On Senegal: the pot, the patience, the argument.
SThe Jolof Empire existed from roughly 1350 to 1890 in what is now Senegal. The dish took its name from the empire. Debate with us on this point at your own risk.
The dish arrived at our kitchen the way it arrives at every kitchen — inherited, contested, half-remembered, adjusted. We cooked it the way we were shown, and then we cooked it the way we were corrected, and then we cooked it the way that tasted right. It took us 16 tries before we were willing to print it.
“You cannot see the rice become itself if you are interrupting it.”
This page is not the final word. It is a footnote on a conversation that has been going on for six hundred years. If we got something wrong, write us a letter. We publish them.
Senegalese Thieboudienne
The origin. Broken rice, whole fish, the tamarind-bright xoonq. Dakar on a Sunday.
