up many photos our buddies over at stuff they don't want you to know. Have taken a trip there.
Yes, I've passed it many times. I've never gone in, but if you're interested in allowing your daughter showing your daughter some more Bigfoot information. It does exist. It's interesting.
Sure, interesting is a great word for it.
Yeah, yes, yes, and I do love this. I love how kids get these. Oh yeah, very specific, pretty niche. This is what I'm into. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's really fun. Well, thank you to both of those listeners to writing in. If you would like to write to us, you can our emails hello at savorpod dot com.
We're also on social media. You can find us on Blue Sky and Instagram at saber pod, and we do hope to hear from you. Sare is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks us always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots of more things are coming your way
