Eating Ethiopian style

[Gob]

Something over the last few months which has become a much anticipated event in our house, is eating Ethiopian food. We started off by eating this at, or getting takeaways from, the three Ethiopian restaurants in 'Berra, but progressed to cooking it ourselves. (We had it again last night, Hen head chef, supervising and cooking, Hatch as sous chef, me cheering from the sidelines as KP.)

It's so good I thought I'd share, this is what we had last night.

Injera this is the heart of the meal, the food is served on, and eaten with this bread.

Ethiopian Beef Stew in Berbere Sauce Very spicy, good for a nice clean out.

Yellow Split Pea Stew

Chicken wot

Of course, much to your disgust I should imagine, we used meat substitutes in the recipes.

Anyone else got any "spécialité de la maison" they would like to share?

[rubato]

Something over the last few months which has become a much anticipated event in our house, is eating Ethiopian food. We started off by eating this at, or getting takeaways from, the three Ethiopian restaurants in 'Berra, but progressed to cooking it ourselves. (We had it again last night, Hen head chef, supervising and cooking, Hatch as sous chef, me cheering from the sidelines as KP.)

It's so good I thought I'd share, this is what we had last night.

Injera this is the heart of the meal, the food is served on, and eaten with this bread.

Ethiopian Beef Stew in Berbere Sauce Very spicy, good for a nice clean out.

Yellow Split Pea Stew

Chicken wot

Of course, much to your disgust I should imagine, we used meat substitutes in the recipes.

Anyone else got any "spécialité de la maison" they would like to share?

Ethiopian food is one of the world's great cuisines. I've been eating it my entire life.

They have a lot of different kinds of lentils which lend themselves well to vegan diets.

yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

The one problem we've had is sourcing "Teff" flour for the Injera.

[The Hen]

Presently I am using a 'run of the mill' millet flour instead of Teff flour. But I just. Ant replicate the wonderfully intense sour aspect if the injera bread.

I have started to put lemon juice into my bread mix, but I reckon I added it too late in this last bat h. Next time it will go in in the beginning.

[BoSoxGal]

Do you eat Ethiopian style, with your hands?

[Gob]

Yep, the injera is used to scoop food off the plate and into your mouth.

[The Hen]

The Hatch will typically use 'choppo-stickos', as it is an affectation with her now.

She is extraordinarily skilled at eating with sticks.

[Gob]

For "extraordinarily skilled at eating with sticks", read; "the kid could eat soup with them", it's amazing to watch.

[Andrew D]

I saw on film once a guy who had no hands eating with chopsticks. No use of his wrist stumps, no use of his feet or any other appendages, just him and his mouth and the chopsticks. Amazing.

[@meric@nwom@n]

Not a recipe of my own making but it's a yum one anyway. I am thinking you could tweak this many ways and even make it spicy if you wanted.

I like fresh green beans and a hard roll with it.

Baked Scallops Recipe
Ingredients

* 2 lbs scallops (about 4 cups)
* 1 cup dry white wine
* Salt
* 6 Tbsp unsalted butter, separated 3 Tbsp and 3 Tbsp
* 1 medium onion, chopped fine
* 2 1/2 Tbsp flour
* 1/2 cup fine bread crumbs

Method

1 Preheat oven to 400°F. Place scallops in a medium sauté pan. Add the wine and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cover and simmer for 4 minutes. No longer. Remove the scallops to a 1.5 quart casserole baking dish. Pour off the cooking liquid to a separate container and reserve.

2 Heat 3 Tbsp butter in the sauté pan on medium heat. Add the onions and cook until wilted, a couple minutes.

3 Slowly sprinkle the flour and add the cooking liquid over the butter onion mixture, whisking vigorously while you do so. As soon as the sauce is thickened, add it to the scallops in the casserole baking dish. Stir to fully incorporate the scallops into the sauce.

4 Sprinkle bread crumbs over the scallops and dot with the remaining 3 Tbsp butter. Bake in the oven at 400°F until bubbly and brown, approximately 15 minutes.

[loCAtek]

I don't cook it myself, but on rare occasions I do enjoy the local Ethiopian Restaurant, which is owned and operated by real Ethiopians. I think it's all cooked by one tiny little Ethiopian woman, who speaks only Ethiopian and has these intricate African tattoos completely covering the palms of her hands.

Eating with my hands was/is no BFD since Mexicans have done that with tortillas for almost as long as the Ethiopians have.

Well, I say 'almost' because it took us a while to migrate; cross that land bridge and settle in Mexico, but we probably ate utensil-less the whole trip, I'm sure.

We were too busy inventing the calender, to fuss about forks.

[Jay Tea]

Looks good, I used to eat at an Ethiopian place in South London regularly before the proprietors went home to Adis.

You can look at some of my recent spicy offerings here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid= ... aid=358371

[Crackpot]

I don't know of any local Ethiopian places (I know there is a rather well reviewed one in Detroit) We do have more Thai than you can shake a stick at tho.

[BoSoxGal]

That makes me so JEALOUS! I adore Thai food, and it's a 5 hour drive to the nearest really good Thai restaurant.

My hips probably appreciate my inability to get regular access, however.

[Crackpot]

they're as innocuous as gas stations here

[kristina]

Going out to eat isn't often in our budget, so I make do with quick Thai curries using Mae Ploy curry pastes http://www.amazon.com/Mae-Ploy-Yellow-C ... B000EICISA. They're quite good, and they last for a very long time in the fridge.

The yellow curry paste was a big hit last week, with onions, garlic, carrots, garnet yam, a can of coconut milk, some shrimp, and fresh spinach tossed at the last minute. (A cousin from MA was visiting, and he had three helpings!) Fresh basil is wonderful for garnish, but not at this time of year, so I used parsley. Not authentic, I know, but ya gotta improvise...

[Gob]

We love Thai, and, as you can imagine, we're not exactly short of choice of them here. We even have a couple of Thai vegetarian places we patronise. Though we normally only visit the medium priced or takeaway Thai's, the high end Thai places here are also well worth a visit.

[BoSoxGal]

Ahhh . . . another reason to keep putting a little money away every month for my long-anticipated trip to Canberra, Oz!

[Long Run]

Ahhh . . . another reason to keep putting a little money away every month for my long-anticipated trip to Canberra, Oz!

If that makes the trip worthwhile, you probably have enough for Addis Ababa right now. And, we have a couple of nice sponge bread places and Thai places about 10,000 miles closer. Not quite as much sun, though.

[rubato]

They've been growing Teff here in the US for a while now. You can probably have it shipped to you.

http://teffgrass.com/seed-suppliers

The local Ethiopians and Eritreans usually buy their Injera, or so they say, except for the older generation of women.

yrs,
rubato