Northern Vittles: Cooking up an Ethiopian feast while visiting Anchorage

I love Ethiopian food and try to sample the cuisine when I'm visiting friends and family on the East Coast. Not only is the food delicious, but it's fun to eat since you get to eat with your hands! Instead of using silverware, you tear off pieces of injera--the gluten-free Ethiopian flatbread that's basically a sourdough pancake-- and use that to pick up your food.

Not surprisingly, Alaska lacks an Ethiopian restaurant, but my friend Courtney has some Ethiopian recipes in her repertoire. Courtney and Dusty just bought and moved into this awesome house that hasn't been renovated for decades. It's got amazing character and quirks-- some will be maintained as they renovate and others will be phased out. I certainly hope this dog party scene wallpaper in their kitchen area stays!

I had been asking Courtney to show me how to make these dishes for months now, so while I was down in Anchorage for work earlier this week, we got busy in the kitchen too! I love spending an evening gathering around a kitchen with friends and preparing a big meal together. I invited my friend Jason to join us and Oisín, a summer intern from NYC at Courtney's non-profit, also joined in the festivities.

For our Ethiopian feast, we made beef stew, lentils, and injera-- injera is traditionally made of teff flour but since it's not readily available at this latitude, we substituted and use buckwheat flour.

Beef Stew in Spicy Berbere Sauce

The basic ingredient are pretty simple:

1/4 c butter
two onions
a tablespoon of fresh ginger
14 1/2 oz can of crushed tomatoes
1/4 c dry red wine wine
2 1/2 lbs of chuck beef

It also calls for all sorts of spices:

1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon cayenne
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon fenugreek
1/2 teaspoon tumeric
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice

(It's possible to buy a berbere spice mix if you don't have all these on hand)

Start by chopping the onions. Courtney volunteered for onion duty. She didn't even cry while cutting the onions.

Use a food processor to finely dice the onions (almost to a purée).

Melt the butter in a large pot.

Add the onions and brown them. But since they're practically a purée, they didn't really brown too well.

Mix all the spices together. They smell amazing!

Mince up the fresh ginger.

Add the spices and ginger to the butter and onions.

Cut the beef into bite size chunks....

Add the crushed tomatoes, wine and beef to the pot

and simmer for two hours, stirring occasionally.

Lemony Lentils

2 tablespoons butter
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups yellow or brown lentils
4 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1/4 cup lemon juice
salt and pepper
chopped cilantro

Start by chopping all the ingredients.

Melt the butter in a pan.

Add in the garlic and let it brown (~1 minute).

Add in the lentils and coat them with the butter. Then add in the chicken broth and cook until tender-- 20-30 minutes. Once they start cooling, the will begin to thicken up.

Remove from heat and stir in the ginger, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Injera

While injera is traditionally made from a sourdough starter, the neat thing about this recipe is that is uses club soda instead, so you don't have to keep a sourdough starter on-hand. Also, injera is usually made from teff flour which is pretty hard to find in Alaska. I can find teff seeds which could be ground into teff flour, but we just used buckwheat flour instead.

3 cups buckwheat flour (or teff if you can find it; next time I might try swapping out half of the
         buckwheat flour with rice flour)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 eggs
~3 cups club soda (how much club soda you need probably depends on what type of flours you use;          we probably double this since you want the batter to spread thinly in the pan when cooking)
         oil for oiling the pan (though a non-stick pan is recommended)

Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Add in the two eggs and club soda.

Mix well, and if necessary add more club soda so it's about the same consistency as crêpe batter.

To cook, heat a non-stick or oiled pan up; pour in ~ 1/3 cup of batter and immediate roll the pan around by your wrist to spread the batter across the bottom of the pan. Let the injera cook throughout (you shouldn't need to flip the injera). Adjust the heat as needed so it cooks thoroughly but does not burn on the bottom. I found that the edges began to peel up when the injera was done. Stack on a plate and cover to keep warm. Serve fresh!

Jason was a total natural at cooking the injera.

I made a couple of nicely formed pieces as well.

Jason teaching Oisín the ways...

Oisín had the knack as well.

Once the stew, lentil, and injera were done, we were ready to feast. Courtney also made a green salad and grilled some asparagus to compliment the meal.