A Taste of African

 African cuisine, or more specifically Ethiopian cuisine is one of my favorite foods. There is an African Restaurant here in Lincoln, NE that is a must try for those of you who have never experienced African, and is a must go for those of you who have and love it.

Roy, the owner of The African Restaurant in Lincoln,  NE.
 Photo from his website: www.letseat.at/africanfood

However after many visits to this wonderful restaurant I decided to venture out and try to make it on my own with the help of my like-minded buddy Rachel :)

The most difficult part I anticipated would be making the injera, which is the bland spongy flatbread that you put the stews and vegetables on. Injera also acts as the dining utensils, as in this cuisine you tear off pieces and grab the food with it, instead of using a fork. 

The most amazing part of Ethiopian: The spices! Not only do they add a kick to the dish, they add a beautiful earthy color as well. These are all the spices the recipe calls for mixed together. 

We decided to cook a venison stew in spicy berbere sauce. The original recipe calls for beef, but venison was a wonderful subsitute. Here is that recipe:

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/beef-stew-spicy-berbere-sauce-10000001157813/

Spicy Venison Berbere Stew

Ingredients
2 medium onions, quartered lengthwise
1/4 cup butter
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 tablespoon each ground paprika and cayenne
1 teaspoon each ground cumin 
1/2 teaspoon each ground turmeric, cinnamon and cardamom
14 teaspoon each ground cloves and allspice
1 can crushed tomatoes in puree
1/4 cup dry red wine
2 1/2 pounds boned venison cut into small pieces
Salt

Preparation 

1.In a food processor, pulse onions until very finely diced (almost pureed)

This is the caramelized onions after adding the spices. 

2. Melt butter in 4 to 5 quart pan over medium high heat. Add onions and stir until browned, about 10 minutes..
3. Add all the spices ( I measured and put them all in a cup first, then threw them all in). Stir until fragrant, about 1 minute.
4. Add tomatoes, wine and venison. Bring to a simmer then cover and reduce heat. Let simmer for two hours, stirring occasionally. 
5. Add salt to taste.

Here the stew is simmering. I wish you could add smells to a blog, because the aromas were amazing. 

 Now I hope you noticed that this simmers for two hours, which is a perfect amount of time for you to get started on the injera and spicy vegetable side. For the vegetable side dish we chose spicy potatoes, cabbage and carrots. This dish takes your familiar potato and carrot dish, flips it on its head and gives it that bold but mild East African kick that makes you think you've never truly had potatoes or carrots before. Plus it's easy!

Here is the recipe we used: http://localfoods.about.com/od/sidedishes/r/potcabcarrot.htm

Spicy Potatoes, Cabbage and Carrots


Ingredients


2-4 Tablespoons of butter
1 onion, chopped
6 cloves of smashed or minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 head of savoy cabbage or 1/2 head of green cabbage cored and chopped
3 potatoes peeled and diced
3 carrots peeled and diced

Preparation:


1. Melt butter in a large frying pan or medium pot over medium high heat. Add onions garlic and salt. Cook for 3 minutes until soft, stirring frequently.


2. Add all the spices, stir for 1 minute. Add cabbage and stir, then cover and reduce heat to medium low. Cook the cabbage until it wilts, 5-10 minutes.


3. Add potatoes, carrots and 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat to a simmer.Cook until vegetables are tender. If there is too much liquid, cook with the cover off to reduce liquid. 


 Lastly, we fried up the injera. Here is where we had our trials, errors and lessons learned. When making something so out of the ordinary and out of your culture, there's bound to be something that doesn't go exactly to plan. But we learned, adapted and came out with delicious injera!

Injera is an Ethiopian staple that is cooked weekly and eaten daily in most East African households. It is made from teff flour and water, which is allowed to ferment for several days. This fermentation gives the injera a mildly sour taste, and gives the spongy texture to the flatbread. 

Injera is traditionally cooked on a large black clay plate. Photo from wikipedia commons. 

We decided to make the traditional injera with 100% teff flour. Here is the recipe:

http://www.food.com/recipe/authentic-injera-aka-ethiopian-flat-bread-96980 

It simply calls for teff flour and water, then fermenting it for 3 days. However after doing this and frying it up, the smell was terrible, and the taste was probably similar to what your dog leaves behind in the yard for you to pick up. It didn't look that great either...

Injera gone wrong...

So we continued in a different direction, with a recipe more like this: 

http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/bread/recipe-injera.html

This recipe only used a 1:4 ratio of teff flour to white flour. For a quick rise we put it in a bowl with about 2 tsps of yeast and let it sit for 30 minutes.

Injera

Ingredients

1/4 cup teff flour

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1 cup water

pinch of salt

vegetable oil

The trick to injera is to pour the batter on a hot oiled pan, and wait for it to cook all the way through without flipping it. You will know it's done when you see many bubbles and it looks cooked. 

  After a couple of hours of chopping, stirring, simmering and frying, we had a beautiful plate of boldly tasting Ethiopian food. The venison was so soft you could cut it with a fork, the sauce tasted as intoxicating as it smelled, the spicy vegetables melted in your mouth and the bland tasting injera held everything together perfectly. The best part was it tasted 99% like the food we had at the restaurant! I'm excited to cook this again, maybe for my family? We'll see if they are ready for it :) Thanks for reading, and remember, no cuisine is ever too out of reach to try in your own kitchen!

Pumpkin Bliss

I'll admit, since graduating from college I've felt like your typical 20 something year old trying to go head on with the world and tackle its problems one by one. I really do pity action heroes; the need to save the world is a tough feeling. So most days I try and take joy in the simple things in my life that are making it so happy and meaningful; drinking coffee with Ben in the morning before we go off to work, waking up to a snoring puppy with his feet stretched in the air, the love pouring through from my family in things as simple as facebook posts or phone calls.

And lately, my own personal redemption against the chaos of the world; cooking. I've always loved it, but through college didn't get much time or have enough energy for it in such a get up and run out the door lifestyle. Since graduating I've learned to slow down and really immerse myself in the present moment in everything I do, especially cooking.

So yesterday, instead of tackling the world's problems, I tackled pumpkin butter :)

I bought three small pumpkins from the farmers market, and was excited to put them to use. I searched for recipes all over, until I came across this simple crock pot pumpkin butter recipe. Then I got to work. I’ve never done anything with a pumpkin before besides carve it (who knew it was edible?!).

The recipe calls for about two of these smaller pumpkins. I chopped them in half to get the seeds out, and then I peeled the skins off with a knife and cut the meat of the pumpkin into smaller inch long pieces. 

Then I dumped these into a crock pot, and added about a cup of sugar, ½ a cup of brown sugar, and a handful of cinnamon with a few pinches of nutmeg and allspice. I also added about a ½ cup of milk. 

Turn the crockpot on low, and cook for 8 hours. An hour into it I decided to help the process by blending the chunks together so it looked more pureed.

After this your work is done and the crockpot takes over cooking it while simultaneously filling your house with amazing autumn aromas. I made some fresh bread that was finished baking just as the pumpkin butter was ready to taste. A spread of the freshly cooked butter over a piece of homemade bread tasted like a perfect fall day melting in your mouth.  It turned out great and I look forward to making more of it maybe for Christmas gifts!

But of course, the pumpkin possibilities didn’t end there. I had saved the seeds, rinsed and dried them. 

But instead of salting and roasting them as usual, I incorporated them into my homemade granola. The result: pumpkin bliss.

Here is my granola recipe (Of course I change it everytime, so feel free to do with it what you want with whatever you have around)

About 3 cups of plain oats

1 cup of brown sugar

½ cup of honey

3 tbsp of melted butter

1 cup of crushed walnuts

1 cup of sliced almonds

1 cup of pumpkin seeds

Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, or any other spice you can think of to taste.

Mix all together and spread out on a baking sheet. Bake for 60 minutes at 250degrees, stirring every 15 minutes.

The smell alone of this baking in your oven will make your mouth water. Plus, homemade granola is a lot cheaper, tastier and fresher than store bought, so why not make it yourself!

Moral of the story: Cook a lot, eat well, and relish the sweet, simple things in life :)