Rama Dione rubbed chicken with heady garlic and ginger before simmering it with onions and tomato paste. She thickened the pot with a serious amount of peanut butter, and when the sauce cooked to a blanketing gravy, I marveled at the deep, nutty flavor of the dish called chicken mafe. It’s believed to have origins in Mali, then to have spread to the rest of West Africa, and from there across the Atlantic to the American South, where it evolved into Virginia peanut soup. I asked Rama’s husband, Papa Diagne, why he thought this dish became so popular in his native Senegal, hoping to find a little homesick romance. ‘‘We have a lot of peanuts,’’ he said. ‘‘We had to find something to do with them.’’

Born and raised in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, he left Rama there in 1990 and came to the United States. He learned to speak English by watching TV; ‘‘Sesame Street’’ and ‘‘The Honeymooners’’ were his favorite teachers. Sharing an apartment with siblings, he got hungry waiting for them to come home, so he began cooking. First it was for himself, but then he started delivering lunches to Senegalese workers and their curious colleagues around the city. Rama, who he says is a better cook, rejoined him, and 20 years ago they opened a restaurant, Joloff, in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, where they live. I asked him if he spends time in Harlem, to immerse himself in the culture of the city’s main Senegalese enclave, and he replied matter-of-factly: ‘‘I don’t go out much. Mostly I’m between the house and the restaurant.’’ He doesn’t have much time for sentimentality.