If you tell a kid you're taking them out for ice cream, then decide not to go, you're pretty much the grinch. If you tell your friend you're meeting them at Beyond Sushi Friday afternoon, then cancel, you're the worst friend ever. It'll take weeks for sushi to leave the brain. But worst of all, if you plan to make Injera crepes with your injera starter this weekend along with an Ethiopian feast, and then your starter fails??? That is suffering. You pretty much have to make it anyway. I can't see how you could come back from such a hardship without a substantial substitute for injera and tons of WAT.

I kept thinking I was only going to make 4 stews. I had a stockpile of cabbage shreds from golabkis last week, so it was clear I was to make Tikil Gomen with it. I've been wanting to make shiro for a while, so I thought I would make that too, along with Atkilt Alecha, because Alex loves green beans. At the farmers market I found this little awesome sugar pumpkin! I thought it could rock the house if it got roasted and mashed with berbere and simmered in the best apple cider in the world, also found at my local farmers market too. And it did, folks. The house was rocked.

While I was cooking the Tikil Gomen and Atkilt Alecha, I was like... how are you gonna leave off the lentils. Lentils are everyone's fav. So I simmered them too. Then I thought about that awesome Avocado salad we had at the last few Ethiopian places we've been to in the city, and I thought it would be easy enough to make too. Then I thought we needed another cold dish, and Butecha is so fun to make, and so I made that too. Then I thought of how much I miss mushrooms and never make them anymore because Alex doesn't like them. I love mushrooms, guys. I can't live without them. So I made Ingudai tibs too. Then I forgot about my pumpkin in the oven, and mashed it up with a ton of berbere and niter kibbe, and simmered it in my awesome apple cider I got. I toasted the seeds up in my skillet while it simmered, and noticed that when the seeds get really hot, they start to spin SO FAST! Then they pop and fly out of your pan and at your face, so be careful. Cool, though. This morning I found one on my floor and thought it was a bedbug. Nope. Just a pumpkin seed. Phew. So yeah, that's the story of how I went from making 4 dishes to 8. They ruled though, you gotta believe me.

Ethiopian has become my favorite cuisine to eat over the last year or two. It's served differently than most other cuisines serve their food, almost family style, but literally, you all share one plate. Instead of forks and knives, you use sourdough crepes to pick up the food and eat it. And damn, are those crepes good. Since the arrival of Vegan Eats World by Terry Hope Romero, I've been wanting to make Ethiopian food at home more, and since her book includes a slew of recipes from the spice blend to the crepes, I went to town. Or stayed in my kitchen. You get the idea.

The spice blend, berbere, is really fun to make, especially if you're easily amused by making spice blends. I don't normally make such blends, but it is pretty fun to make, and not difficult at all. Also, all the recipes call for a spiced oil, called nitter kibbe, which is made in a large batch ahead of time along with the spice blend. It's great and buttery and full of yellow turmeric which at any moment may strike down upon your counter and turn it neon yellow. For a while. Good thing yellow is my favorite color.

Traditionally, they make these huge (I mean really huge) crepes and serve them on a (really) huge platter with piles of stews or dishes on top of the crepe. Since, I don't have a way to produce such large and beautiful crepes, I made smaller ones and served them on individual plates. Also, crepes are kind of a bitch to make. I'm not very good at making them. I found the smaller pan I tried, the more success I had. But I still didn't have boatloads of successful crepes. I did however have some. And with those, I shoveled delicious Ethiopian food into my mouth. Purpose served.

When I get Ethiopian food at a restaurant, I always get the vegetarian sampler, because I could never imagine getting to eat only one of these dishes per visit. The more variation, the better. When you're making it at home, it results in cooking like five dinners worth of food in preparation for one dinner. So basically, it was a ton of work. But it was totally worth it, and I will totally do it again :) 

I made this big spread for my friends, who seemed pleased by the authenticity of the dishes.  I think it's all about the spice blend. That's what gives it that perfect restaurant-quality. From the left to right, I made ingudai tibbs, which are portabello mushrooms in berbere sauce, but'echa, which is chickpea shallot and jalapeño eggy crumbles, Seitan tibbs, which is seitan in berbere sauce, yemisir wat, a spicy berbere lentil stew, and potatoes and green beans in berbere sauce. My favs were mushrooms and the egg-like chickpea crumbles, though all were good.

For dessert, I made the Ethiopian Chocolate Flourless Torte, the last recipe in the book. It's silken tofu-based, with a little berbere spice. I made this during testing, but used cayenne for mexican chocolate cake, my fav. This worked just as well. I could taste just a hint of spice. I suppose that's how it outta be. I'm always tempted to put way too much cayenne or spice thinking I won't taste it otherwise and they turn out ungodly spicy. These tasted kind of brownie-like, which is good. Everybody like brownies, right?

Overall, I had a great time cooking, a great time eating, and a great time hanging with my friends and feeding them delicious food! I'll raise a spicy brownie to many more dinners like this one :)

The last week has been pretty crazy, what with the hurricane and the power going off, then on, the gas crisis, no food at stores, and most stores not being open. It's so much worse along the shore, the things I complain about sound so trivial. I haven't cooked in a while, since the power just came back on, so last night I decided to cook something new from Terry's new cookbook. I had to drive half an hour to a store that had produce, and caught the luckiest break at a gas station, I only had to wait 20 minutes. I felt like I won the lottery. So I came home chipper, and made a ton of seitan. Seitan cures all sorts of blues. Everybody knows that.

This is a bowl of good stuff. It was pretty simple to make. I feel like you should make this for your meat-and-potatoes dad who thinks tempeh is a kind of spiritual dance and that gelatin comes from the seeds of schnozberries. He would eat it in the blink of an eye, in a house with a mouse. And he would like it too.