It was a hot Saturday in downtown Salt Lake City, and food trucks, nonstop dance and musical performances and a huge bouncy castle dotted the Afro Utah Festival. Tucked into a corner by the main stage, three Utah women tended steaming pots of rice and tomatoes.
“Right now I’m just prepping, like cutting the onions, basically the base sauce of the rice,” said Fatimah Bradshaw.
Bradshaw was born in Sierra Leone, but her mother’s side of the family is Liberian. Growing up, she learned to cook in her grandmother’s restaurant. On Saturday, she was making a Liberian version of Jollof rice, a traditional West African dish made of rice, tomatoes, peppers, onions and lots of spices…