Ikoyi: A Journey Through Bold Heat with Recipes

Product Information

Loosen each tray of rice with some filtered water if necessary, then steam in the oven for 20 minutes.

What I’m trying to relate to the reader is that, yes, I had a privileged experience of eating amazing food as a kid because of my father’s Chinese background. Yet while I make a kebab out of this beautiful animal and show respect to this ingredient, it comes from a love of crappy kebabs I had when I was a kid, which I still love. Since opening in 2017, it has become a culinary destination: impressing diners and critics alike with its bold West African-inspired flavors, innovative combinations of spices with the freshest British ingredients, and striking, textured, minimalist-leaning aesthetics.

There are very few people I admire more than Jeremy Chan, not only as one of the world's best chefs but as a person. In our recipe, we burn and smoke the vegetables over the grill until blackened and blistered, before blending them into a broth of roasted chicken, dried mushrooms, spices, condiments, seaweed, and caramelized tomatoes.

In this book, you feel the creative struggle that one must go through to do something truly special. I went on to create the greatest defense mechanism I could think of: a powerful jollof broth, a vehicle of umami-laden depth, followed by layers of aroma, smokiness, and an all-out assault on the palate. After witnessing the smoking firewood under pots of jollof cooked in Lagos, I knew that the concept of burning must lie at the heart of our dish, too. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. If our guests were going to argue over the dish’s authenticity, at least they would be doing it over inarguably delicious spoonfuls of rice.He discusses developing (and eventually abandoning) the concept of a Nigerian restaurant with his childhood friend—and Ikoyi’s managing director and cofounder—Iré Hassan-Odukale (the restaurant is named for the neighborhood in Lagos where Hassan-Odukale grew up).

The gorgeous, vibrantly-hued new book contains more than 80 recipes, exactly as they’re written in the restaurant’s kitchen, including his decadent take on the classic jollof rice (recipe below). I think of my food as pure expressions of flavor and passion and feeling, so the color and texture are reenacting and mimicking those feelings. The visual presentation is worthy of a coffee-table place of honor, but the book would be equally worthy of a splatter-prone place of use on the kitchen island.Trying to re-create a very technical recipe which is very labor intensive with obscure ingredients—they’re not going to be able to do it. Pour the resulting custard into a wide pan and cook gently, whisking and scraping the edges with a spatula until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. My intention was never to attempt to elevate any preexisting concept but instead to elaborate on an original recipe centered around the core ingredients of the dish: tomatoes, onions, peppers, chiles, spices, and a variety of meat, fish, or vegetables. Toss the peppers, onions, ginger, garlic, and chiles lightly in the remaining grapeseed oil and place in an even layer on the hot grill. This debut cookbook tells the compelling story and journey of Chan and Ikoyi, with 80 recipes that Chan has carefully developed to encapsulate bold his signature style.

This is why I don’t see it as a cookbook, because it’s extremely revealing and honest and goes deep into the creativity. The rice is then dried, rubbed by hand with oil, and cooled before we finish it off by roasting it in hot, aromatic beef fat and our wok hei paste.Leave to cool at room temperature, breaking it up with your hands and adding some cold butter and oil to further break apart the grains. Of all the dishes we have created for Ikoyi, our jollof rice is probably one of the most complex technique-wise but also one of the most personal in terms of storytelling.