The Jollof Wahala!

When I was a complete bachelor. Life wasn't that rosy. How to eat three square meals was always wahala. At that time, I'd just completed Tamale NTC and earned as little as GHc50 as student's allowance. I couldn't possibly risk buying fried rice with chicken with my meagre allowance else it will finish in just a week. I occasionally patronised roadside waakye mainly for its satiety value but not taste.

There was so much pressure on my chicken change allowance at that time because mum and dad had relocated to a new place far from town - outskirts. So, the morning porridge and the nightly constant of TZ prepared by my mum was out of my immediate reach. Hence, the trickle down effect on my money.

To mitigate the food wahala, I bought a rice cooker. I wanted to maximise my GHc50 at least for a month's stretch all times. I was always running an austere budget in order to avoid overruns. My mind was like a subtraction-programmed calculator; it was doing subtraction all the time to assess my increasing incompetence to spend.

The only thing I could do with my rice cooker was to boil rice. I couldn't prepare stew for rice. My sister had prepared rice stew for me in a saucepan. My only duty was to heat the stew everyday to prevent it from going stale. I realised my bachelorhood had become chronic when I could wake up as early as 4 am to boil rice for breakfast. I could eat rice 24/7 without getting fed up or may be I got fed up but there was no option.

One day, I saw a book seller with a recipe book. I bought it. I wanted to hone my culinary skills and diversify my meals. I wanted to be a good cook on my own self pursuits and practices. The first thing that caught my eyes on the recipe book was how to cook jollof rice. I was momentarily swept from the feet with desire to prepare my first jollof all by myself.

As directed by the book, I quickly organised my ingredients needed for the jollof takeover. Even before I started preparing it, I began to smack my lips of its tastiness.

I turned on my rice cooker until its saucepan was hot. I poured my 1 cedi groundnut oil in it, followed by chopped onions, keta school boys, mashed tomatoes and powdered pepper. It was "chimming" in my ears and I could see the aroma running out of the door as if to announce that Chef Confidence is cooking jollof rice. I added water to increase the volume of the frying ingredients. Next, was to add salt. I've had troubles with adding salt to food. I always over-added salt in all my cooking exploits. This was jollof I was committing so much resources to prepare and for that matter won't take chances with salt. I recalled that my mum put a handful of salt whenever she's cooking soup. The soup's saucepan was three times my rice cooker's saucepan. Therefore, I will need approximately one-third of salt for my jollof using "if less more divide" rule of ratio and proportion in maths. It took me barely quarter hour to calculate the amount of salt to put in it.

I then soaked and washed three cupful of rice twice before pouring it in the simmering broth. I covered the saucepan with the lid and opened it every minute to look at the face of the jollof. I kept on adding more water to it until the face of the rice looked like a waterlogged area.

The aroma of the jollof rice was good and I began salivating. I fetched a laddle of it into my bowl to wash down my saliva. To my outmost disappointment, the jollof rice was not delicious - it wasn't tasteless - but it didn't taste as much as the efforts and ingredients I committed into it. I couldn't finish eating just a laddle of it. I felt I didn't do enough to give it a great taste.

I quickly rushed to the nearest provision store and bought a tin of tomato paste, a tin of African Queen Mackerel and two tins of Sardine. I didn't want the money I committed in preparing the jollof rice to go waste because of bad taste. So, I was ready to spend more to give it an intercontinental taste.

I mixed the tomato paste in a small bowl of water and poured it into the jollof rice. With the African Queen Mackerel, I hand-blended it before pouring it into the jollof. The rationale for hand-blending it was to make sure that every atom of the tasty mackerel reaches every nook and cranny of the jollof rice. Then, I decorated the face of the jollof with the two tins of Sardine of six fishes. I waited for fifteen minutes for the deliciousness of the second batch of competent additives to takeover every grain of the rice.

When I opened the lid of the saucepan, the aroma of the jollof rice defied scientific principle of osmosis as it penetrates through the walls of my room. The aroma alone made me half satisfied. I fetched five laddles of the jollof to placate my taste buds but I was shocked to the bone marrow. The taste didn't improve at all. It was still like that or perhaps deteriorated.

I felt quite bad about the resources, money and time wasted into preparing a jollof of undefinable taste. But then, I was hungry and couldn't go to bed on empty stomach. My only hope was the jollof that particular evening. I'd to close my eyes tight and gobble down the bland-to-tasteless jollof down my throat.

After eating, I whispered to myself that I should've bought kenkey and enjoy it with my African Queen Mackerel and Sardines. However I was of the belief that the taste will improve by the next day. But I couldn't even taste it the next morning; it was untastable. I took the saucepan with heavy heart of the huge financial loss and poured everything in it into the dustbin.

From that day, I realised that knowing something in a book is never knowing how to do it practically. I also realised that I can never cook anything apart from boiling yam and egg. As a matter of fact, I hate cooking and I don't want to even learn how to cook. I'm just lucky that I haven't developed food aversion for jollof rice after that bad encounter.

If it so happen that my future wife wouldn't be able to cook one day, I will suggest that we go out and buy food.