About Ethiopian food

When it comes to food, Ethiopia is sadly more frequently associated with famine, yet is also often described as the land of bread and honey. Grains such as millet, wheat and particularly teff, a tiny round grain that flourishes in the highlands of Ethiopia, are prominent parts of the Ethiopian diet.

Injera, a sour pancake-type bread made with teff, forms the centrepiece of many Ethiopian meals. In fact, injera is much more than simply the bread for the meal; it is also used as the tablecloth, crockery and cutlery. The injera is laid over the table (like a tablecloth), and portions of stew are piled on top of the bread in order to soak up the juices. Mouthfuls are torn off, used to scoop up the main dish, then rolled into a cigar shape and eaten.

The national dish of Ethiopia is a spicy stew called wat (or wot). It can be made with beef, chicken, lamb or goat. During religious fasts, the wat is made with pulses such as chickpeas and lentils. The primary ingredient that characterises every wat is berbere, a hot red paste made from a mix of herbs and spices that always contains hot red (cayenne) pepper and fenugreek.

Doro (chicken) wat, is further enhanced with boiled eggs and niter kebbeh, a clarified butter mixed with spices. This clarified butter (similar to Indian ghee) is a handy cupboard item that's used in many facets of Ethiopian cooking.

A milder stew served in Ethiopia is the alecha. It is made with many of the same ingredients as the wat, but the berbere is replaced by green ginger, giving the soup a milder flavour.

Other dishes that may be found on the injera include labne, an acidic white curd cheese similar to Greek feta, and kitfo – a dish of raw ground beef that is marinated in a spicy chilli powder.

Generally, the meal is finished when not only all the stews and are eaten, but when the tablecloth (the injera) has been eaten too.

The sweetener in the Ethiopian diet is honey, collected by ancient beekeeping techniques. Honeycomb is wrapped in the injera and served as a treat, complete with the young honeybee grubs inside. Tej, a honey-based wine, may be served at the beginning of the meal as an aperitif. Coffee, Ethiopia’s main export, is served at the end of the meal and is also sweetened with honey.