My thiebou guinar (Cheh-boo ghee-Nar), Senegalese rice with chicken, is not shown exactly as served. After toting this takeout lunch to the quiet and isolation of a nearby park, I edited out (read: ate) some garden vegetables and hardboiled egg that had been arranged atop it, the better to show off the goodly portion of crispy rice, or xoon (pronounced, roughly, Hone). The bulk of the rice, if less photogenic, was exemplary as well: Riddled with peas, carrots, green beans, raisins, and pimento-stuffed green olives, it was well-seasoned and moist through and through.
Previously: Borokhe (baw-Row-hey), one of three entrees on offer during one day's lunch, is a sauce feuille, a general name for leaf-based stews prepared in many West African countries. This recipe called for spinach and lamb, a little fish and peanut — though not so much peanut as you'd find in a mafe, also called sauce arichide or even "peanut butter stew" — and a generous dose of palm oil. Also shown: a walk on the beach.
J. Restaurant Chez Jacob
2479 Frederick Douglass Blvd. (132nd-133rd Sts.), Manhattan
212-862-3663
www.Facebook.com/ChezJacobRestaurant
