Ethiopia Eating

Eating

Eating Injera is Ethiopia's national dish. Injera is a spongy, tangy tasting bread made from the grain teff, which grows in the highlands of Ethiopia. It is eaten with wot (or wat), the traditional stews made with spices and meat or legumes. Some popular wats: Doro (chicken) wat, Key (lamb) wat and Asa (fish) wat. Another popular dish is Tibbs, spicy beef fried in butter. It can be either really bad (burnt to a crisp and resembling petrified wood) or juicy and delicious in more fancy restaurants. (The Holiday Hotel in Addis serves delicious Tibbs). The injera sits directly on a large round plate or tray and is covered with wat placed symmetrically around a central item. The various wats are eaten with other pieces of injera, which are served on a side plate. Injera is eaten with the right hand - rip a large piece of injera from the side plate and use it to pick up one of the various flavors of wat on the main platter. Do not eat with your left hand! In Ethiopia food is a respected gift from God and eating with your left hand is a sign of disrespect. Another popular injera dish is firfir: fried,shredded injera. It can be served with or without meat or with all sorts of veggies. If you prefer vegetarian foods, try the 'shiro wat' which is a vegetable stew served with injera, most of the times you have to specifically ask for it as it doesn't come with most of the combinations as ethiopians prefer meat. Kitfo is minced meat, spiced with chilli. You can have it raw (the locally preferred way, but there's a risk of getting the tape worm), 'leb-leb' (lightly cooked) or fully cooked. It comes with a local cheese 'ayeb' and a spinach. For the pickier traveler, almost every place in Ethiopia also serves spaghetti (thanks to the short lived and unsuccessful Italian occupation.) In nice restaurants in Addis you can find excellent spaghetti (Try the Blue Tops or Top View restaurants), and in the more peripheral places you will usually find it overcooked with bland tomato paste as sauce. Drinking The coffee ceremony involves drinking a minimum of three cups of coffee and eating popcorn. It is a special honour, or mark of respect to be invited into somebody's home for the coffee ceremony. In preparation for the ceremony the coffee beans are roasted in a flat pan over charcoal. The beans are then ground using pestle and mortar. The coffee is brewed with water in a clay coffee pot and is considered ready when it starts to boil. Coffee in Ethiopia is served black with sugar. Tej is a honey wine, similar to mead, that is frequently drunk in bars (in particular, in a tejbeit)