Demonstration record

Adaeze Okonkwo

Home cook · b. 1961 · Enugu

Cooks celebration jollof in Enugu. Insists the pot is not to be stirred once the rice is in.

Okonkwo family kitchen

Stories

Oral history

Demonstration record

Oral history

The pot that must not be stirred

Adaeze Okonkwo’s jollof is a celebration pot. Birthdays, returns from far away, the Sunday that is not ordinary. The base is blended tomato, pepper, onion. Palm oil. Thyme. Bay. The rice goes in and then — this is the law — you do not stir. If you stir, you have porridge, she says, and porridge is for another day. The crust at the bottom is not a mistake. It is the part the children fight over. She has eaten jollof in other houses, other cities, other countries. She does not rank them. She only knows her pot.

Recorded by Archive demonstration

Dishes cooked

Jollof rice

Demonstration record

Tomato-red one-pot rice. In the Okonkwo kitchen of Enugu it is a celebration pot that must not be stirred.

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