Home-cooked Ethiopian food. I don’t have a cookbook and I don’t know of any definitive website, but at a basic level, Ethiopian is very simple. I learned a lot of it from chatting with the sales clerk while she rang me up. There are three essential ingredients: berbere spice powder, a jar of kibbeh (a spiced clarified butter), and, of course, injera, the spongy bread made from teff flour. While there is undoubtedly a lot more to learn, use these three things and whatever you make will taste Ethiopian. Injera is kind of expensive and comes in large packs of about ten, which is a great incentive to continue making Ethiopian food for the rest of the week.

To start, you’re supposed to take red onions and cook them very slowly, stirring until they become a paste. I diced the onion in a food processor and put it in a cast-iron skillet on low heat for an hour. I was the most successful in cooking atakilt wat, which you make by stewing diced carrots and potatoes (and cabbage, which I didn’t have) in about two tablespoons of kibbeh, about one and a half teaspoons of turmeric, and a little water and salt, cooking until they are soft. To make mesir wat, a red lentil stew, I started with onions and kibbeh, but the butter probably isn’t needed. Then I added two tablespoons of berbere, which is far too much; I had to temper it with sugar. Use half of that or less. Add garlic, which brings out the taste of the berbere, and then add one cup of lentils and two to three cups of water. Cook until the mixture is thick and soft, adding salt and more berbere to taste. I also made roasted beets with red wine vinegar.

(Photo: Ethiopian coffee at Java Shack, Arlington, Virginia.)

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