This famous West African rice is named after the Wolof people of Senegal and Gambia, who themselves call it benachin. Maggi, a popular imported bouillon cube ubiquitous in West Africa, has become part of the flavor profile of everything there. If you have access to an international market, it will have Maggi cubes, and you can use them to make a Maggi broth to replace the stock here—just follow the instructions on the package. Be careful—it tends to be salty, so go lightly at first to find your bearings.
Kitchen pepper is an old-school spice mixture that was very popular in early American cooking, especially in the coastal South. While it takes its main cues from quatre épices, a spice mix of pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and ground ginger common in French cooking, it also helped to preserve both medieval and Silk Road flavors in Southern foodways, as well as the flavors of West Africa, where indigenous and Middle Eastern spices had long influenced the cuisine. This is my take on this classic. It has the complexity of garam masala without quite the punch and heat. —Michael Twitty
