Last week I had off from work for our “midwinter” break.  It wasn’t a very relaxing week but cooking, for me, is very relaxing. Five hours of cooking can actually be quite relaxing as well.  And that’s what happened when I decided to take on the challenge that Joan of Foodalogue put in front of her readers – create a dish from Ethiopia.  I made six Ethiopian dishes and ingredients and, yes, it took me five hours to create all of it.  But, in the end it was all worth it.

Ethiopian cuisine is one that I have only recently become acquainted with and when I first tasted it, I was hooked.  While researching for this post I realized how little is out there on this fabulous cuisine.  Anthonly Bourdain recently said that he believed Ethiopian food would be the next big trend in eating and I have to agree that it should be.  It’s delicious, communal, flavorful, fun to eat and relatively healthy (except the ridiculously high amount of butter used in the dishes).  We’ll see if his prediction is correct.  I mean how can you go wrong when all you have to eat with is your hands and some deliciously sour, sponge and crepe-like bread called injera?

The two biggest staples of Ethiopian food are a spice mixture called berbere and a spiced clarified butter called niter kibbeh (see both recipe below).  Many Ethiopian recipes utilize one or both of these ingredients.  The other staple and accompaniment to Ethiopian food is injera bread which is traditionally made from a specific type of flour called teff and usually takes three days in order for it to ferment causing its sour taste.  I didn’t have teff flour so I utilized Saveur magazine’s recipe which wasn’t as delicious as the authentic type but did the trick.  Brushing lemon on the bread gave it a bit of the sour flavor I was craving.  As mentioned earlier, injera bread is used as your plate, fork, knife and spoon when eating Ethiopian food.  Your food will come in small piles scattered on a a big injera where you will tear off bits of the outside layer in order to get the food in your mouth.  You continue until you eventually have to eat the layer that has sopped up all the flavors of each dish you chose.  These are some of the best bits but you’ve got to get to the end of the meal to savor them.

Ethiopian food is like no other – it borrows ingredients from Portugal (chile peppers), the Orient (ginger) and India (spices) to create a taste that is very, well, Ethiopian and very different to anything you’ve ever eaten.  Most of the recipes found below are based on things found in the cookbook Exotic Ethiopian Cooking and a blend of other website recipes I found.  I recommend you all give Ethiopian a try, whether you have five hours to cook or have always been curious to try that Ethiopian restaurant down the street.  Vegetarians and non-pork eaters will have a field day and even the pickiest of eaters will enjoy this fun and fabulous cuisine.  So thank you, Joan, for pushing me to finally create Ethiopian food at home.  Now that I’ve done it I’ll be doing it again.  Now, I hope you will try your hand at it!

BERBERE (Ethiopian Spice Mix)

• 1/4 cup ground red pepper (about 8 Dried Chiles de Arbol, blitzed in a spice grinder)
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ground fenugreek
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom (about 6-8 cardamom pods, blitzed in a spice grinder)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves (about 4-6 cloves blitzed in spice grinder)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 3 tablespoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons dried onions, blitzed in grinder, or 2 tsp. onion powder
• 1 tablespoon salt and 1/2 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper

**Grind chiles in a spice grinder. Toast all seeds for about 3 minutes, allow to cool and add everything to spice grinder and blitz. 

NITER KIBBEH (Ethiopian Spiced Butter) – Makes about 1/3 cup – for the effort you may want to double or triple this recipe

• 1 stick + 1 tablepoon unsalted butter
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and then grated on a microplane or grater
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 red onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• pinch of salt

What to do:

1. Melt butter on low heat and skim off the foamy, white layer that that floats to the top as butter melts (this is how you make clarified butter).
2. Add onion, garlic, ginger and spices and allow to cook on low heat for 15 minutes.
3. Turn heat off and allow to rest for 5 minutes.  Strain the butter mixture using a fine sieve or cheesecloth and store in a cool place.

YEKIK ALICHA (Ethiopian Split Peas)

• 1 cup yellow split peas, soaked for 1 hour
• 1 cup of water (or veggie stock)
• 1 cup chopped red onion
• 1 tablespoon ginger (1 inch piece, peeled and grated)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 jalapeno peppers, minced
• 1 tablespoon nitir kibbeh (spiced butter)
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric
• salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Bring soaked split peas to a boil and then lower to simmer for 30 minutes.
2. Drain if there is extra water and then mash well (they will be very soft and will mash easily with a fork).
3. Add butter  to another pan and stir fry onion and garlic for a few minutes till onion is translucent.  Add ginger and spices and give a quick stir.  Add back the mashed split peas, jalapenos, salt and pepper and a cup of water (or veggie stock).  Reduce for a few minutes until you have a thick puree.  Serve on or with injera.

GOMEN (Stewed Collard Greens and Cottage Cheese)

• 1 lb collard greens, stems removed and chopped
• 1/2 lb of cottage cheese (about 10 ounces), drained
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced and smashed to a paste
• 2 tablespoons nitir kibbeh (spiced butter)
• salt and pepper to taste

What to Do:

1. Boil greens until tender.  Drain and press down to get rid of all the excess water. Finely chop greens.
2. Add butter to a pan and cook onions for five minutes then add ginger and garlic and cook for a minute or two. 
3. Add greens and stir. If you find it needs a bit of moisture, add a touch of water or stock.  Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Transfer to a bowl and stir in drained cottage cheese.

ZIGNI WE’T (Ethiopian Spiced Beef Stew)

• 1 lb minced beef
• 1 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1/4 cup berbere
• 1/4 cup nitir kibbeh
• 1 tablespoon ground fenugreek
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ginger, peeled and minced
• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup wine (red or white)
• salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Fry onions for a few minutes and add garlic and ginger.  Add berbere plus water, stir.
2. Add nitir kibbeh and sprinkle beef while stirring.  Allow all the beef to cook and all the liquid to be cooked away. 
3. Add rest of spices, stir. Allow to cook until meat is done, about 15 to 20 minutes.  Serve on or with injera.

Such was my mood then upon reading the latest issue of the magazine that is quickly overtaking Rachel Ray as WANFs bête noire. You see, the January edition of Bon Appetit focuses on what is calls “the new trend” of everything a cheval, or mounted by an egg, as it were, and quite apart from having spent a good part of our 2007-2008 oeuvre (pun intended) posting recipes and photos of various foods dressed in this way, we, quite pathetically perhaps, like to think of ourselves as in the comparative culinary vanguard and hate to be thought of as simply following a BA trend. So, before we go on, I would like to state, in no uncertain terms, that we not only made the subject of this post dish in October (towards the end of our self-indulgent egg sluttishness), but that our posting this now is influenced in no way by the food magazine zeitgeist.

With that off my chest, allow me to introduce to you one of the most wonderful ways of cooking eggs – uova in ragú, or eggs in a Bolognese sauce. Not to be confused with the well-known Tex-Mex breakfast staple of eggs in hell, this is essentially a Bolognese sauce version of the Tuscan classic Uova e Spinaci Cotti alla Fiorentina which we posted during aforementioned egg-focused period. And, not only does it allow one to indulge a fetish for eggs and meat, but the visual contrast on your plate of the white and yellow of the egg against a reddish-brown background of ragú is one to please children of all ages, even those in their 30s.

Less research than we typically do suggests that this is not an authentic Bolognese dish, and in fact, our inspiration came from a menu item - Uova al Pomodoro (eggs baked in a marina sauce) - at a small local trattoria called Apertivo. Nevertheless, we feel that it should definitely sit among the greats in the canon of Emilia-Romagna cuisine, utilising as it does the king of sauces, the ragú.

The main key to success, then, in this stupidly simple dish, apart from some (forgive the pun) good eggs, is clearly the quality of your ragú, so we strongly encourage you to read at least some of the marathon post that is A Tale of Two Sauces: It’s A Traditional Ragú Bolognese Deathmatch from last year to get a sense of the time, effort and joy involved in creating this wonderful thing. Then, once made (and you will have plenty leftover), simply add sauce to a large saucepan, heat until simmering, and crack in as many eggs as you like (two per person seems about right). Then, either cover with pan lid and reduce heat to medium-low, or slap the whole thing into a 350F (180C) oven and bake until eggs are firm, about fifteen minutes. It can be served over pasta (think pappardelle or tagliatelle) or simply as a main course with some bread and salad on the side. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be upset if I was served this for breakfast either.

An article in the latest issue of Gourmet magazine addressed the oft-ignored, but very real, dilemma of the carnivore that is the slaughter of animals for human consumption. We touched on this issue briefly a while back in a post on Provencal rabbit stew as I had a succession of rabbits as pets growing up and initially found it difficult to decide if I could eat rabbit given these very friendly relationships in my formative years – what my sister refers to as the dilemma of whether or not to “eat your friends.”

In this Gourmet article, two Brooklynites go shopping in search of goat meat in order to recreate some goat tacos they’d eaten in northern Mexico. After searching high and low for the cut of goat they need to re-produce this dish authentically, they end up at Madani, a halal butchers in Ozone Park, Queens, and there, they witness the slaughter of their chosen goat in the traditional halal method of throat-slitting, and subsequently, they experience some philosophical issues relating to mortality, meat-eating and the preparation of the goat tacos.

For a rather more comprehensive discussion of the ethical slaughter of animals, check out Halal: The Original Ethical Meet Eating at EatDrinkBetter.com where the gist of the piece is that halal-style slaughtering methods are the most humane to be used anywhere – showing as they do proper and due respect to the animal before, during and after its death.

Never having witnessed the killing of an animal for food using halal, kosher or any other method, and therefore not knowing the look in its eyes as the knife is drawn across its throat, nor having watched the life (and blood) ebb out of it, I was both fascinated and made a little fearful by this article. For me, it wasn’t that I had a sudden ethical problem with the killing of animals for food – far from it, in fact, it brings me great delight on a daily basis that animals are killed so I can eat them — rather I felt that I should also witness, first-hand, the death of at least one animal that was to play an important role in my dinner in order that I too could appreciate this sacrifice in all its horrific reality.

Little did I know that within hours of having read this article I would be faced with almost exactly this opportunity. And, when I say almost, I mean that whereas the guys in the Gourmet article only watched while someone else dispatched their goat, in my case, I was to be cast in the role of the grim-reaper.

Regular readers of this blog who look at our photographs carefully may have noticed a certain black and white (a so-called “tuxedo”) cat loitering in the background, paws poised to take a swipe at whatever’s in focus should our backs be turned momentarily. This is our cat Windsor and, being our cat, she is a gourmet and a gourmand in every sense of the word that is applicable to felines. A lover of all things dairy (including a recent obsession with the Italian hard cheese Piave), Windsor has a well-rounded palate and is just as likely to nibble on avocado and tomatoes (she is also an amateuse of mushrooms sauteed with garlic and parsley) as she is to be tempted by pieces of fish skin and lamb bones, and of course, this pleases us no end that our pet shares our hobby (and, to a degree, our waistlines).

However, we are not so enamored when her tastes expand to feral beasts. Indeed, several are the times when we have been awoken before dawn on a spring day to the pathetic, plaintive final shreiks and whimpers of some unfortunate sparrow hatchling that Windsor has been tormenting. After which she continues this agonizing soundtrack serenading us with cheerful and proud meows to alert us to her macabre victory over a defenceless prey. This is the cue for yours truly to drag himself out of bed and step very carefully through a dark apartment – now littered liberally with tiny feathers – into the kitchen to retrieve the dustpan and brush in order to usher the late creature to its final resting place as respectfully as I am able to at 4am.

So it was with an extreme sense of foreboding last week when my wife called me at work in the late afternoon to tell me that Windsor had outdone herself and had left us an altogether larger gift this time. Happily, she had left this one outside our back door, probably because she couldn’t carry it inside.

It was a large grey squirrel – about two or three pounds (1 – 1.5 kilos) in weight, I would guess. Fully grown with a large bushy tail and some very serviceable-looking buck teeth. The kind of urban squirrel that we had been cursing as vermin for months for digging up everything we planted in our small garden regardless of the amount of chicken wire we tried to protect it with. Ironically, it was precisely the same kind of squirrel that, because of this, we had been trying in vain to encourage Windsor to be more territorial about and go after.

The moral of this story, though, is not be careful what you wish for. No, it’s actually make sure that when your cat does what you want it to and brings you the animals you’ve been telling it to deal with, that said animals are actually dead. This one was gravely wounded but had certainly not yet shuffled off its mortal coil, and it was this liveliness that so bothered my wife. After all, what the hell do you do with a half-dead squirrel?

Hurrying home on the subway, I wasn’t able to come up with a good answer to this question. It seemed to me that the easiest (and most cowardly) approach was to hope that at least Windsor had done enough to mortally injure the squirrel and that it would succumb to its wounds mercifully soon. However, were this not to happen, I was left to wonder just how long I could mentally deal with the fact that a kind of cute squirrel was dying a slow and agonizing death just steps away from where I was trying to sleep.

When I got home however, one look at the stricken creature gave me my answer — I could probably sleep quite well, or if not well, then certainly better than if I had to dispatch the thing myself. My wife though, ever my moral compass, directed me towards a heavy snow-shovel and suggested invitingly that I “be a man about it.”

I shall spare you, gentle reader, the finer details of just how I sent the poor squirrel off to meet his maker, but suffice it to say that both Windsor and I could learn a lot about humane methods of slaughter should this situation recur. If it did, not only would it occasion a great and heroic blog post about killing ones own food, but it would also necessitate an investigation of recipes for squirrel, the idea of which for now, at least, rather turns my stomach…

Just received my new January, 2008 Bon Appetit magazine and thought maybe I received a fake copy. I thought maybe there was a mistake – did I receive a copy of some shitty food magazine with the same name as my beloved Bon Appetit? What’s happening here? This impostor magazine looks like it’s trying to be ‘young’ and ‘fun’ and ‘different’ with it’s multicolored logo. It looks more like a Marta Stewart magazine with it’s boring/hackne yed perfect balance of pastel colors and use of space. NOOOOOOO!? Please god, please tell me Bon Appetit did not decide to go for a new logo, to go for an ‘update and sexy’ image? Unfortunately, the magazine has changed it’s look. This is bringing back bad memories of my time working in corporate NYC.

NOTE: If you don’t care about why I even have an opinion on this issue, don’t continue reading. I know this shouldn’t evoke so many emotions, but my time working in the magazine biz makes me care.

Years ago, before I woke up out of my corporate coma and left to pursue a job in the school system, I used to work for a very well-known “outdoors-man” magazine. As one of the biggest multimedia and publishing companies bought the magazines from the small company I was hired by, I heard the new corporate big-wigs whispering about how the magazine needed a change – it was time to ‘update’. These corporate dim-wits used words like (I swear to GOD I am not lying to you) “sexing up the mag” and “making it more fun” but still making sure it stays a “lifestyle mag” and a magazine so awesome “men keep it on their coffeetable”. BARF BARF BARF BARF BARF (sorry, I still have reactions to this). You can not convince me that there is any way in hell you can make fishing and camping and hunting and whatever else ‘sexy’ .

My point is that I may not be the best person to judge Bon Appetit’s change. I think past history has tainted my ability to judge this pretty meaningless change without judgment. All I know is when I look at that new logo, instead of thinking intelligent, strong, knowledgeable and sophisticated, I think mushy, boring, trying-too-hard-to-be-youthful-and-fun as well mainstream. I just don’t like it. I’m just hoping it’s contents won’t change along with it’s new look! I haven’t had time t read it yet, so I’ll let you know (unless you beat me to it!).

Anyone care or think I’m a crazy idiot for even posting this?

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