Wish You Many, Many Jollofs

Africa Avenue, at the far end, is a randomly assigned name. This is the real McCoy: an estuary of lanes, snaking into one of those organically overgrown neighbourhoods, from where you’re apt to spot young Africans streaming out to face another tough Delhi day. Polite enquiries conducted over backalley puddles and curious pye-dogs convey us to this no-frills African dhaba.

Now, food does more things than feed you. Authentic food, teleported, gives to the road-weary traveller (and migrant) a feeling of home. Many’s Square performs this function for Delhi’s modest but swelling African diaspora. It’s cosy and downhome. Liquid soap rubs shoulders with spoon stands, an early sign that the style of eating is not too distant from the Indian way, and hands can get intimate with food. The tables face the wall—functional, in the manner of old southern ‘meals ready’ joints, but not inimical to conversation. The ambient language is Igbo. Jackie Chan fights Al Jazeera (English) for screen space on the corner TV.

Food also gives to the stationary an illusion of mobility. This is what we’re after. Africa on the cheap. But, we are finding out in little ways, the familiar and the exotic resemble each other. Jollof rice, extremely savoury, could be your plate of Udupi tomato rice, except that (as we discover on allnigerianrecipes.com) its making involves chicken stock. That gives it the deep, umami factor. Keeping it company is a piece of fried fish. The chef doesn’t stint on oil.

Moi Moi is black-eyed beans and egg-white all mashed up and steamed into a soothing, legumey blandness. As a gustatory experience, it’s difficult to slot, though there are a few faint Indian cognates one is put in mind of. Visually, these white, cylindrical protein bombs recall puttu. They contain no cheap thrills, nothing to pique spice-numbed palate receptors. A newspaper review describing it loosely as “the African momo” provokes much hilarity around us. But if you take in, impressionistically, the overall zone of look and taste—white, bland, wholesome—it’s easy to see what provoked the analogy.

Those deep, rich notes recur in the soups--Egusi (melon seeds), which is the yellow concoction in the picture, and Bitter Leaf, an African superfood that fights everything from diabetes to menopause. The soups are a true joy: thick, textured, and quite the point of the meal for us. The Egusi seed, having gone through a half-hour ritual of oblation, has attained the texture of scrambled egg. The Bitter Leaf isn’t very bitter: its Latin name, vernonia amygdalina, is appropriately sexier. They’re both layered, and filling. Again, that blend of spry satvik flavours with savoury stock and bits of fish/chicken. The bass notes, holding the harmony, contain a special African satiety genie. Turns out it’s African red palm oil. They also use it in soap and cream, the head chef George Christopher tells us. He has to import it from Nigeria. Would anyone want to buy in bulk? No, we don’t know anyone who uses so much soap.

He’s curious about us. Are we, er, North African? No? Ok, Indian. Ah, Kerala...that’s where we get a lot of goodies from. The plantain, for instance (it’s that king of plantains, nenthrapazham). And of course, the tapioca.

Soup goes with a lorryful of carb. Semolina, rice flour or tapioca flour (garri in Igbo). The shape and volume in which it’s delivered is, well, designed to separate the men from the boys. The nearest kin I’ve seen is the southern labourer’s special, ragi paste. We ordered suji. Imagine half a kilo of upma, except of a harder consistency and without the seasoning. And with a big piece of country chicken riding on its back. Hard, stringy and deep-fried with the skin. Not very amenable to gentle persuasion—but, like the fried mutton, meant for some hard-earned moments of communion. How are we to tackle this? We look around. Fingers are coaxing out large lumps of suji and squeezing it into a palm-sized ball, tossing it up lightly like an off-spinner would in his stride. The African cousin of the urula or mudda! The orb is then immersed in the soup to soak up its eclectic goodnesses. The alchemical moment at which matter is turned into energy and then into a Fela Kuti polyrhythm.

Our advice: skip this bouquet of flour unless you’ve skipped breakfast, and plan to skip dinner. Or you’re splitting it. Or you’re six foot four, like my old friend Dominic Onyechi back in the day, whose diplomatic calmness deserted him after a year of dal-roti-subzi at a hostel mess and who nearly sent the caterer to a hospital. Those days, within striking distance in this part of Delhi, we could only offer a rooftop Udupi for variety. Come back Dom and Joseph O. Kwaka, you owe me a plate of Jollof Rice.

A shorter version of this appears in print