Ethiopia: Ethiopian Food Recap
Ethiopian food is totally different from anything else in the world and even in Africa. Roasted meat (goat, lamb, beef) and stews as well as variety of vegetables are all eaten with injera bread (a fermented spongy pancake-like sourdough flatbread made from teff flour). No utensils of any kind are used – you tear a piece of injera and use it to grab the meat or vegetable morsels. A staple at Ethiopian meals is a combination of various stews, or “wats,” served on top of injera. Some other variations include meat roasted right in front of you on hot coals as well as meat stew baked in an injera-like bread. All the stuff is pretty spicy! Another common item is tibs – beef or lamb or goat chunks grilled to various condition of crispiness and served in a special pot that has coals burning in the bottom – fantastic, fresh, and flavorful. We also tried kurt – which is actually raw chunks of beef, cut from the choosiest pieces of only bull meat. The bull needs to have been killed the same morning and never ever frozen – basically tartar on steroids! And finally, you can’t sample Ethiopian cuisines without trying the delicious coffee – after all this is where coffee was born!
