I think that one of the best ways to get to know a culture is through it’s food. One of the staples of the Ethiopian diet is injera; a pancake like flatbread made from teff. Teff is a grass-like plant that grows in east Africa that is very high in nutrients. I have seen different figures but an 8 ounce serving will provide up to 40% of calcium and 80% of the iron needed for a 2000 calorie diet as well as some other vitamins and minerals. Pretty impressive figures for a grain that is 1/100th the size of a grain of wheat. After the teff is milled into flour it is fermented for a couple days which will give the injera it’s slightly tangy, sourdough-like, flavor. Teff grain or flour can be purchased from Bob’s Red Mill in Portland (also available online) or from many health food stores.
There appears to be two main categories of seasoning for dishes: those that are spiced with the fiery berbere and those that use the milder spices of nitr kibe. Berbere is a seasoning made from red chili peppers, garlic and other spices blended together. The berbere sauces are easily identified by their dark-red color. Nitr kibe is clarified butter that is cooked with up to thirty different spices that produces an intensely unique flavor.
With this information in mind we promptly decided that a trip to Portland was in order. Unfortunately, this trip was delayed because of all the bad winter weather. Oh well, this gave us time to decide which restaurant we wanted to try first since there are several restaurants that specialize in Ethiopian food in Portland. For our first encounter we ended up at The Queen of Sheba. We had fun learning to tear off chunks of injera and scoop up our food. For those of you that have never eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant the food (usually) is served on a “plate” of injera with more injera served along side it. Utensils are not used, intead the injera is used to scoop up the food. We tried several different dishes: beef in a berbere sauce, lentils in a berbere sauce, chicken and mushrooms in an alitcha sauce and potatos and other vegetables in a mild alitcha type sauce. It was all very tasty but the berbere sauces were a little warm for me. We both thought that the chicken and mushrooms in the alitcha sauce was especially tasty. I’m not sure how traditional of a dish this is but even my picky three year old would eat it. Our goal is to try a different Ethiopian restaurant until we have tried them all. I guess after that we’ll just have to keep visiting our favorites.
~Alisha
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