Ethiopian Cooking with your host.....Mark

Wendi and I are hosting some Ethiopian nights coming up so I needed to try and learn a few dishes. We have been collecting ideas for the past few months from magazines and online and by sampling a few at Ethiopian restaurants. I also have purchased a few of the staples of Ethiopian cooking such as berbere spice and Teff Flour.

Tonight I decided to first try and make some samosas. A dish that I thought was Indian, but turns up often in Ethiopian cooking. They are little filled pastries that are typically fried. As I hate to fry food, I decided to try baking mine. They came out great! They had a dough that had a lot of fall spices in it and a stuffing with potatos, carrots, onions and some spices. The recipe was mostly from Cooking Light magazine, but with a few personal twists. They were the highlight of dinner.

Next I decided to try the Ethiopian staple bread, Injera. It is a flat, spongy, sourdough pancake. The recipe I used was also from Cooking Light Magazine and I have to say that it was very good. It was a lot different than what we had at the Ethiopian restaurant, but looked just like the photo in the magazine. Wendi and I both thought that it tasted better than the restaurants. Getting the thickness etc, right is the most difficult part.

Last, I made Doro Wat. It is a very traditional, spicy, chicken dish. There are about a million different recipes for this dish, so I borrowed a little bit from several and it came out pretty good, but VERY HOT. I think I will need to "tweak" the recipe for this dish also to make it a little more palatable for Americans. I think it has a lot of potential though, and I look forward to learning and creating more Ethiopian dishes.