Jollof Penne Rigate
Aperçu
Jollof penne rigate is what happens when the Nigerian jollof method is applied to pasta rather than rice, and it has become a genuine staple of home cooking rather than a novelty. The logic is straightforward once you see it. Jollof is not really a rice dish, it is a technique. A base of blended tomato, red pepper, onion and chilli is cooked down hard in oil until the raw edge burns off and the mixture darkens, and then the starch is cooked in that base so it takes on the colour and flavour all the way through rather than being sauced at the end. Apply that to pasta and you get jollof pasta. Penne rigate is the shape most associated with it, and the ridges are the reason, they hold the thick tomato base in a way smooth pasta does not. It sits in the same family as the spaghetti dishes cooked across Nigeria and Ghana, and it belongs to the same broad West African habit of taking an imported staple and cooking it by local rules rather than the rules it arrived with. In Nigerian homes it is weeknight food, lunchbox food and party food, and it is one of the dishes most likely to be cooked by someone learning to cook for themselves.
Made a batch for iftar using halal vegetable stock powder for the seasoning. Blending the fresh tomatoes and white onions together makes such a smooth base, and frying the garlic in the oil first gives it a lovely rich smell. My late mother used to make a spicy pasta sauce but the bell peppers in this give it a fresh sweet bite.