The Ethiopia Report

Raw goat served here with mitmita. Eating tere sega is similar to eating sashimi.

(Jolie cabled from the continent the following report)

From September 2006 to September 2007, I had the opportunity to work on food security related issues while living in Addis Ababa. Unfortunately, Ethiopia usually conjures up visions of starving, fly-in-the-eye children and a general mass of helpless hungry humanity. I came to appreciate that while Ethiopia is a poor, densely populated rather drought prone country, food is actually readily available. I’d spent the greater part of the last ten years living in Washington, DC, so I was not unfamiliar with habesha (ethiopian) cuisine. This assignment did prove to be my master class in ethio-style eating. I learned that habesha food is a relatively simple cuisine, but with powerful spices and flavors that make it sophisticated and some of the most interesting food one can experience. Some of my favorites . . . .

Kitfo.
Finely minced beef (chop by hand, only high quality lean cuts such as tenderloin)
Kibey (spiced garlic, cumin, coriander, basil, clarified butter)
Mitamita (spicy-salty blend of chili peppers, salt, ginger, onion, garlic, cumin, cardamon)

Kitfo Lebleb with lab (cheese) and gomen (greens).

Kitfo is a very special food in Ethiopia. It is traditionally eaten by the Gurage, an ethnic group from the south-western part of the country, but now-a-days it very much a part of the greater culture. It is a dish especially eaten by urban dwellers (men and women alike) who have been more exposed to mixing cultures and have the income to afford them this delicacy. Kitfo is a simple dish of minced beef, butter and spices that is most often served raw or gently warmed. There is something powerful about raw meat-- it evokes feelings and associations that are much more vivid that its cooked counterpart- perhaps a way the human animal expresses its dominance over other species.

Kitfo is served one of three ways: raw (tere), warmed (lebleb) or fully cooked (abasala). Most people will tell you there is not point getting the fully cooked version, it is still quite tasty but it is not the full experience. The kitfo is accompanied by fresh, homemade cheese not unlike fresh ricotta called lab and served along with gomen, similar to collard greens. The kitfo is arranged in a clay bowl atop a banana leaf doily. There is usually a puddle of butter gathering in the banana leaf as you work your way towards the bottom on the bowl. Kitfo is eaten by hand with injera, kocho (a fermented enset bread) or with a very long spoon. Kocho is supposedly an acquired taste that I loved the instant I got it into my jaws. Some have compared kocho to eating carpet padding. I find it has an interesting texture and a cooling effect that is welcome while eating fiery kitfo.

It is a sight to see a group of smartly dressed people gathered around a lunch table, elegantly brandishing long spoons, eating this dish. Many non-ethiopians I met in Addis were hesitant to try Kitfo, expressing concerns over disease, sickness and parasites-- “why would I eat that? I don’t want to die” a friend told me. You want to eat it because it is absolutely delicious. It is better raw than cooked and probably completely safe to eat in most restaurants, especially in the US where there are strict meat handling regulations. Note-- you dont need a lot of this to fill-up. Four of us ordered three portions and were experiencing serious belly-swelling before the third bowl could be finished. The butter makes kitfo a particularly rich food.

Derek Tibs (fried goat)

Tibs.
Amharic for ‘fried’, tibs are most ubiquitous chomp in Ethiopia. And they are delicious because what is not to love about pan fried meat? Ethio-tip number one: if you find yourself in a sketchy restaurant, get the tibs, your intestines will thank you. Tibs are made from many different animals, but mostly goat, sheep and cow. Fish tibs refers to an entire whole fried fish, which was confusing for me. . . . . Before frying, the meat is prepared by chopping various cuts in to bite sized chunks (though there are variations such as the finger shaped zilzil tibs). The meat can be mixed with rosemary, onion, jalapeno, tomato, bebere* and then pan fried in butter or oil. The ‘derek’ or dry tibs is a delicious variation where by the meat is simply pan fried to a crisp all on its own, raw shallots are added after frying. Derek tibs are frequently served in a clay dish set over coals. Each order of tibs should be accompanied by a set of riblets. It is proper ethio-etiquitte to eat the riblets after having consumed the rest of the dish. I insist on eating my tibs with plenty of mitmita, otherwise its just the burger without the cheese. Others prefer awaze (berbere paste) or sene fitch (Ethiopian mustard).

*Berbere is the most essential element in ethiopian cooking. It is a blend of chilies, onion, ginger, bishop’s weed, cloves, coriander, etc. Most households prepare their own berbere, thus the exact ingredients will vary according to tastes and family recipes.

Bozena shiro

Shiro Wat.
My bread and butter, shiro wat, is the mac & cheese of Ethiopian cuisine. The prepared packets of roasted ground chickpeas and spices need only be combined with oil, water and shallots to provide a satisfying and comforting meal. Nothing feels quite a nice as warm shiro on a chilly day. If you’d like to try shiro at your local Ethiopian restaurant, you will probably see it in either of its two basic forms: Bozena shiro (shiro with chunks of meat) or vegetarian shiro (without the meat). I prefer straight shiro with butter. If you’d like to try shiro at home, it’s quite easy to whip up if you are able to find shiro flour in your locality. Here is a link to a recipe: http://www.ethiopianmillennium.com/SHIRO.html. Shiro is best served piping (boiling!) hot in a clay dish with a lid to keep the sauce warm-- then you gradually spoon out the wat on to the injera waiting to soak it all up. A regular sauce pans works fine too. If you find yourself in Addis, the best shiro I found was at the Crocodile Cafe located near the National Theatre on Churchill Avenue. Though owing to the fact it is a most basic cheap and delicious ethio-staple, it is available at most food outlets.

Shiro flour:
roasted chickpeas
cumin
cardamon
basil
bishops-weed
ginger
garlic


There are many more wonderful and exciting dishes in the habesha kitchen. If you have the opportunity to try tere sega (raw meat), dulet (a mix of minced tripe, liver and beef), doro wat (spicy chicken stew) or the variety of vegan fasting foods, take full advantage, especially if you love spicy, exciting food.

Playing pool with a horse in Addis.

(Thanks Jolie. For more photos check out Jolie's Flickr page)

Cheers.

Dia de los Muertros

To take in the true meaning of the season, you should sashay to the to the National Museum of Mexican Art for the Day of the Dead exhibit. It runs through 16 December. While there we loaded up on the sugar skulls.

The museum is located in the Pilsen neighborhood, so make some time to mosey around 18th street. We ate lunch at Nuevo Leon, poked our heads into some tortilla factories, and picked up some pastels at Bombon.

muy bueno.

¡salud!

Rillettes

Making lard and potted pork.

Say you have a big Autumn sausage festival and you have some leftover ingredients. Ask yourself what would the French do? OK I am over generalizing again, What would a person of Angers, of Le Mans, or of Tours do? Why they would throw pork scraps into a big pot let it stew for a few hours then put it into jars to be used as sandwich spread. Stick a "gourmet" label on it and folks will snap it up at Dean & Delucca for twelve bucks a pop.

Rillettes is part of a family that includes Rillons and Rillauds (Tic loves the three R's). All three start out as Rillions which is cubed pork poached in fat. Rillauds are cured in salt prior to cooking. Rillons and Rillauds are served hot or cold soon after cooking. Rillettes are pounded (pesto!) after cooking then potted and covered with lard. Oh boy I'm getting hungry, let's get cooking.

Making Lard.

First we need our cooking medium, lard. The hardest part of making lard is finding fresh pork fat. You can try asking at the grocery meat counter, but you'll have better luck if you go to a butcher or a packing house. Any kind of pork fat will do, it just needs to be fresh (it shouldn't have any unpleasant smell), and relatively free of meat.

Chop up the fat and put it into a pot. Place the pot uncovered into 250F oven for three hours, check it every once in a while, give it a stir, watch the fat melt away!

Once you have some nice brown bits and everything looks good and melted, strain of your hot lard.

As the lard cools to room temperature, it solidifies. Lard will keep in the fridge for a month or two before it starts tasting a little off. I have also read it keeps well in the freezer (just like butter huh?), but frankly there are so many things to do with lard (just wait until Christmas) that I usually use it up before I have to freeze it. Making lard is very simple and you get a product that is superior to what you can find in the store. That said, its okay to go to the store to get some, but the stuff sold in blocks at the grocery have hydrogenated fats and preservatives added and it really does not have much flavor. You would be better off to find a Hispanic market where you may find lard sold in tubs labeled Manteca. Wherever you go whatever you buy, always read the food label.

Rillettes.

The next day I melted the lard in a medium pan (sautoir) and added my cut up pork shoulder and a bouquet garni. The lard should just cover the pork. The pot goes in a 200F oven for several hours (maybe four) until the pork is fork tender. Strain while hot.

At this point it's time to add some spices and start pounding. Now you can start pounding with a mortar, maybe use a fork to pull apart the strands (I tried), or you can drop the the lot into a cuisinart set for obliterate (I did). While the blades where turning I added the juice of half a lemon and a bit of chopped parsley.

Les quatre épices: Poivre, macis, gingembre et clou. Un peu de sel.

Here's the portions I used:

For the Lard

517 g Pork Fat cubed (That's a little over a pound)

For the Rillettes

862 g pork shoulder cubed

Bouquet garni made up of fresh thyme, Hyssop, bay leaf and 2 cloves of garlic

10 g salt

7 g pepper

1 g mace

1 g ground clove

1 g ground ginger

Juice of half a lemon

a bit of parsely

For the fancy pants look, I put into a french jar and poured warmed lard to cover by about a half an inch.

Whatever.

Spread it on some bread crack it with some mustard and you got a fun snack. If you want to read more about Rillettes go to the library and look up Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, by Jane Grigson, she has the word.

Put on some loud music and get back to work.

cheers.

Jackpot

Cher Jloie:

I found mine. You and your brother take care not so set fire to Poland. Send pictures anyway.

Bisous,

macmac

Used book sales at the library can be a good place to look for cookbooks. Sure there are piles of Sunset BBQ books and Betty Crocker Microwave Primers, But sometimes you can strike pure gold. Last Saturday I found the Holy Grail of food nerd cookbooks, Larousse Gastronomique.

It's a 1961, first American edition, (book club edition). Five bucks. Sure I could have bought one on Ebay or purchased a new one at the bookstore, but where's the sport in that?

Cheers.

Tic

I have a tic. I know it because it happens every time, it's involuntary, and it takes a great deal of effort to control it. I usually don't notice it but my wife mentioned it a few days ago as one of the few things I do that embarrasses her. Whenever I am around a person who is speaking with a accent I start speaking with an accent too. It's especially bad when I hear a Brogue or a French accent. I grew up in Ohio, I have no natural twang or twinge, but it feels so good to shape vowel sounds in the back of my throat and roll them through the roof of my mouth and expel them out my mouth and my nose simultaneously. Not only do I affect an accent, but I invert my sentence structures and repetitively say in my head (at least I don't think I say it out loud) "How do you say...(Comment dit?...)."

Now Gentle Reader you may be wondering why you are reading about psychological problems in a blog about sausage, curing, smoking and whatever else blah blah blah. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I entered the culinary program at Kendall College. And the instructor for my Intro to Kitchen class is French. In addition to wanting to repeat everything Chef says avec accent, all the culinary terms we are learning are French too. My tic is a singing vortex, Batonnet (BA- ton-nay), Tourner (tour- nay) over and over in my head. After five hours I'm exhausted. On Monday we are starting with chicken (Poulet!).

School or no school I must get you caught up on what's been happening around the hermitage. A couple of weeks ago, we had our first Oktoberfest Celebration.

My mom and dad came up to help and we turned out twenty pounds of sausage and some sides. We made Bratwurst with marjoram and caraway:

Then, by special request, we made Italian sausage with parsley and cheese (not exactly German, but our most popular sausage this summer)

And we made a weisswurst.

This traditional München sausage is emulsified, meaning it's a bit harder to make. You grind ice with fat and meat then whip it into a mousse like structure. The final product should have the consistency of a hot dog rather than a brat.

I used a recipe from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman. In the recipe Ruhlman stresses the importance of keeping the emulsion from breaking: "[A broken emulsion] though flavorful...will feel a little like eating clumps of soggy ground-up newspaper." Well I think I didn't whip it long enough; even though it was light, the texture was all wrong. Still we didn't have any trouble eating it all without giving it to the dog.

The first batch I poached I had the oven temp at 350F and some of the sausages burst. I found an oven temp of 300F ideal for poaching.

How about some sides?

Once again I tried to make sauerkraut, but after two weeks of curing it still didn't taste right, so I picked of a few bags of Bobak's.

Mom mixed up a little sodium hydroxide for pretzels.


Bonne Femme made a warm potato salad and apple strudel.

All in all a very good party. We will work out the bugs and have a bigger and better one next year, maybe you can come help make sausage.

Speaking of sausage my mom waited until the next morning to have hers.

As a strict traditionalist she insisted on having her Weißwurst cooked in water and served for breakfast. What's the German word for waffle?

Thanks to everyone (especially mom and dad) for making our first Oktoberfest such a success I hope to see you again next year.

Cheers.

Fall

Last Saturday, apple picking at The Elegant Farmer, Mukwonago, WI.

I have to keep it short this week, I'm busy preparing for the highest of sausage holidays, Octoberfest. A quick note on last week's ricotta cheese experiment: The next day the cheese had mellowed and I used it to make a lasagna sort of dish with tomatoes and eggplant. It was pretty darn good. Making cheese at home is fun. Impress your friends.

But first say goodbye to Summer, and welcome the Fall by standing outside with a beer in one hand und a sausage in the other.

Ein Prosit!

Building Blocks

Experiment 21B, Ricotta Cheese.

If you are looking for something good to make at home this weekend, do not read this article. The tale I present here is not exactly one of woe but a rill that starts from a spring of good idea, winds through thicket, opens to fertile plains, yet does not quite reach the promise of open sea. Keep paddling.

A couple of weeks ago I started ruminating upon making cheese. I wanted a fresh cheese that could be good for pizza. After some searching, I decided to try Ricotta: It's simple, quick, and I had all the ingredients required on hand. I found a nice write-up about making ricotta at the Fias Co Farm Website. As noted on the website ( and also documented in The Oxford Companion to Food, p 666, and Larousse Gastronomique, p. 888,) Ricotta, is Italian for re-cooked, and ricotta cheese is made from heating the whey created when making hard cheese. I know what you are thinking, and no, I didn't have whey on hand, and I haven't been making hard cheese (but I am thinking about it, I would have to start a new blog, Fromage MAC) This ricotta is made from milk and an acid like lemon juice or vinegar. The first time I made it with lemon juice, it turned out pretty good, a slight lemony twang to it. The texture was a bit rubbery, but I probably let it hang too long. It was still good on top of pizza.

Yesterday, I decided to try it again, this time with vinegar. Let's go to the boards:

First I gently heated one gallon of whole milk (bought at the grocery), to 200F. Next I added about 90ml of rice wine vinegar (a bad choice). I covered the pot let it stand for ten minutes, then transferred the mixture to a colander lined with cheese cloth.

The fabric in the picture is actually unbleached muslin. Instead of paying $3.50 for a small package of cheese cloth, I paid 99 cents a yard at Jo Ann's (my mom would be proud). The weave on the muslin is a little tighter so it is not an exact substitute, but it seemed to work well in this application.

I tied off the cheese to hang for a couple of hours. The water draining out of the curd is whey. I saved it because it's good for other uses: I cooked couscous with it.

Et Voilà, 970 grams of cheese. Perfect texture, add salt to taste. Oh yeah the taste. I didn't take into account the wine part of rice wine vinegar: The cheese had a fermented-alcohol flavor, not appropriate for a fresh cheese. I accidentally poured some of the whey into H's milk glass and he asked, "Daddy why does this milk taste like bread?" Maybe a plain white vinegar will do the trick, or try the lemon again, or I just remembered, I have some citric acid left over from canning tomatoes. I will figure it out. You should work on it too, it's fun.

Cheers.

Postcard from Addis

Hi Macmac--

This weekend some buddies and me went out of town for a tibs (fried goat) and tej(honey wine) fest. We also got some tera sega (raw (goat) meat). it was pretty awesome, a real canivore's delight. I had never tried the raw stuff before, and it was really surprisingly delicious. Kinda like sashimi, like you might expect. Since there is a butchery inside the restaurant, you know it's fresh. you order by the kilo, and the waiter goes over to the butcher stand and the dude hacks off the right amount and the waiter brings it back to the table. Pretty awesome. Probably nothing like that in the states due to some heath code what have you.

The tej was pretty fantastic as well, since it is basically the wine-cooler of Ethiopia, it can really sneak up on you so you gotta be careful. Anyways, since I haven't gotten around to learning how to cook here yet, I thought I could write an article about eating here for saucison. How does that sound?

talk to you soonnnnnnm,

jloie

Thanks JL, hope to see you soon. By the way, If anyone wants to party like it's 1999, Ethiopia is having it's Milenium celebration on September 12th. Seven years late you say? No, Ethiopia follows the Julian Calendar. Read more here in an artlicle from the Guardian.

Happy New Year.

Cheers.

Pork Shoulder Does Double Duty

I hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend. Around here we kicked back with some favorites. With a 5 pound pork shoulder I made some sausage and some barbecue. First up an encore performance of the Italian Sausage with Parsley and Cheese. I doubled the amount of cheese from the first recipe, I highly recommend it, very cheesy. For extra ooziness, don't overcook it. Then on Monday I used the other half of the shoulder for the Labor day requisite Genuine Authentic Barbecue.

Thus Summer winds.

Fall edges forward.

Back to school.

Cheers.