Zenash Beyene pours a thick, tan liquid onto a round electric griddle and gracefully tilts it around to create a perfect circle. She covers the huge pancake with a lid and turns to her visitor to discuss Ethiopian cooking.
“Ethiopian food is about more than just ingredients,” she says, her high cheekbones rising as she smiles.”You can have a recipe and follow it exactly, but to really make Ethiopian food, you have to feel it, you have to have it in the genes.”
Still, when you watch the ease with which she coaxes the finished, unflipped pancake off the griddle onto a wicker trivet and transfers it onto a cooling table, it gives you hope that with enough practice, it can be learned.
Beyene is cooking injera, the foundation of Ethiopian cuisine, at her Chicago restaurant, Ras Dashen. The huge, sour pancake lies beneath nearly every Ethiopian meal, usually topped with colorful scoops of slow-cooked meat stews, creamy legumes and vibrant vegetables. Folded rounds of this crepelike bread are also served on the side and used as spoons, napkins and bread.
In addition to being eaten in the restaurant,
Beyene’s famous injera sells like hot cakes as takeout.
But making injera is not like whipping up a short stack on a Saturday morning. The batter for these cakes can be fermented for up to three days to achieve its signature tang; otherwise, a starter from a previous batch needs to be added to speed the fermentation along.
And authentic injera is really only supposed to made with teff, a grain cultivated only in Ethiopia until a short time ago and still expensive in the U.S. Most Ethiopian restaurants in America use a teff and wheat blend.
Still, recent growth in the number of Ethiopian restaurants in Chicago and the wider availability of Ethiopian ingredients and services have made enjoying the East African country’s cuisine easier than ever.
One of these services is a young Web site, injera.com, where food lovers can order an array of Ethiopian staples, including cooked injera, and have them delivered overnight.
For those who don’t want to cook at home, Chicago now has two Ethiopian food enclaves. One is long established, in the Lakeview/Wrigleyville area of North Clark Street, where Tekle Gabriel opened Mama Desta’s almost 18 years ago. Ethiopian Village and Addis Abeba followed not long after.
The newer cluster of Ethiopian eateries is in Edgewater, where Ethiopian Diamond has been operating for six years. In the last year it has been joined by the small, informal Merkato and the larger, ornate Ras Dashen.
The two neighborhoods lie on either side of Uptown, where most of Chicago’s 5,000 Ethiopian-Americans live.
Although many from the community (especially bachelors) patronize the restaurants, most families prefer to cook their native food at home. So where do the rest of the restaurant customers come from?
“Our clientele from the beginning was mostly the vegetarian non-Ethiopians,” says Atsede Yimer, chef at Ethiopian Village.
Certainly the cuisine offers a rich variety of dishes for non-meat eaters, largely because most Ethiopians are Coptic Christians. Their religion features more than 200 fast days each year, during which the consumption of meat is forbidden. So Ethiopians have developed scrumptious ways to cook yellow split peas, lentils, chickpeas, kale, spinach, okra and more.
But during the non-fast days Ethiopians enjoy their meats, notably kifto, a steak tartare seasoned with butter, salt and ground red pepper. More often, meat is cooked in delicious stews made with lamb, beef, fish and chicken (chicken stews are always served with hard-cooked eggs). Never pork, for religious reasons. Spice mixtures are complex–using garlic, ginger, ground red pepper, cardamom, allspice, cloves and more–but never does one flavor dominate.
“Our cuisine comes from a meeting of cultures, including those in the Middle East, Europe and Africa,” Yimer says. “So we use a blend of spices. If you taste one spice in the dish that is not good cooking.”
These sophisticated spice blends infuse the cuisine’s two main preparations: alicha and wat. Alicha preparations of legumes and meats is bright and light with hints of ginger and garlic. The dark, bold wat, though, employs a mix of intense spices called berbere. It is kind of like an Ethiopian mole, minus the chocolate. Every cook has her own secret berbere spice blend, but the fiery concoction usually includes ground red peppers, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, garlic and salt and often is mixed with tomato paste.
You can make your berbere blend or buy it on the Internet or at Ethiopian Village.
Gabriel’s recipe for doro wat (spicy chicken stew) called for a full cup of berbere spices (much of it ground red pepper), which in the Tribune test kitchen produced an incendiary dish that only the toughest tongue among us could tolerate. We modified the ratio of ground red pepper to paprika to cool it down a bit.
If you are serving Ethiopian food to guests at home, you might want to create a more authentic experience by eating around a low communal table and washing your guests’ hands in the traditional manner before the meal. For this you would bring a basin and pitcher filled with warm water to the table and then pour it over your guests’ right hands. Hang a clean towel on your left arm for drying.
In terms of table etiquette, Gabriel offers these hints:
“Eat with your right hand. We are discouraged to do anything with our left hand. You don’t have to talk too much. Give all respect to your meal and sit and enjoy the blessing of your labor with the family.
“The oldest person blesses the meal and then he tastes a little bit of injera and hands it out to the rest of us. And make sure you don’t eat all the injera on the side, because you want save room for the injera from the middle with all the sauce. It is the best.”
Beyene concurs that an Ethiopian meal should be more than just grabbing a quick bite.
“For us, sitting down and having a meal together is more than just eating, it is about loving each other,” she says. “That is why in my country if someone hurts someone else, we say, ‘I cannot believe he would hurt that person; those two ate and drank together.’ “
Ethiopian pancakes (Injera)
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Standing time: Overnight
Cooking time: 1 minute per batch
Yield: 16 pancakes
This adaptation of a traditional recipe for Ethiopia’s basic bread is from chef Atsede Yimer of Ethiopian Village. It is served at every meal with meat and vegetable stews.
2 cups self-rising flour, such as Aunt Jemima
4 cups water
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
6 tablespoons regular pancake mix
1. Mix the flour and water together in a bowl; let stand overnight. Pour off any water that has risen to the top.
2. Combine flour mixture, baking powder and pancake mix in blender container; blend on high until smooth, adding more water if necessary to make a thin pancake batter.
3. Heat a 10-inch non-stick skillet over medium high heat. Pour in 1/4 cup of the batter; immediately tilt the skillet to create a thin pancake. Cover; cook until bubbles break, about 1 minute. Transfer to platter. Repeat with remaining batter, stacking the pancakes.
Nutrition information per pancake:
65 calories, 3% calories from fat, 0.2 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 250 mg sodium, 14 g carbohydrate, 1.8 g protein, 0.4 g fiber
Ethiopian spicy chicken stew (Doro wat )
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Yield: 8 servings
Berbere, the Ethiopian spice mixture, adds a powerful kick to this chicken stew. If you prefer less heat, use less of the red pepper called for in the berbere recipe. For a lower-fat result, you can halve the amount of butter called for. The recipe is adapted from Tekle Gabriel, owner of Mama Desta’s. Serve this stew with injera or rice.
8 red onions, peeled, quartered
1 cup clarified butter, see note
1 cup berbere spice mix, see recipe
1 1/4 cups water
8 chicken legs, skinned
4 skinless chicken breast halves, cut in half
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon ground nutmeg
4 hard-cooked eggs, peeled, quartered
1. Puree onions in bowl of food processor. Transfer onions to large Dutch oven or saucepan. Cook, stirring often, over medium heat, until onions are lightly browned and liquid from onions has evaporated, about 30 minutes.
2. Reduce heat to low. Stir in clarified butter, berbere mix and 1/2 cup of the water. Cook 15 minutes. Add chicken and remaining 3/4 cup water; simmer 30 minutes. Stir in garlic; cook 10 minutes. Stir in nutmeg; cook 5 minutes. Transfer to platter; garnish with eggs.
Note: To make clarified butter, heat 2 sticks butter over low heat in small saucepan. Simmer until milk solids collect at bottom of saucepan, about 20 minutes. Skim any foam off top. Remove butter from heat. Carefully pour butter through fine sieve into measuring cup, leaving white milk solids in saucepan. (Can be stored in refrigerator up to 3 months.)
Nutrition information per serving:
705 calories, 57% calories from fat, 45 g fat, 20 g saturated fat, 345 mg cholesterol, 1,835 mg sodium, 18 g carbohydrate, 58 g protein, 5 g fiber
Spinach with onions (Quosta)
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Yield: 8 servings
Owner Sisaye Abebe of Ethiopian Diamond restaurant shared this recipe for a side dish.
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 yellow onions, chopped
8 cloves garlic, minced
4 whole jalapeno chilies, seeded, minced, optional
4 boxes (10 ounces each) frozen spinach, thawed
2 teaspoons salt
Freshly ground pepper
1. Heat oil in large Dutch oven. Add onions; cook over medium heat until golden, about 10 minutes.
2. Add garlic and jalapenos. Cook, stirring, 30 seconds. Add spinach, salt and pepper to taste; cover. Cook until tender, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Taste; adjust seasoning.
Nutrition information per serving:
120 calories, 49% calories from fat, 7 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 690 mg sodium, 12 g carbohydrate, 5 g protein, 5 g fiber
Yellow split pea stew (Kik alicha)
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Yield: 6 servings
This vegetarian stew is adapted from a recipe from Ethiopian Village. To make the dish spicy, omit the ginger, and add in its place 1 tablespoon of berbere spice mixture (see recipe), 2 tablespoons tomato sauce and chopped green chilies to taste.
3 cups water plus 2 tablespoons
1 cup dried yellow split peas
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 piece (1-inch long) fresh ginger root, peeled, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
1. Place 3 cups of the water and peas in large saucepan. Heat over high heat to boiling. Reduce heat to medium; cook until almost tender, about 30 minutes.
2. Heat olive oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat; cook onion until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, ginger and turmeric; cook 1 minute. Add remaining 2 tablespoons water; cover. Cook on low heat, 3 minutes. Add mixture to cooked peas; stir in salt. Simmer until peas are very soft, about 30 minutes. Taste; adjust seasonings.
Nutrition information per serving:
140 calories, 30% calories from fat, 4.9 g fat, 0.7 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 395 mg sodium, 18 g carbohydrate, 7 g protein, 7 g fiber
Berbere spice mix
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 3 minutes
Yield: About 1 1/4 cups
This spicy-hot mixture is used in many Ethiopian stews. For less heat, reduce the amount of red pepper. It is adapted from a recipe used at Mama Desta’s restaurant.
1/2 cup each: sweet paprika, ground red pepper
2 tablespoons each: salt, garlic powder
1 tablespoon each: ground allspice, cardamom pods
1. Combine paprika, red pepper, salt, garlic powder and allspice in small bowl.
2. Heat a small, dry skillet over medium heat; add cardamom pods. Heat until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Cool. Grind in spice grinder or clean coffee grinder. Add to spice mixture; stir to mix well. Store, covered, in cool, dark place.
Nutrition information per tablespoon:
20 calories, 27% calories from fat, 0.8 g fat, 0.1 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 700 mg sodium, 3.8 g carbohydrate, 0.9 g protein, 1.5 g fiber
