Jollof rice is an incredibly flavorsome rice dish enjoyed in countries like Ghana and Nigeria. It’s recently gained popularity on social media and with good reason–it’s delicious. Seeing it all over my feed inspired me to put my own spin on the dish.
This pasta dish is inspired by Jollof rice–I see pasta as the perfect vessel to carry flavor into our mouths. Anything can be pasta-ized and it will be amazing–any dish that is sauce-based will work with pasta. Jollof rice is made with something called ‘stew’, a tomato based sauce with spices, and it’s used in more than just rice.
The sauce for this dish is the same stew: charred up onions, peppers, and tomatoes blended up and added to onions fried with bay leaves, tomato paste, and spices. I reduced the sauce to remove almost all the liquid to get a thick sauce that a would stick to the pasta. Here’s where I went rogue: I also added heavy cream and parm to introduce extra fattiness. I also added a spiced whipped ricotta as a topping to the finished resuslt, made with ricotta and the same spice blend used in the sauce.
I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the best pasta dish I’ve ever had. It was a spicier, more flavorful version of rigatoni ala vodka, and the spiced whipped ricotta helped to cool things down but also reminded me of what I was eating.
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