Lemlem Zigin (Raw Beef in Spicey [sic] Sauce)

"Lemlem Zigin is a delicious meal for people who like their meat rare and at the same time favor the spicy sauce." ~ D. J. Mesfin, Exotic Ethiopian Cooking, p. 121

If I were ever to write a children's book with a concept completely stolen from someone else, it would be titled Llama Llama's Injera Drama.  It's like I've never, ever made a decent batch of injera in my life and I'm not understanding it!  I know there's a learning curve, and I'm okay with that.  But I seem to be encountering learning peaks and valleys.  I know the adage "two steps forward, one step back"; it's just not a favorite of mine.  


I had put some buckwheat injera mixture together to ferment a day or so before we were going to be making it, and I stuck to the recipe, rather than adding my husband's sourdough starter to the mix.  After last week's injera mess, I thought it was time to get back to basics.  However, I had never just used this basic recipe -- I had always added about 4 to 5 ounces of my husband's sourdough starter (his blog is here, but he isn't the best about updating it; just trust me when I say we are up to our necks in sourdough and bread around here).  I don't know why I thought I should skip it this time, but I think it was a mistake.  The morning of Ethiopian night, the dough smelled like something that had been partially digested and regurgitated.  This may have been normal, as it happened to one of my husband's starters at one time (and we could smell it from upstairs); he mentioned something about a war between good bacteria and bad bacteria.  In the end, his starter turned to the light and it stopped smelling like something had died.  If I had left this injera starter alone for another day or so, it, too, might have turned for the better, but I needed something for dinner that night, so I turned to a new recipe that didn't require any sitting, a recipe taken from Marcus Samuelsson's The Soul of a New Cuisine (there are two different links here; his name brings you to his website, while the book's link takes you to Amazon).  While the process was more than approachable, the result was disappointing.  I really think I need to move towards an injera with less teff; the more teff injera I make, the more I think I understand why our local Ethiopian restaurant's injera is more buckwheat than teff.  Meanwhile, my husband has taken up the gauntlet and has started work on his own injera.  Between the two of us, we have to meet with success!  The other night, I was at a book discussion at the Ethiopians' school and was talking to a fellow committee member, who happens to be from Ethiopia; until then, I hadn't really had a chance to talk with her, so, as we talked, I seized my chance and asked what she does for injera.  She smiled sheepishly and admitted that she brought injera back from Ethiopia with her after their every-other-year visits and, in between that, she brings it up from Washington, DC.  She said she tried for years, but just gave up.  That makes me feel a little better, but I still refuse to believe that I can't figure this out.  Maybe I'm delusional.  


Onto dinner!  Tonight's dinner was a minimal-berbere-added dish: just one teaspoon instead of the usual 1/2 cup.  I wasn't wild about it.  It seems that, the more dishes I make from this book, the more I realize I prefer the berbere-intensive dishes.  Considering that I don't really like spicy-hot foods, in general, this comes as a complete surprise.  I can't tolerate cayenne or hot sauce or anything like that, but I sure love berbere!


I've photographed the cooking red onions so many times, I decided to try a different photo.  I just love the contrast in colors here!!

Red onions in a green bowl...is there anything prettier?  Even with the chip on the rim?

By now, I'm sure you know what is done to the onions: they're browned without grease or oil in a pan.  


After the onions were done, some meat was added.  At this point, the recipe called for "meat with bones".  I hate meat with bones, so I just cut up some steak.  

Then came the berbere, some red wine, and some nit'ir qibe.  

I love the color of nit'ir qibe!

The spices were simple: black pepper, garlic, ginger, and cardamom.  I added some water after adding the spices and let the stew simmer for about 20 minutes.  


Once done, the hot (in temperature) sauce is supposed to be poured over raw ground beef so that it cooks a little, but remains quite rare.  I would have loved to have done this, but I hadn't been able to get to Whole Foods for some very fresh ground beef and I didn't want to take a risk with supermarket (all right, I'll admit it, Aldi's) ground beef.  Instead, I put the ground beef in and let it cook.  

the end result

on the injera

And after uploading my pictures, I realize that the injera didn't look all that bad.  

But the taste was lackluster and the texture wasn't exactly right, so the quest continues!

Yesiga T'ibs (Meat Cooked in Spice and Red Pepper)

"Yesiga t'ibs is prepared on all occasions.  It is very delicious with injera or bread." ~ D. J. Mesfin, Exotic Ethiopian Cooking, p. 114

that's homemade injera there, baby

I put the t'ibs together this morning to throw into the crockpot, as I was also to be tackling injera today, which I figured could end up consuming a good amount of time (it did).  

I am going to right come out and say that I don't think that the proportions in this recipe are correct.  Either that, or an ingredient is missing.  Or I simply haven't a clue.  But I'll get there in a moment.  

I started as I usually start with an Ethiopian dish: I dry-sautéed a very large amount of red onions (after being quite thankful for my food processor):

To that, I added 1/2 cup of nit'ir qibe (I know I don't usually throw in too many measurements, as I wish to respect the author's copyright, but I'm giving some today because I really need help figuring out whether this recipe was correct or not).  

So far, so good.  Next, came 1 cup of berbere.  

Still within the realm of possibility, though it seemed like an awful lot of berbere for that amount of nit'ir qibe (in my doro we't, for instance, I use 2 cups of nit'ir qibe to one cup of berbere).  I even had a bit of trouble incorporating the berbere into the nit'ir qibe and the onions.  I thought "this can't be right" and looked at the recipe again.  Oh, I had forgotten to add 1/2 cup of red wine.  It still seemed like way too little liquid for the amount of berbere that I had in there, but I added the wine.  It did help a bit:

But it was still quite thick.  By now, I decided it really needed some more liquid, so I threw in another 1/2 cup of nit'ir qibe and added some water until it stopped looking so pasty. I didn't add a lot of water, just enough.  

Then I added the meat and cooked it for 15 minutes:

Next came (clockwise from top) black pepper, salt, cardamom, and garlic powder:

I usually grind the cardamom whole, pods and all, in my coffee grinder, but, for some reason, this morning I was inspired to see how easy they were to open up.  It turns out it was quite easy to get the seeds out and, in no time, I had the little cardamom carcasses to prove it:

I still, however, threw the cardamom seeds into the coffee grinder.  After adding the spices, I then put the t'ibs into the crockpot until we were ready for dinner:

It looked good and smelled divine, but, sadly (at least it was sad for myself and the Ethiopians), it was way too spicy.  And that was with the addition of the extra butter and some water (it was probably about 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of water, not a huge amount).  I cannot even imagine trying to eat this stuff full-test.  It was very good, but I couldn't eat more than a few bites due to the heat.  We weren't talking the lovely endorphin-rush heat of the yesiga fitfit, where it was hot, but you couldn't just resist taking another bite.  This was painful all the way down and it remained painful for quite a while.  My husband pronounced it the spiciest/hottest stuff he's ever eaten, and he'll use a half bottle of (very) hot sauce as a condiment for his lunch.  He had to go outside to get some air and was pretty blissed out for the rest of the evening.  

Does anyone know if the yesiga t'ibs is supposed to be basically berbere-coated beef with no sauce?  Almost like an awaze paste?  My husband even mentioned that it felt grainy.  I never order yesiga t'ibs, I can't remember if my husband has ever ordered it before, and I'm having trouble finding pictures of it on the Internet.  It seems that some of the other t'ibs recipes in the book include cups (like 6) of water, but not all t'ibs use the berbere and it's just very difficult to figure out if that's how it was supposed to be.  After all, with water added, isn't it just t'ibs w'et?  Though that beef is fried, not stewed.  Arghh!!  One of the hazards of learning a very foreign cuisine.  I tried pulling out my Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery (circa 1966), but they don't cover Ethiopian cookery.  Go figure.

For now, I added some more water and am letting it stay in the crockpot overnight so that my husband can bring it to work for his lunch.  I probably won't be able to get it to my tolerance level, but I'd like to next time.  I can handle the doro w'et with 1 cup of berbere, so I know that that alone is not the issue.  This is the first time a recipe from this book has been too hot/spicy for me to eat.  

Despite the thrill of feeling like I could eventually get a handle on the injera, I have to say that tonight's dinner was a bit disappointing as a whole.  I haven't eaten so little of a dish since the iskunfur, though I can't say that was because it was too spicy!  :)

This is What a House Should Smell Like!

 ye'atakilt alich'a (top) and yesiga fitfit (bottom)

It's been a great summer, but as Labor Day weekend churns its way inexorably towards Tuesday, I find myself with a chance to take some breaths!  As my husband and I discussed the options for dinner tonight and looked over what we had in the freezer (a lovely, new, huge chest freezer, thanks to my mom) and the refrigerator, I thought to myself "I could make a yesiga fitfit and ye'atakilt alich'a!"  All right, what I actually said was "I could make yesiga and some of that cabbage and carrot stuff".  (I know my yesiga.)  Since things here have been so quiet, I thought I'd blog about it.  It's not an official post or anything like that, so I'm not going to document the process, but I just thought I'd poke my head up out of the hole to prove that I'm still here.  :)


It turns out we actually needed to go out and purchase more potatoes and red onions and tomato paste, but everything else we had in the house.  Yes, we are a household that has berbere and qibe, but no potatoes.  Alas, we are also a household that didn't have injera (except for the frozen stuff that we didn't like before, which lends itself well to fitfit).  Enkutatash (the Ethiopian New Year) happens to be this Saturday, the 11th, and I've decided that injera will be our Ethiopian new year's resolution.  Our local Ethiopian restaurant is now only open for dinner, after 5:30 p.m., which is too late to be of much use for us (I used to be able to pick up injera around lunchtime, but no more), and the mail-order injera currently in our freezer doesn't do it for us (it has an odd texture and breaks instead of being all flexible).  So, 2003 (the Ethiopian calendar is 7 years behind ours) will be the Year of Injera.  A friend has offered us an injera skillet, even!

yesiga fitfit (left) and ye'atakilt alich'a (right)

I winged the fitfit. There is no recipe in Exotic Ethiopian Cooking for yesiga fitfit, but the fitfit part is the easiest of all: just add pieces of injera to the yesiga we't (or whatever we't you like; my personal favorite is doro fitfit).  The berbere came courtesy of my friend, Amy, over at Reimagining Our Lives.  It's different from what we've been using in the past, but it still comes straight from Addis and it was some seriously good berbere.  I'm starting to wonder exactly what is put in that homegrown stuff over there.  Every single one of us can't stop moving our hands from our plate to our mouth.  The Ethiopians are crying, panting, swigging milk, and taking bites of bread in between bites of the we't, yet I believe I served them fourths.  The ye'atakilt?  The alich'a? (alich'a is a mild stew; we't is the spicy stuff with berbere)  They didn't even ask for seconds.  They like it just fine and ate it, but there is just something about dishes with berbere.  We are going to have to videotape it one of these times because it's like a comedy routine.  You wouldn't think that somebody who appeared to be suffering that much would keep on eating that which is making them suffer, yet I understand it.  It gets to me sometimes, too, but it's so good it's hard to stop!


The Ethiopians forgave me for the lack of injera and used some of Daddy's homemade wheat buttermilk bread instead.  Poor ND was so excited to have Ethiopian that she scooped up the all-but-bubbling we't and threw it in her mouth.  :(  She did something similar at Meaza in Northern Virginia once, except that time she only burned her fingers a bit.  We have made a mental note to remember to either tell her to let it cool or just hold off on serving her until things are manageable for her!  After an ice pack to her tongue for a minute, she got right back up on that horse and dug in.  


The Ethiopians start preschool on Friday and have requested the yesiga fitfit for their first lunch.  "Can we bring it in our lunchboxes?" they asked.  I can just picture the scene now.  Eleven soynut and jelly sandwiches (the school is a tree-nut-free zone) and 2 dishes of yesiga fitfit with buttermilk bread.  I'm not sure I can explain it to their teachers...I'm fairly sure they'll think we're trying to torture them.  We'll have to see if there is a microwave there when we go to orientation on Wednesday.  


The start of preschool brings me about 12 extra hours of time a week and I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of this blog again.  After all, it was a new year's resolution and Saturday marks the Ethiopian new year.  It's a perfect transition!!  Despite the fact, however, that it has been pointed out to me that I have approximately 13 hours of things-to-do planned for every 4-hour school day.  

Iskunfur (Stuffed Tripe Stew)

"Iskunfur is a delicious sauce prepared for special occasions.  It may be eaten with injera or bread as a main dish or served with rice and vegetables as a side dish." ~ D. J. Mesfin, Exotic Ethiopian Cooking, pp. 132-3

Iskunfur, top, with its sauce on the left; on the right is ye'assa t'ibs.

I dreaded this day.  When I first looked through Exotic Ethiopian Cooking, I noticed there were a few recipes that involved offal.  According to Wikipedia, "People in some cultures shy away from offal as food, while others use it as everyday food, or even in delicacies that command a high price."  Let me be perfectly clear that I am in firmly embedded in the first camp: those that "shy away from offal as food".  Indeed, I actually shy away from it even when it's merely a concept.  I don't even like trimming meat at home, though I do it.  

I figured it would be inevitable, though, and, sure enough, suddenly page 132 was staring me in the face.  What to do, what to do?  I am fairly confident in believing that few, if any, of my followers would blame me if I just skipped a recipe, but I felt like to do so would be entering morally ambiguous territory.  Julie Powell didn't skip over the less-appetizing recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Not only that, but she then moved on to write a book about butchering, which is is officially where any resemblance between us falls away.  Far, far away. 

So, in the interest of full accountability, I bring you iskunfur, or stuffed tripe stew.  While making this recipe, I had to totally dissociate myself from what I was handling, but if you're interested in details, you can head here. 

The beginning of the recipe is quite familiar:

 Cook the onions in a dry pan, then add the nit'ir qibe and berbere.

 

I used one tablespoon less of butter than was called for in the recipe simply because the sauce called for one cup and the stuffing called for a tablespoon.  I really hated to dig into a whole container (holding one cup) of nit'ir qibe just for one tablespoon, so I decided to just take it from the sauce's allotment.  

To this was also added (clockwise from top) some false cardamom (black cardamom), ginger, black pepper, and garlic.  

False (black) cardamom is an interesting creature and entirely different than the cardamom that you can find in your grocery store (which is green cardamom).  Unlike the tiny, fingertip-sized green cardamom pods, false cardamom pods are about an inch long.  They carry the strong scent of antiseptic (camphor some would say, but despite being a devotee of Campho-Phenique as a child, I don't quite pick up the camphor notes).  

I have to run them through my coffee grinder to get them into a powder form:

After setting the sauce mixture aside, I assembled the stuffing for the tripe, which involved using one tablespoon of the nit'ir qibe, a small amount of chopped red onion, some more false cardamom, ginger, and black pepper, and some cooked rice.  I cheated on the rice and used already cooked, frozen rice:

This was all combined together, but it seems I neglected to snap a picture of it by itself in the bowl.  

Next, I finally had to confront the tripe.  I'll understand if you need to leave now:

I had no idea Ethiopian cooking would involve geometry problems, but sometimes it does.  For instance, I needed to cut 4- to 6-inch squares from something that most assuredly is not square.  Or even regular in shape.  I took out the ruler and measured 6 inches, but thought that was too big, so I elected to go with the 4-inch squares.  I just used my scissors to cut the tripe into the squares. 

Into this, I put a tablespoon of the stuffing (now you can see what the stuffing looks like):

I was then instructed to "sew them up with needle and thread".  I was a bit uncertain as to what kind of thread to employ and what kind of stitch (running? blanket? back?) and worried about how easy it would be to undo the thread so that it wouldn't be eaten (I did plan on trying some).  I also didn't really want to be in such close, sustained contact with this stuff, so I opted for toothpicks, which did the job, even if they left a bit to be desired aesthetically.

this was the first one I did

I eventually changed my technique and more or less 

just folded over the square, securing it on three sides with the toothpicks

These little packets were then added to the berbere sauce to simmer while I went to the Abyssinian and picked up the injera:

I knew my husband wasn't going to even try the tripe, so I made another dish -- ye'assa t'ibs -- to go with this one (due to Easter, I was a bit behind with the recipes, anyway, so it was also an opportunity to catch up a bit; the post for the ye'assa t'ibs should be up later today) and plated them together on the same injera.  I knew the berbere sauce would be eaten, so I ladled some of that out separately.  

a cross section of the stuffed tripe

The Ethiopians loved this and even ate the tripe.  They will turn their nose up at boxed macaroni and cheese and SpaghettiOs, but will eat stuffed tripe.  Sad to say, they won't be getting a lot of it.  I gave it a try, but couldn't get past the texture.  I rank all of my culinary adventures next to one I had in Thailand, which involved eating something called "jumping shrimp salad".  And the reason the shrimp were jumping was because they were still alive.  I'll take jumping shrimp over tripe any day.  

The sauce, however, was very good.  I think I prefer a more traditional we't sauce; this one had a bit more false cardamom in it than the others and the flavor definitely reflected that, but it was good in its own right and it did make a great dipping sauce for the the ye'assa t'ibs!  

In other news, the stinging nettle leaves have come into season and I have ordered some for the samma we't that I had to skip over earlier in the year (precisely because the nettle leaves are only in season for about a month, and February was not the month).  

And if you're wondering where the yebunna t'ej went, it's done and I meant to decant it at Easter, but forgot all about it.  My husband and I will have to have our own private t'ej tasting and I'll get a post up (and if anyone wants me to send them some, just e-mail me with your address and you can join in the tasting, too).  

Look for a post about the ye'assa t'ibs a bit later in the day!

T'ibs We't (Fried Beef Stew)

"T'ibs We't is prepared on occasions as a main dish.  It is very delicious with injera or bread and a little homemade yoghurt or cottage cheese." ~ D. J. Mesfin, Exotic Ethiopian Cooking, p. 107

Dinner was about two-and-a-half hours ago and my husband and I are still talking about how good the t'ibs we't was.  My husband proclaimed it the best thing I've made yet and even added that it was better than the t'ibs we get at our local restaurant, the Abyssinian.  This was also, by far, the spiciest thing I've made, and it was teetering dangerously on the precipice between "spicy" and "intolerably hot".  I added the cottage cheese because I was worried that it was going to be way too spicy hot for the Ethiopians, but they plunged right in and kept going back.  They'd take a bite, gasp, say it was spicy, and you'd think they were about to cry in sheer misery, yet as they were complaining about it being spicy, their hands were already in there for another bite.  When it temporarily overpowered them, they asked to sit in our laps while they had some milk and plain injera, but within minutes, they'd be back into the we't.  I ended up eating most of the cottage cheese, yet was doing the same thing they were...as spicy as it was, my hand kept going back in for more and I felt my brain being washed in the endorphins that were triggered by the spiciness.  My husband, meanwhile, was calling for a seconds to be ladled onto the injera while wiping sweat from his forehead.  Man, this was good; I am totally blissed out.  

It is also a pretty simple dish to make.  It's not the first time I've made it (it was one of the first dishes I made, as I mentioned in my blog post from yesterday).  This was, however, the best batch I've ever made.  

You start with the red onions:

before

After chopping, throw them into a dry frying pan and cook them until they turn a brownish-red color.  While I was cooking these, I was also chopping up the beef and wasn't keeping as close an eye on these as I should have and they started sticking a little to the pan. If this happens, just throw a little water in there and stir until the water evaporates.  

after

Then you add the nit'ir qibe (I had made a fresh batch just last night).  

I mentioned in the blog post about nit'ir qibe that the last several cups from the bottom of the pan were a bit sludgy.  The puck of butter on the left is pure nit'ir qibe without the sludge, and the puck on the right is one of the sludgy ones (the most sludgy one, in fact).  You can see the sludge on the top of the puck, but I can assure you it didn't affect the end result one bit, aside from cutting the butter content a tad.  

all melted

One of the things I find amusing when I find some recipes for Ethiopian food on the web (usually posted by a westerner, not an Ethiopian) is the amount of berbere called for.  The upper limit usually seems to be one tablespoon; occasionally, there is an asterisk mentioning that if you like things really spicy, throw in an extra tablespoon of berbere.  

Mr. Mesfin does not mess around.  Here is his idea of a berbere measurement:

That would be a cup.  A cup.  Most of the we'ts in this book call for a cup of berbere for a dish that serves from six to eight people.  I love my berbere:

It's the same exact stuff we brought home from Ethiopia, but not the exact bag, as the bags are only 1 kg. and three or four we'ts will wipe that out.  Thanks to the generosity of many, I keep finding myself with more bags of berbere from Selam Baltena.  If you're reading this and will be traveling to Ethiopia in the near future, I am always looking for more berbere.  If you'd be willing to bring a bag back, please e-mail me!  

with the berbere added

After the berbere, you throw in some red wine (or t'ej, if you have it). 

Meanwhile, I had taken a bunch of stew meat (it was a "family pack" of mixed beef chunks) and cut it into small cubes, both so it would be more tender and easier to eat.  

I browned the meat in a dry pan.  A lot of liquid and fat was expelled from the meat as it was cooked; I never know whether I should drain it or use it in the stew.  Tonight, I just kept cooking the meat until all the extra liquid had evaporated.  Then came time to add the meat to the onion-berbere mixture.

I added some water to the stew and then the spices:

Moving clockwise from the salt, we have:

~ cardamom (I didn't have any ground cardamom, so I ground some cardamom pods in my coffee grinder)

~  ginger (I forgot I used up all my ground ginger for the yegebs siljo), so I ground some fresh ginger and used that

~  black cumin, which can be found in Asian markets as kalonji.  

I discovered that the Asian market I go to (Patel Bros.) is actually a chain!  So if you're wondering if there's one near you, head on over to here.  Mine is a great little market and I enjoy going there.  

~  cloves

~  garlic (I chopped my own tonight because I was out of my Dorot cubes)

~  black pepper

I should not have put in the salt because I forgot that the nit'ir qibe I made last night had been made with salted butter, and the t'ibs we't tasted a bit salty to me (though only to me, I guess, as my husband thought it was fine).  What I really should have done was used unsalted butter for the nit'ir qibe, but I forgot to specify this when I sent my husband out for butter.  

I wanted to add a note about the water here.  The we't recipes in this book often call for a couple of cups or more of water, and while I used the specified amount tonight, there are times when I feel like I don't want to water it down, and I either leave out the water entirely or use less.  It may take a fair bit of trial and error before you find the consistency and/or intensity you prefer. 

After adding the water and the spices, I let it simmer while we waited for my husband to get home with the injera (the recipe recommends simmering for 15 to 20 minutes; at this point, it can also go into a crock pot for as long as you want).  

Then, it was just a matter of digging in!

It's even later now, and I'm still all blissed out on berbere.