Adventures in Cooking

Saturday night, I entered into an Ethiopian Cooking Adventure. I bought my supplies at EthiopianSpices.com and used thier recipes for Shiro and Kik Wot. I have never had Ethiopian food before, so I have nothing to compare this to, but I will go ahead and give you my impressions.

This is the injera I ordered. Injera is a staple in Ethiopian food, like bread, rice, or pita might be to other diets.

The injera was mosit and spongy. The thickness was between a crepe and a pancake. It was a very bendy, flexible bread. It is kind of tart and sour, and the taste reminds me of lime.

These are the red lintel I ordered. They are really more orange than red. I made Kik Wot (Red Lintel Stew) with these. They are also used in other recipes, and next time I will try making Misir Wot (Yellow Lintel Stew.) The main difference between the red and yellow lintel stews seems to be that red is made with berbere as the main seasoning, while the yellow is made with Turmeric.

I started by cooking the onion, garlic powder, and berbere in oil.

I then added the water and Lintel and let cook. I cut the recipe in half. (In the future, I think I would add more than one cup of water. The Lintel never really softened up, and maybe a better proportion would be 2:2 rather than 1:2 for water:lintel.) It wasn't really a stew as it was pretty dry.

This is the Shiro. Shiro is flour made from ground yellow chick peas. I don't know if it was because the Shiro was shipped in the same box as the berbere or not, but the shiro had a slightly spicy aroma.

The Shiro recipe started much the same way as the Kik Wot- cooking the onion, garlic, and berbere in oil. (Note- I used only about 1 tsp. of berbere in both recipes, and it was still pretty spicy. Granted, I am a spice wuss, but still...)

Then I added the water and the Shiro. I had to let it cook much longer than 20 minutes to get it to thicken up enough that it was not runny as the recipe calls for...

It did eventually thicken up, and of course, thickened more as it cooled.

Here is our Shiro and Kik Wot on injera.

And here is Abigail trying it... she didn't really care for it. I didn't care for any of the parts seperately, but eating the Shiro and Kik Wot with the injera tempered both. (The injera was pretty sour! And the Shiro and Kik Wot was pretty spicy! But they worked together.)

Overall, I can't wait to try more recipes, and to try some authentic Ethiopian food on March 1 so that I know what I am supposed to be aiming for:)