THE BASICS OF ETHIOPIAN COOKING

Ethiopia is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Early records of Ethiopia date back to biblical times. In fact, members of the Ethiopian royal family believe they are descended from the Old Testament’s King Solomon and Makeda, Queen of Sheba. Throughout the nation’s long history, Ethiopian cooks have depended on three ingredients—teff, spices, and butter—to give their cooking its distinct flavor. These ingredients have been the foundation of Ethiopian cooking since 3000 b.C.

A Unique Grain

Teff is a unique grain that grows only in Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea. Measuring only 1/32 of an inch in diameter, it is the tiniest grain in the world. It is so small that it takes 150 grains of teff to equal the weight of just one grain of wheat. Although teff is small, it is so nutritious that food experts call it a “super grain.” Eight ounces of teff has twice as much iron as an equal portion of beef and more calcium than a cup of milk. It is also loaded with protein and complex carbohydrates.

An Essential Part of Life

Ethiopians use teff to make injera (en-jer-a), a spongy tart flatbread that Ethiopians cannot do without. “When I explain Ethiopian food to people who have never had it before, I always start by telling them about injera,” explains chef Marcus Samuelsson, an Ethiopian who grew up in Europe. “It is what makes Ethiopian food special.” The bread is served at every meal and is so much a part of Ethiopian life that when Ethiopians meet, they greet each other by asking, “Have you eaten injera yet?” Because Ethiopia has experienced many periods of food shortages, an answer of “yes” implies that all is well. Sharing the nourishing bread during hard times kept many Ethiopians alive.

Plates and Utensils

Making injera is time consuming. To get its tart flavor, which is similar to that of sourdough bread, the dough must be left for three days while a natural substance in teff causes it to ferment. The dough is then shaped into a large disk that measures about 20 inches (50cm) in diameter and looks like a giant pancake. It is dropped into a skillet known as a mitad (mi-tad) and fried over a wood fire. When the dough hits the hot pan, air bubbles form. This gives injera a spongy texture.
When the bread has cooled, it is spread across a large communal platter that is the same size as the mesab (meh-sahb), a drum-shaped straw table used in Ethiopia. The main course, which is almost always a variety of saucy stews, is then poured over the injera. According to journalist Amy Pataki, “It looks like an oversized artist’s palette, the various stews daubed on like various colors of paint.”
More injera is folded and placed beside every diner. Then the fun begins! Everyone eats from the central serving tray and no utensils or individual plates are used. Instead, diners break off pieces of injera from the pile beside their place and use the bread to scoop up bits of stew from the shared platter. The many air holes in the bread and its stretchy nature allow it to absorb the stew like a sponge. When the folded injera is gone, the diners share the injera on the center tray. It has soaked up all the savory stew juices so it is especially delicious. Although this type of shared eating may seem odd to North Americans, Ethiopians insist it brings people closer together. In fact, a popular Ethiopian proverb goes, “People who eat off the same plate will never betray each other.”

Red Hot

Fiery spice blends complement injera’s tangy flavor. For centuries, Ethiopian cooks have been combining different spices to create a wide range of spice blends. At first, the spices were used to preserve food that would otherwise spoil. But they added so much flavor that they soon became an essential part of every Ethiopian meal. Iyassu, who grew up in Ethiopia, explains: “Ethiopian food is the ultimate in spicy cookery, not only because the food is hot, but also because of the abundance of spices used.”
Most Ethiopian spice blends begin with very hot red chile peppers. They give Ethiopian cooking vivid color, zesty flavor, and an enticing aroma. Berbere (bar-bare-ree) is far and away the most popular of these blends. This scarlet spice mixture combines red chile peppers with up to 20 other spices such as garlic, cinnamon, cumin, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger, and fenugreek seeds, all of which are sold in Ethiopian markets. Here, according to author Helen Bergan, who lived in Ethiopia for three years, “A woman could choose those spices she wanted from the colored mounds that filled the air with fragrance. With these spices, taken home wrapped in pieces of newspaper, she made her own special blend of berbere.”
The first step in making berbere is drying the chiles and garlic in the sun. This takes three days. It is common to see the bright red peppers and the snow-white garlic spread on straw mats outside Ethiopian homes. Once dry, the spices are put in a stone bowl known as a mortar and ground by hand into a fine powder with a malletlike tool called a pestle. Depending on the cook, because each cook has his or her own special recipe, a variety of other spices is added. The spice blend is then either roasted or placed out in the sun to dry again. Because making berbere is time-consuming, many Ethiopians make at least 15 pounds (6.80kg) of berbere at once. The spice, which is kept in clay containers with tight-fitting lids, can keep for several months. There is always a supply in every Ethiopian home. Ethiopian cooking would be incomplete without it.

Spiced Butter

Besides using spices to flavor their food, Ethiopians mix spices with butter to create niter kebbeh, (nit-ra keb-bah), a rich and fragrant oil that almost all Ethiopian food is cooked in. Niter kebbeh starts with clarified butter. It is the oil that forms when water and milk solids are removed from butter. For this to occur, butter is heated until all the water in it evaporates and the milk solids separate from the oil. The milk solids are skimmed off, leaving a golden oil. To make niter kebbeh, clarified butter is mixed with as many as 30 spices. These may include onions, garlic, cumin, oregano, turmeric, and basil, to name just a few. The spiced oil can be stored for months without refrigeration.
Ethiopians cook almost everything in niter kebbeh. It adds a powerful perfume and an intense buttery flavor to meat, vegetables, and stews. “The spiced mixture known as nit’ir qibe [niter kebbeh],” explains Samuelsson, “is kept handy in most Ethiopian kitchens to add flavor to meat and vegetable stews. In fact, virtually no meal in Ethiopia is made without nit’ir qibe.” The spiced butter has been a part of Ethiopian cooking for thousands of years, as has teff and fiery spice blends like berbere. Just like their ancestors before them, modern Ethiopian cooks depend on these unique ingredients to give their cooking its distinctive and delicious taste. These are the foundation of Ethiopian cooking.

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Special Skills

In the past, it was the job of Ethiopian women to make the mesab, the Ethiopian dining table. Weavers used different grasses, which they wove into intricate patterns, and added vegetable dyes to color their work. They waterproofed the tables with the juice of the aloe plant. Ethiopian women also wove straw baskets for carrying things, as well as straw bowls, hats, and parasols. Although many modern Ethiopian women buy these products readymade, some Ethiopian women still work with straw, especially those who live in rural villages.

Many Blends

Berbere is not the only spice blend that Ethiopians create. Awaze is another popular spice mixture. It starts with mild green chile peppers. Ginger, garlic, cardamom, basil, and water are added. Ethiopians use awaze like catsup, or as a dip. It is milder tasting than berbere. Mitmita, on the other hand, is hotter than berbere. It is a powder made from the hottest chile peppers in Ethiopia and mixed with cardamom and cloves. Mitmita is sprinkled on meat.




By Barbara Sheen in the book "Foods of Ethiopia", Gale,Cengage Learning (Kidhaven Press), U.S.A., 2008-2011, p. 4-17. Adapted and illustrated (using pictures from the book) by Leopoldo Costa.

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