Cooking this week -- Saturday Ethiopian Night

I've been in a cooking class these past two weeks. More on that later. I've been writing some, but not posting so things are getting stale around here. To keep things fresh I've decided to post some of the recent (home) cooking forays with comments and links.

Saturday -- Ethiopian night

Ethiopian style spiced butter (Niter Kebbeh). This is nice to have around as a flavorful fat base for East African dishes. Melt butter, remove foamy milk solids. Add chopped onion, and garlic. When translucent add cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, fenugreek and strain through cheese cloth. It keeps well so if you intend to cook a few Ethiopian dishes, I recommend making a couple pounds of butter and storing in the fridge. Getting the milk solids out is tedious work so make an amount that makes it worthwhile. For recipe details click here.

Saturday -- Doro Wat (Ethiopian Chicken stew) This recipe calls for the spiced butter above. I've had numerous versions of this in Ethiopian restaurants, but Elizabeth and I call it the "mother daughter combo" because it is served on injera with a chicken leg and a hard boiled egg along with side dishes (a vegetable stew alecha, yogurt, and yellow lentil stew).

Marinate chicken in lemon or lime juice. Add onions, garlic and spices including berere to the Niter Kebbeh. Don't go crazy with Niter Kebbeh, it is flavor, but it is also fat and your sauce will be very greasy if you overdo it. After a few minutes add chicken thighs and or drumsticks and just enough water to cover chicken. Reduce on medium heat for 30 minutes. For a detailed recipe click here.

Whenever cooking Ethiopian, injera is crucial. I got brown barley pancakes from my first effort making it myself. Not the thin spongy doughy injera I've come to love. I have a little teff flour and tried a recipe so vague I had to make a lot of guesses. There are places nearby that sell it, but Elizabeth was warping a loom so it was a bad time to interrupt.

My cooking class is helping my chopping and all-around cooking speed, but this just isn't a quick meal. It was fun and gave the house an exotic restaurant smell. To do the dish Doro Wat justice, don't skimp on the berbere. If you have little ones, you may want to have some other options for their dinner unless they have a high heat and spice tolerance.

The Roastmaster's Apprentice

The beans at the top are raw, on the left are Sidamo (Yirgacheffe) from Caribou and my first roasting attempt on the right. Note the uneven color of mine vs. Caribou's

Our Mini Chef is a valuable resource for exploring small markets, sniffing their air ("that smells good") and charming store owners as a seven year-old can. Today's outings were to four small east African markets within two blocks of Snelling and Sherburne. They largely overlap each others' inventory, but distinguish themselves by the owners' native culture (Ethiopian, Eritrean, Somali).

I've been teaching myself how to cook the dishes from this region through trial and error. The internet has been of help, but wandering the markets and asking about ingredients has been as great an aid. Invariably, fenugreek, cardamon, cinnamon, oregano and the spice mix berbere show up, but next to them I've found green coffee beans. I may have graduated from Maxwell House to buying whole beans and grinding them at home, but green coffee beans? I asked.

No one had to explain to me that "baby carrots" aren't a special type of carrot conveniently shaped and miraculously cleaner than regular carrots. I understood that green coffee beans were unroasted coffee beans, but why? The man at the Piazza Market explained with a Turkish coffee maker. "You put the beans in here; cook them; grind them up and make coffee." I blushed. The Mini Chef's presence allows me to ask questions with impunity.

Ethiopia is the home of coffee. A gardener learning about carrots from Baby Carrot Inc. makes about as much sense as Ethiopians learning about roasting coffee from Starbucks. I had to try it.

Within minutes of getting home, the beans were on the stove. I had been advised that slower roasting worked better. I had even learned that from TV commercials. I kept the heat on low to medium. Nearly half an hour later, the gray green beans had turned chocolate-colored. They were uneven, some lighter, others closer to an oily French Roast. A minute in the grinder. When I sniffed the freshly ground, still warm beans I got a nose full of chaos. It was too rich and complicated to describe.

A purist might scold me for using an automatic drip coffee maker rather than a French Press. Oh well. This may not have been the best cup of coffee I've ever had, but I've been eating a lot more carrots out of the garden lately and I'll be roasting more coffee too.

Do you know what this is? Would you eat it?

I was looking at the spices in a Somali grocery store in Minneapolis, but didn't know what this stuff was. No labels on any spices. I knew some (ground fenugreek, berbera, oregano), but this I couldn't figure out by sight or smell.

The clerk and the owner had a long conversation in Somali, then told me they didn't know either. But they could tell me it was good for me. "Put it in your soup it makes it taste good."

Everyone in the store broke off a little bit and ate some. It had heat, not like a pepper, but more like cinammon. It lasted a long time, but it didn't have much flavor. Just mouth sensation.

The picture is poor, I know, but the bits were like little cones. Does anyone have any idea what this is?