Well, I am still here. Sorta. I am not posting from my normal couch up in Seattle. I am instead posting from my old couch in California. This is where I have been pretty much since my last post. I'm home visiting my family and am going back to Seattle (and work, blah) in a couple of days. Since I have been home I've been letting my mother cook for me and eating out way too much for my own good.
I did make dinner once when I was craving Ethiopian food. I really enjoy Ethiopian food. It's a beautiful food with an almost magical spice blend that I love and find enchanting in some way. Also, I don't really like meat. Sometimes I will crave steak or something, but more often than not I don't eat a lot of meat. I think most of this has to do with the fact that in Seattle I live by myself and it's annoying to cook meat for one. I would rather have lentils or curry than meat most of the time. And if I do use meat it is generally in a small way as an accent or as an ingredient, not as a main component. For example in a curry not in a Thanksgiving dinner sort of way, even though I do love Thanksgiving dinner ever so. Back to Ethiopian food, I love it that Ethiopian cuisine has a very large vegetarian menu. Also, last but not least, I love anything that I can eat with my hands. I used to eat my salad and my dinner with my hands until my parents would yell at me to stop.
When I decided to make Ethiopian food I had a big hurdle to cross. Ok, not that big, but not that small either. Bigger than a breadbox but smaller than the dinosaur era orange car that sits in my parent's garage collecting dust (and most likely spiders). I don't know which Ethiopian dishes I like nor did I have a source for Ethiopian recipes. The reason I don't know what I like is because whenever I go out to eat Ethiopian, generally with my vegetarian brother, we just get the vegetarian sampler. And luckily I like all the stuff he doesn't and vice versa. So there would have to be some dish identification and general recipe finding, a job fit for Google.
First though I want to share what looks like a beautiful book , that I found in my Google searching and visited at my local Borders. Its definitely added to my list of Giant Cookbooks that I will buy once I have the Money. I don't know why so many people insist on having cookbooks that are better suited for a coffee table than a kitchen. I mean some of these books are bigger than my tiny apartment kitchen. Regardless their siren call ensnares me and well let's just say I have a couple in my room waiting patiently for me to gain the courage to finally cook something from them. This may be a good time to tell you I love buying cookbooks and I use them as references and for ideas, but I don't always follow them.
Anyway I found a great website with pictures of different dishes , which I found to be enormously helpful in identifying different dishes. Sadly though, many of the dishes I identified as being something I recall weren't easy to find online. However, I ended up finding another website with lots of recipes, some of which I tried.
Going clockwise from the top is Kae Atar Wot (split green peas), Collard Greens and Spiced Cheese, Yetakelt W'et (Spicy Mixed Vegetable stew), and a Mushroom dish I came up with using the Ethiopian Berbere spice mixture.
Everything was easy to make and really tasty. I forgot to take pictures of the Injera which the the flat bread you use to eat with, but if you look at some of the link pictures you can see the porous flat bread underneath some of the dishes.
To be fair I did not strictly follow the recipes (I used less butter, and I did not use the spiced clarified butter because I was lazy), but I stayed pretty close to them and things turned out great. I was so happy with the dinner and I think my favorite were the mushrooms and lentils.
My big word of caution for the lentils is that the liquids will reduce and the salt as well as the spices (but keep in mind the salt) will intensify. I forgot this and then was quickly reminded.
Recent Comments