Ethiopian Food!
Feb. 9th, 2014 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
motodraconisMini coffee ceremony!
Warning, some dire and none too appetizing photos under the cut - taking photos in dim light with a mobile is not the greatest way to record foodage. However, if you're vaguely interested in what Ethiopian food and beverages entail, read on!
The first thing sampled was the beer, and in the case of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
giggly_teapot and ninshubur sampling occurred within minutes of arrival as we waited for our connecting flight. I waited until we got to the first hotel at least!
Dashen beer. Brewed in Gondar. This is the local tipple for the likes of Boromir and Faromir. (Yeah, the Gondor/Mordor jokes never got old for me.)
It's a fairly average and perfectly reasonable tasting lager, but here is my first local dish...Shiro wot with (undefined) meat...
...this arrived bubbling like a veritable red-hot volcano, as you can see from the spatter. It's a thick but smooth chickpea sauce, richly but not hotly spicy, with the aforementioned nuggets of undefined (probably mutton) meat sat at the bottom. This was very tasty. The grey-matter is Injera, a type of savoury pancake typical of Ethiopian cuisine and generally made with a flour ground from teff. Teff is a small grained grass, but surprisingly nutritious. When I first saw the pancake, I wasn't entirely sure it was edible and not some sort of absorbent flannel I needed to put on my lap to protect from the bubbling spatterage. I took a cautious bite of the corner. It was weirdly lemony, so I was still unsure if this wasn't some sort of cleansing hand-wipe. I ate it anyway.
Fasting food. (Apologies for the terrible unflattering flash photo.) Orthodox Ethiopian Christians fast 2 days per week. This is pretty much the same sort of fasting you get in Catholic countries - and like them, it means on a Friday, no meat. (Fish is fine though.) In Ethiopia, this extends to Wednesdays too. Fasting is a misnomer - this typical "fasting dish" will not leave you hungry, involving various dollops of lentil sauce, chickpea, veg, salad and the like all on the ubiquitous edible flannel. Now if you're a vegetarian, you're in luck, as you can order meat-free "fasting dishes" off the menu any day (handy to remember for Ethiopian restaurants outside of Africa.) Fasting can mean dairy and all animal product-free, especially during Lent, so if you're vegan, you'll get browny points for requesting your fasting food to be properly hard-core. The downside is that the fasting food, while awesome, will probably always be the sort of dish shown below.
Lamb tibs below, available everywhere, in varying degrees of deliciousness depending on the local cook. Served with flannel and powdered hot Mitmita to mix in to your own taste. (I found Ethiopian food gently spicy in general and no idea if they were holding off the spice on the suspicion that we were wimpy foreigners, but I did on occasion miss more of a kick. So if your tibs doesn't come with add your own spice on the side, you can ask for it as a condiment. There's also Berbere, though wikipedia seems to think this is generally cooked into food while Mitmita is a dipping condiment. I suspect you'll get whatever they happen to have available.
Perhaps Sir or Modomme would like some vino with their meal? Ethiopia has a range of wines on offer...of which I sampled the Gouder, the Axumit, and the Kemila. Or more accurately, sipped a taste from the glass ofgiggly_teapot and ninshubur...
...it is hard to grope for the words to express what Ethiopian wine tastes like. I'll do my best.
IT'S BLOODY AWFUL!!!
Seriously, it's the worst wine I have ever tasted. It tastes wrong, if not actively poisonous. I could not take a sip of the Gouder without violently flinching. I never suceeded in consuming so much as a teaspoon of the stuff. The Axumit is described as "a sweet red" which in itself would be enough to send me running away screaming. I almost managed to drink a full glass of that, but only by diluting it with the local fizzy water in the hopes that might make it vaguely drinkable. The Kemila; was almost bearable, but possibly only because my palate had been worn down by then - certainly the quantities of debris floating in the glass was a bit disconcerting.
In one restaurant, a large party of French tourists, delighted at the concept of wine with their meal after endless beer, ordered a bottle of the red Axumit and the White Kemila. They were reduced to mixing the 2 bottles together in the hopes that that would be an improvement. I did not bring any bottles back, because I do not think I hate anyone enough to give them a bottle as a gift. (I ain't fucking drinking it!)
My first Ethiopian cake was also a bit of a shock. Cakes are readily available, and the menu always seems to include Black Forest (which has no resemblance to Black Forest Gateau) and "White Forest" of which the cake below is an example...
...it was WET! Like it had been left to stand in a drainage ditch. I was so freaked out I left it all after one bite. Thankfully I did get to sample White Forest later on and can confirm it is not supposed to be soggy.
But after desert, perhaps a coffee? Here is the traditional Ethiopian Coffee ceremony in action.
The coffee is heated up in a round-bottomed Jebena over coals (often with a few nuggets of frankincense chucked in for flavour/poshness. You're supposed to dish up 12 cups at a time, to represent the 12 apostles. There will be no milk, though you might get sugar and popcorn.
Every coffee drinker who I've asked who has sampled Ethiopian coffee, has raved about how good it is. I personally thought it was foul, but then I find most coffee foul, especially black coffee which is near enough undrinkable to me so my opinion is not worth much in this case.
Goat 'n' chips, this was excellent.
As was this take on the classic "mix on flannel" - a fasting meal with added meat! Note the many pointy fingers of people going "that looks fantastic!" And it was.
The same (alack) cannot be said of that other classic Ethiopian dish, available on every menu and traditionally served for breakfast - Firfir.
It's basically chopped up flannel, stuffed into a flannel. I have an anathema of carb-on-carb meals. (Baked potato and chips, flatbread stuffed with rice, chip butties, fucking pasta served with fucking bread... that sort of thing) so firfir is the stuff o' gastronomic nightmare to me. UGH!
As a general rule, local dishes are likely to be tastier, but then you might be nervous of the hygiene of a local eaterie, and if feeling delicate, you might repair to an expensive (5 quid meal!) hotel for something safe...
...which invariably will arrive stone cold and taste disgusting. I took two bites of that horror above and left it uneaten. So no dinner for me on New Years Eve! Similar occurred on Ethiopian Christmas Eve where my loathesome and cold meal from the local posh hotel also had to be left uneaten, though in that case I did not entirely starve as I'd had a starter...
...that's raw meat. Now, I'm not adverse to eating intentionally raw meat itself, and this meat was supposed to be raw. I've happily eaten raw flesh before, but this is Africa. Possibly not sensible. I did avoid Kitfo which is raw minced beef, though if I get a chance I'll probably try it in an Ethiopian restaurant in London. I was not ill though. Thankfully.
More congenially, traditional Lamb stew is delicious. I can confirm that when this sauce is spilled on your lap, flannel-injera is quite good for wiping yourself down!
Fish and chips below. Lake Tana was a good place to get a tasty fish dose. This dish was always called "fish goulash" but was always dry fish tossed in spice and nothing like goulash. I suspect it's a miss-translation and is supposed to be "fish goujons."
Hang on...What the fuck is this place?
Apparently its a place to get Shepherds pie...
(Ok, I broke my cardinal rule and ordered chips with potato - I had a massive craving for salt-drenched chips.) The shepherds pie was ok. If you're English and used to such things, it was exactly as it should be. If you're not English and unused to Shepherds Pie, you'd probably be unimpressed. The trouble is, while the local food is tasty, there only ever seemed to be the same dishes on offer. Tibs, fasting, shiro, firfir, tibs, fasting, shiro, firfir, tibs, fasting, shiro, firfir... even a bland English Shepherds Pie starts to sound good after 2 weeks of tibs, fasting, shiro, firfir!
But at least there was never any shortage of Lager. And better still, there was a loose approximation (very loose, but when you're travelling ya can't be too picky) of ale - Amber beer!
Unleash its unique and exceptional taste over and over. Getting anything other than sodding lager is a MASSIVE bonus when you're on hols anywhere south, east or west of Northern Europe.
Now. They have juice bars in Ethiopia. In Bahir Dar there seemed to be loads of them, easily recognisable by the stack of fruit piled outside. (And the heavy hint of bottled water - meaning your juice will not be mixed with tap water - allegedly.)
Just look at what you can get! This was the "mix" juice, a thick gloopy layer (bottom to top) of papaya, guava, avocado and mango!
The first juice I tried - guava, avocado and mango.
Taking a spoonful..
First taste - the mango... and it's surprisingly good!
Now for a taste of avocado. I happen to love avocado, but I tend to think of it as a savoury, solid fruit that you wouldn't generally think would work in a drink, and...
OMFG IT'S THE BEST THING EVER!!! Yeah, it's a bit of an odd expression I have on my face, but that's the look of someone who is amazed at just how delicious something could be. Brain can barely compute.
This is food heaven...particularly the avocado, which tastes very different to the avocados you get in England, which are picked unripe and rock solid, shipped for months before sitting in your fruit bowl until they go soft and likely with a hint of bitterness.
These avocados (I'm guessing) are picked ripe from the sun, and are much sweeter. The taste is very different, and so much better. I'd love to have avocado smoothie in the UK, but it won't taste as good because the pears are picked unripe. WOE! That and in the UK a smoothie like this would be at least 5 quid and probably much more than that. In Bahir Dar they cost 13 bir, about 50p after the tax has been added! I ended up having two smoothies in a row, instead of lunch. This second one just of my two favourite juices - avocado and guava (guava is another fruit I adore, I can get 'em from my local grocer, but again, they'll have been picked unripe and shipped for ages.)
The last cake - in Addis Ababa. A good and tasty cake, even if it does appear to be looking at you accusingly.
In a posher part of Addis Ababa, we stumbled across one of those self-serve, pay by weight frozen yoghurt places. The last and only time I'd had such a thing was in LA, where I had a huge pot piled high with berries and choc which cost me about 3 quid.
It's not something I have in the UK as it's so expensive here. This pot cost about 5-6 quid, about what you'd pay in the UK. An outrageously expensive snack in Ethiopian terms and out of reach for most locals. Our local guide secretly tried the smallest pot available while we were later waiting in the grand (and as ever, utterly useless) hotel next door with the rest of the group. He was horrified at the expense. But bloody hell, after 3 weeks of dust, heat and food and drink that ranged from good to utterly inedible for me this was a real treat...
Life is beautiful - indeed.
Warning, some dire and none too appetizing photos under the cut - taking photos in dim light with a mobile is not the greatest way to record foodage. However, if you're vaguely interested in what Ethiopian food and beverages entail, read on!
The first thing sampled was the beer, and in the case of
giggly_teapot and ninshubur sampling occurred within minutes of arrival as we waited for our connecting flight. I waited until we got to the first hotel at least!Dashen beer. Brewed in Gondar. This is the local tipple for the likes of Boromir and Faromir. (Yeah, the Gondor/Mordor jokes never got old for me.)
It's a fairly average and perfectly reasonable tasting lager, but here is my first local dish...Shiro wot with (undefined) meat...
...this arrived bubbling like a veritable red-hot volcano, as you can see from the spatter. It's a thick but smooth chickpea sauce, richly but not hotly spicy, with the aforementioned nuggets of undefined (probably mutton) meat sat at the bottom. This was very tasty. The grey-matter is Injera, a type of savoury pancake typical of Ethiopian cuisine and generally made with a flour ground from teff. Teff is a small grained grass, but surprisingly nutritious. When I first saw the pancake, I wasn't entirely sure it was edible and not some sort of absorbent flannel I needed to put on my lap to protect from the bubbling spatterage. I took a cautious bite of the corner. It was weirdly lemony, so I was still unsure if this wasn't some sort of cleansing hand-wipe. I ate it anyway.
Fasting food. (Apologies for the terrible unflattering flash photo.) Orthodox Ethiopian Christians fast 2 days per week. This is pretty much the same sort of fasting you get in Catholic countries - and like them, it means on a Friday, no meat. (Fish is fine though.) In Ethiopia, this extends to Wednesdays too. Fasting is a misnomer - this typical "fasting dish" will not leave you hungry, involving various dollops of lentil sauce, chickpea, veg, salad and the like all on the ubiquitous edible flannel. Now if you're a vegetarian, you're in luck, as you can order meat-free "fasting dishes" off the menu any day (handy to remember for Ethiopian restaurants outside of Africa.) Fasting can mean dairy and all animal product-free, especially during Lent, so if you're vegan, you'll get browny points for requesting your fasting food to be properly hard-core. The downside is that the fasting food, while awesome, will probably always be the sort of dish shown below.
Lamb tibs below, available everywhere, in varying degrees of deliciousness depending on the local cook. Served with flannel and powdered hot Mitmita to mix in to your own taste. (I found Ethiopian food gently spicy in general and no idea if they were holding off the spice on the suspicion that we were wimpy foreigners, but I did on occasion miss more of a kick. So if your tibs doesn't come with add your own spice on the side, you can ask for it as a condiment. There's also Berbere, though wikipedia seems to think this is generally cooked into food while Mitmita is a dipping condiment. I suspect you'll get whatever they happen to have available.
Perhaps Sir or Modomme would like some vino with their meal? Ethiopia has a range of wines on offer...of which I sampled the Gouder, the Axumit, and the Kemila. Or more accurately, sipped a taste from the glass of
giggly_teapot and ninshubur... ...it is hard to grope for the words to express what Ethiopian wine tastes like. I'll do my best.
IT'S BLOODY AWFUL!!!
Seriously, it's the worst wine I have ever tasted. It tastes wrong, if not actively poisonous. I could not take a sip of the Gouder without violently flinching. I never suceeded in consuming so much as a teaspoon of the stuff. The Axumit is described as "a sweet red" which in itself would be enough to send me running away screaming. I almost managed to drink a full glass of that, but only by diluting it with the local fizzy water in the hopes that might make it vaguely drinkable. The Kemila; was almost bearable, but possibly only because my palate had been worn down by then - certainly the quantities of debris floating in the glass was a bit disconcerting.
In one restaurant, a large party of French tourists, delighted at the concept of wine with their meal after endless beer, ordered a bottle of the red Axumit and the White Kemila. They were reduced to mixing the 2 bottles together in the hopes that that would be an improvement. I did not bring any bottles back, because I do not think I hate anyone enough to give them a bottle as a gift. (I ain't fucking drinking it!)
My first Ethiopian cake was also a bit of a shock. Cakes are readily available, and the menu always seems to include Black Forest (which has no resemblance to Black Forest Gateau) and "White Forest" of which the cake below is an example...
...it was WET! Like it had been left to stand in a drainage ditch. I was so freaked out I left it all after one bite. Thankfully I did get to sample White Forest later on and can confirm it is not supposed to be soggy.
But after desert, perhaps a coffee? Here is the traditional Ethiopian Coffee ceremony in action.
The coffee is heated up in a round-bottomed Jebena over coals (often with a few nuggets of frankincense chucked in for flavour/poshness. You're supposed to dish up 12 cups at a time, to represent the 12 apostles. There will be no milk, though you might get sugar and popcorn.
Every coffee drinker who I've asked who has sampled Ethiopian coffee, has raved about how good it is. I personally thought it was foul, but then I find most coffee foul, especially black coffee which is near enough undrinkable to me so my opinion is not worth much in this case.
Goat 'n' chips, this was excellent.
As was this take on the classic "mix on flannel" - a fasting meal with added meat! Note the many pointy fingers of people going "that looks fantastic!" And it was.
The same (alack) cannot be said of that other classic Ethiopian dish, available on every menu and traditionally served for breakfast - Firfir.
It's basically chopped up flannel, stuffed into a flannel. I have an anathema of carb-on-carb meals. (Baked potato and chips, flatbread stuffed with rice, chip butties, fucking pasta served with fucking bread... that sort of thing) so firfir is the stuff o' gastronomic nightmare to me. UGH!
As a general rule, local dishes are likely to be tastier, but then you might be nervous of the hygiene of a local eaterie, and if feeling delicate, you might repair to an expensive (5 quid meal!) hotel for something safe...
...which invariably will arrive stone cold and taste disgusting. I took two bites of that horror above and left it uneaten. So no dinner for me on New Years Eve! Similar occurred on Ethiopian Christmas Eve where my loathesome and cold meal from the local posh hotel also had to be left uneaten, though in that case I did not entirely starve as I'd had a starter...
...that's raw meat. Now, I'm not adverse to eating intentionally raw meat itself, and this meat was supposed to be raw. I've happily eaten raw flesh before, but this is Africa. Possibly not sensible. I did avoid Kitfo which is raw minced beef, though if I get a chance I'll probably try it in an Ethiopian restaurant in London. I was not ill though. Thankfully.
More congenially, traditional Lamb stew is delicious. I can confirm that when this sauce is spilled on your lap, flannel-injera is quite good for wiping yourself down!
Fish and chips below. Lake Tana was a good place to get a tasty fish dose. This dish was always called "fish goulash" but was always dry fish tossed in spice and nothing like goulash. I suspect it's a miss-translation and is supposed to be "fish goujons."
Hang on...What the fuck is this place?
Apparently its a place to get Shepherds pie...
(Ok, I broke my cardinal rule and ordered chips with potato - I had a massive craving for salt-drenched chips.) The shepherds pie was ok. If you're English and used to such things, it was exactly as it should be. If you're not English and unused to Shepherds Pie, you'd probably be unimpressed. The trouble is, while the local food is tasty, there only ever seemed to be the same dishes on offer. Tibs, fasting, shiro, firfir, tibs, fasting, shiro, firfir, tibs, fasting, shiro, firfir... even a bland English Shepherds Pie starts to sound good after 2 weeks of tibs, fasting, shiro, firfir!
But at least there was never any shortage of Lager. And better still, there was a loose approximation (very loose, but when you're travelling ya can't be too picky) of ale - Amber beer!
Unleash its unique and exceptional taste over and over. Getting anything other than sodding lager is a MASSIVE bonus when you're on hols anywhere south, east or west of Northern Europe.
Now. They have juice bars in Ethiopia. In Bahir Dar there seemed to be loads of them, easily recognisable by the stack of fruit piled outside. (And the heavy hint of bottled water - meaning your juice will not be mixed with tap water - allegedly.)
Just look at what you can get! This was the "mix" juice, a thick gloopy layer (bottom to top) of papaya, guava, avocado and mango!
The first juice I tried - guava, avocado and mango.
Taking a spoonful..
First taste - the mango... and it's surprisingly good!
Now for a taste of avocado. I happen to love avocado, but I tend to think of it as a savoury, solid fruit that you wouldn't generally think would work in a drink, and...
OMFG IT'S THE BEST THING EVER!!! Yeah, it's a bit of an odd expression I have on my face, but that's the look of someone who is amazed at just how delicious something could be. Brain can barely compute.
This is food heaven...particularly the avocado, which tastes very different to the avocados you get in England, which are picked unripe and rock solid, shipped for months before sitting in your fruit bowl until they go soft and likely with a hint of bitterness.
These avocados (I'm guessing) are picked ripe from the sun, and are much sweeter. The taste is very different, and so much better. I'd love to have avocado smoothie in the UK, but it won't taste as good because the pears are picked unripe. WOE! That and in the UK a smoothie like this would be at least 5 quid and probably much more than that. In Bahir Dar they cost 13 bir, about 50p after the tax has been added! I ended up having two smoothies in a row, instead of lunch. This second one just of my two favourite juices - avocado and guava (guava is another fruit I adore, I can get 'em from my local grocer, but again, they'll have been picked unripe and shipped for ages.)
The last cake - in Addis Ababa. A good and tasty cake, even if it does appear to be looking at you accusingly.
In a posher part of Addis Ababa, we stumbled across one of those self-serve, pay by weight frozen yoghurt places. The last and only time I'd had such a thing was in LA, where I had a huge pot piled high with berries and choc which cost me about 3 quid.
It's not something I have in the UK as it's so expensive here. This pot cost about 5-6 quid, about what you'd pay in the UK. An outrageously expensive snack in Ethiopian terms and out of reach for most locals. Our local guide secretly tried the smallest pot available while we were later waiting in the grand (and as ever, utterly useless) hotel next door with the rest of the group. He was horrified at the expense. But bloody hell, after 3 weeks of dust, heat and food and drink that ranged from good to utterly inedible for me this was a real treat...
Life is beautiful - indeed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 09:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 12:36 pm (UTC)I've also brought back 2 big bags of berbere and mitmita from Addis market that I shall break into at some point.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-10 11:09 am (UTC)Ethiopian coffee is pretty good but coffee ceremony coffee wasn't. The woman sits and stirs the pot of beans over the fire in a rather desultory way. If the beans are not used I suspect they are left for the next day. The upshot is burnt beans rather than a dark roast.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-10 05:09 pm (UTC)Ah... the coffee ceremony. I was given a proper coffee made in the proper way... and it was just tepid - mildly off-putting as I suspected the water was just standard, from wherever (not bottled) and as such, I'd have liked to have known the water had been properly boiled to kill off nasties. Eventually, I had to give it back after a few sips to the coffee lady, asking for a hot cup. She promptly poured it back into the main pot. Which I found a bit ick.
The next cup was hot, and I drank it with no ill effects. (Well I say that, no ill effects or parasites that I know of.)
no subject
Date: 2014-02-10 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-10 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-10 11:19 pm (UTC)