Exotic Ethiopian Cooking: Society, Culture, Hospitality & Traditions

by Daniel J. Mesfin (Compiler)

Exotic Ethiopian Cooking: Society, Culture, Hospitality, and Traditions includes 178 tested recipes. Some of these recipes date back to the time of the Queen of Sheba. Although the book provides measurements, cooking will eventually come by instinct. The food is spicy, subtle, piquant and unforgettble. Besides recipes for main meals, breads, drinks, alcoholic beverages, yogurt, breakfast, soups, etc., the book includes how to store prepared and unprepared foods, how to prepare basic ingredients, spices, measurement tables, glossary of basic terms, and index.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Cooking, Africa

324 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Lee Broderick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what to expect of Ethiopian food when I went to work there, several years ago now. What I found surprised and delighted me. It was only later that I discovered it's a cuisine that's fairly well known in N. America: I'm sure at some point Europe will catch up but we haven't yet.

After much searching, I eventually found this book. On the one hand, it does a fair job of describing Ethiopian culture and food's place within it. That came as a pleasant surprise. The recipes, though, can seem tricky to prepare individually (and, predictably, use U.S.American measures and names - why can I never remember what 'collards' are?) and could probably have been written better. Oddly, for example, a brief description of the dish is often found at the end, rather than the beginning, of each recipe. Knowing how Ethiopian meals work I'd also like to have seen accompaniment suggestions for each dish.

Obviously produced on a budget, and now more than twenty years old, Daniel J. Mesfin's work exceeds expectations in some respects and succumbs to them in others. For now though, there's no competition for cooking Ethiopian food at home, or for eating it in Europe outside of the biggest cities.

[Redsteve · Rating 2 out of 5]

This a an adequate introduction to Ethiopian cooking and many of the traditions associated with it but it's not a great book. It begins with a brief section on Ethiopia and it's people, geography, agriculture, religion, and holidays (staying mostly away from politics) and then gets more focused, concentrating on the traditional rituals of hospitality and eating in Ethiopia. During this section, the author frequently writes like an overcaffeinated tour guide. His attitude towards gender (and studied lack of opinion on female circumcision and infibulation) may also be a bit off-putting. Once he gets to the actual recipes, he settles down and gives a wide range of dishes (beef, lamb, chicken, fish and vegetarian), including several types of injera, brewing local beer and various flavors of tej (honey wine) - banana, citron, prune, ginger, coffee, et al. There is also a recipe for katikala (Ethiopian vodka), although the instructions just state to "distil the liquid" after the initial process is complete. Strangely, the author's fluency in English seems to go down once you get to the recipes; I'm not sure if he copied them from someone else or if the editing was just weaker in that section. WARNING: some of the recipes are in restaurant quantities (or at least amounts for the Ethiopian kitchen), so you may need to do some calculating unless you want to make 20 lbs. of berbere (red pepper sauce) or 12 lbs. of spiced butter. 2.5 stars. The instructions could have been clearer.

[Cilla Savary · Rating 3 out of 5]

The recipes are delicious. But you have to work very very hard to make them. The translation is not consistent. Some measurements are way off (3 cups of butter). You have to look up all the unfamiliar words to determine if this is another recipe in the book or something you will need to find a source for. Ethiopian cookbooks are rare so this is a treat. Five stars for taste. One star for execution. Voila! Three stars.

[Aja Marsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

not what i was looking for.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the longest time, this was pretty much the bible of Ethiopian cooking in the English language. Unless you knew someone who could teach you, there simply were no other decent sources for information on cooking Ethiopian cuisine. For its breath of recipes it is still completely worth getting. That said, I use it more as a guide these days rather than following the recipes closely.

Many of the recipes call for a lot of oil (one to two cups!), and I adjust that way down. I also tinker with the seasoning amounts as sometimes they seem too low (e.g. 1/4 tsp of cardamon in a large dish is hardly detectable). You'll definitely have to adjust berbere amounts to taste. I have decent spicy heat tolerance, and if my berbere is very spicy I have to adjust the recipe amounts down. Also, the book doesn't cover things like using finishing spice blends like wot kimen and alicha kimem. Fortunately, these days there's a lot of information on the web that you can use to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. I like to start with the recipes in this book and compare them to recipes on the web and modify to make my own version. Finally, you can buy teff flour, shiro, berbere, other spice blends, and formerly hard to find ingredients on the Internet, saving a ton of time and work of making your own.

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many exotic ingredients unavailable...but I've made them without and still tastes delicious. Favorites: lamb/or (I sometimes substitute lentil) sambossas(fried dumpling), collards and cheese, cabbage and carrots, mushroom, tomato salad.

[Dave Haskins]

Food,Cooking,African Cuisine

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome - I want to cook Ethiopian!

[Dori]

A yummy Christmas gift from Ryan - still browsing the "helpful basics" section but hope to get brave sometime in the coming months and actually cook something!

[Bhall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ethiopian is one of my favorites, and this is the best book i have found.