Heard of injera? Teff, wot or berbere? Stand by to be initiated into the heady spices that are part of Ethiopian cuisine.

What's a beautiful Ethiopian woman doing in Outback Queensland? If she's Almaz Taye Cashmore, she's running a motel and cooking traditional Ethiopian cuisine.

Almaz Taye (Leila) Cashmore has been in Mount Isa for more than 20 years. She came here with her Australian mining engineer husband (they actually met in Sudan). She now runs the Best Western motel in Mount Isa. Apart from cooking she is a keen golfer and has even scored a hole in one at the Mount Isa Golf Club.

Although the basic ingredients for Ethiopian dishes are the same as those used for Australian recipes, Ethiopian food is distinguished by the addition of special spices. Any Ethiopian dish is incomplete without these spices as the flavour will not be the same.

Almost all Ethiopian dishes are homemade, including the spice blends.
The staple foods of most Ethiopians are a spicy sauced dish called Wot and injera, an unleavened bread, usually prepared from teff flour.

Teff is a tiny, round, khaki-colored grain closely resembling millet. Its scientific name is Eragrostis, teff. "Teffa", the Amharic word for "lost", is so named because of teff's small size. It is the smallest grain in the world and often is lost in the harvesting and threshing process because it’s so tiny. It’s considered a highly nutritious grain and can be found in some health food stores. The closest grain to teff is millet.)

In Australia, since teff is not easily available, injera is mostly made with wheat or corn flour. A piece of injera (a slightly sour flat bread made in a similar way to a pancake) is carefully wrapped around the rich spicy sauce of the wot and placed into the mouth with the fingers.

Wot can be prepared from all kinds of meats, vegetables and fish. Wot contains the spicy hot, red pepper mixture known as berbere and also a spicy, clarified butter known as niter kibbeh.

Berbere is a mix of hot chillis and paprika plus a variety of sweeter spices like turmeric, nigella, turmeric, ginger and cardamon. Leila gets hers from Ethiopia but you can purchase it from specialty stores in Australian capital cities.

The other kind of sauced dish is known as alecha or alitja. This, on the other hand, does not contain berbere but does contain niter kibbeh along with turmeric, green peppers and other, non-chilli spices.

The Ethiopian custom of “giving gursha” plays up the exotic component of eating. Gursha means “mouthful” and refers to a wad of food which one places carefully in another’s mouth, usually as a gesture of affection.
Gursha is exchanged between husband and wife and among relatives and friends.

Unlike the Australian individual’s table manners, the Ethiopians’ reflect their communal dining traditions. Diners eat from a common platter; the breaking of bread together takes on a strong social significance in Ethiopia where it is considered essential to building and maintaining strong bonds of friendship and loyalty.

To end a meal, the Ethiopians love the coffee ritual. Freshly-roasted beans (coffee originates from Ethiopia) are ground and brewed over a small flame. Frankincense is burned. The coffee is served in tiny cups and passed around the company. The idea is to make three rounds of coffee from the grounds, to sit and talk meanwhile. Each round has a special name – the third being bereka. If you last till the third round, bereka, then you are blessed.