so i tried ethiopian food for the first time today and thought the experience was interesting enough to blog about.
here’s ethiopian food summed by wikipedia:
Ethiopian cuisine characteristically consists of spicy vegetable and meat dishes, usually in the form of wat (or wot), a thick stew, served atop injera, a large sourdough flatbread, which is about 50 centimeters (20 inches) in diameter and made out of fermented teff flour. Ethiopians eat with their right hands, using pieces of injera to pick up bites of entrées and side dishes. No utensils are used.
the shape of the menu was probably the first indication that we were in for something out of the ordinary.
we first ordered sambusas, which were triangular fried aperatifs that resembled samosas except the inside was filled with fried lentils. it also came with salty-spicy dipping sauce which garnished it nicely.
ethiopians apparently serve their food family style, as all our orders came into a huge dish covered with straw hut-like lid, served on top of a layer of injera (the unleavened sourdough aforementioned). and here’s what it looks like under the lid:
so basically, you tear off pieces of injera, scoop up either kitfo (ground beef) or wats (stewy meat — lamb in our case), roll it up and stick it in your mouth. think fajitas with unleavened pancake like texture sourdough bread.
my overall impression of the food was actually more negative than positive; the spices and flavoring on the meat, goat cheese and collared greens were too intense for my asian mouth to stomach; the fact that the sourdough does not do much to mask the flavors or lessen them but adds on to the flavors (the sourdough was more sour than anything else i’ve tasted in my life) does not help mellow out the complex array of flavors present.
and of course, no meal is complete without beer:
ethiopian amber ale. yum.
