Heavenly recipes from Ethiopia

Originally published in The Guardian Weekend, July 23 2005 

"Ethiopians take great pride in their national dish, the wott. And with good reason, Matthew Fort, found on a recent visit – this incredibly versatile and tasty spice-laden stew appears in some shape or form at every meal.

"Cooks in Ethiopia use a wider range of spices than is usual in Africa therefore I haven’t given exact proportions for this spice mix because each cook creates their own mix to their own proportions to their own liking. I suggest you do the same.

• Spice Mix
• Coriander
• Cardamom
• Nutmeg
• Cloves
• Black Pepper
• Cinnamon
• Long Pepper (vine pepper)
• Fenugreek

Roast the ingredients in a dry pan, then grind together in a pestle and mortar for use in the following dish.

Doro Wott
Or chicken sauce. This is more of a stew than a sauce.  Either way, it’s seriously tasty, with or without injera.

• 1 whole chicken
• 1kg red onion
• ½ tbsp garlic
• ½ tbsp ginger
• 3 tomatoes
• 4 eggs
• 60ml vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp cayenne
• 2 tsp paprika
• 4 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• Salt

Serves 4

"Wash the chicken and joint it. Finely chop the onion. Mash the garlic and ginger. Blanch and peel the tomatoes, then mash them with a fork. Hard boil the eggs.

"Put the oil into a saucepan and put the pan over a high heat. Add the onion, pour in a little water to loosen, and cook until the onions are light brown, stirring to prevent sticking.

"Turn down the heat, add the cayenne and paprika, and stir in. If the mix looks a bit dry, add a little more later. Cook for a minute or two, then add the mashed tomatoes and cook for three or four minutes. Add the mashed garlic and ginger, along with two tablespoons of butter.

"Now add the chicken and stir so it is covered by the other ingredients. Add a little more water and cook over a gentle heat until the meat is falling off the bone. You may need to add a little more water from time to time, but the texture should not be too liquid.

"Just before you finish cooking, stir in the remaining butter and the mixed spice, season with salt to taste, then turn off the heat. Peel the hard-boiled eggs, make four slits in each and drop them into the sauce. The doro wott is ready to serve.

Injera

"This unleavened bread is really a huge pancake made by the women in special large pans with heavy covers.  The tef batter is saved from an earlier baking and added to the new batter to give it a sourdough quality.  It is poured at a thin consistency and baked covered, so that the bottom does not brown.  The top should be full of air holes before the pancake is covered.  The heavy cover steams the pancake so that, when finished, it looks like a huge, thin, rubber sponge.

"Since tef is not available here, I had to find a way to simulate injera.  The combination of buckwheat flour mix and biscuit mix produced the closest substitute.  Making it is easy, but getting the injera texture takes a bit of experimentation – first, because not all pancake mixes are alike, and second, because it is important to cook the pancake at just the right temperature.  This takes a bit of practice.

The recipe is adapted from Bea Sandler’s The African Cook Book: Menus And Recipes From Eleven African Countries And The Island Of Zanzibar (Citadel Press, 1993). These quantities yield five nine-inch pancakes.

• 115g buckwheat pancake mix (70g buckwheat and 70g plain flour)
• 115g biscuit mix (70g self-raising flour and 70g plain flour)
• 1 egg
• Vegetable oil
• Water

Serves 4

"Preheat the oven to 170C/325/gas mark 3. Combine the buckwheat and biscuit mixes with the egg.  Add a tablespoon of oil and 350ml-450ml of water, until it’s an easy pouring consistency.  Bring a 10-inch skillet (or a handled griddle pan) to medium heat – do not let it get too hot – then with a brush spread half a teaspoon of oil over the base of the hot pan.  Pour in the injera mixture in a thin stream, starting from the outside and going in circles towards the centre.

"As soon as it’s bubbling uniformly all over, remove the pan from the heat and pop in the oven for about a minute, until the top is dry but not brown.  Repeat four more times, then arrange the five pancakes overlapping each other so as to completely cover a 15-inch tray, thus forming the Injera ‘tablecloth’.