49 Fun Facts About Ethiopian Food

Injera is traditionally made from the flour of which grain?

Teff. Its seeds are less than a millimetre across, so small that a single handful is enough to sow a whole field, which suited farmers who were often on the move.

The bubbly little holes that cover the top of an injera are known by what name?

Eyes. They are bubbles that set as the batter cooks, and they earn their keep at the table by soaking up the sauce of whatever is spooned on top.

With which hand do Ethiopians traditionally eat?

Right. A torn piece of injera does the work of cutlery, pinching up each bite of stew.

Shiro, the everyday stew of Ethiopian fasting days, is made from which flour?

Chickpea flour. The dried legumes are ground and blended with spices in advance, then whisked into water and simmered until thick, which keeps shiro on the table through Lent and other meatless fasts.

Which church's fasting rules explain why so many Ethiopian dishes are vegan?

Orthodox Tewahedo. Its calendar sets about 250 fast days, some 180 of them kept by ordinary believers, when no animal products may be eaten and the day's one meal waits until the afternoon.

Which two weekdays are fast days for observant Ethiopian Christians through almost the whole year?

Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday recalls the council that condemned Jesus and Friday the Crucifixion, and the weekly fast is lifted only for the fifty days after Easter.

What is the woven basket table on which a traditional Ethiopian meal is served called?

Mesob. Its tall pointed lid is lifted away at mealtime to reveal the tray of food, and between meals the same basket keeps the household's injera.

Kocho, a staple bread of southern Ethiopia, is made from which plant?

False banana (enset). It looks like a banana tree, yet its fruit is inedible: people eat the starchy stem and root instead, pulped and left to ferment underground for months before baking.

Quanta, spiced and left to air-dry, is an Ethiopian take on what?

Beef jerky. It is chewed as a snack just as it is, or dropped back into a pot of spicy sauce, where the dried strips soften into a meal.

Which European country briefly occupied Ethiopia in the 1930s, leaving a lasting mark on its menus?

Italy. The occupiers were gone within a few years but pasta stayed: it is common even in rural areas, and spaghetti is often served straight on top of injera.

What is considered the national dish of Ethiopia?

Doro wat. It is the dish that ends the long fasts: after weeks without meat, families gather at Easter and Christmas around a pot of this slow-cooked chicken stew.

Which chilli-based spice blend gives most Ethiopian red stews their heat and colour?

Berbere. Its fire is a New World import: chilli peppers come from the Americas and reached Ethiopia only a few centuries ago, so the country's signature red stews are younger than they look.

Which staple of Ethiopian cooking is butter simmered with spices and then strained?

Niter kibbeh. Straining out the milk solids, as with Indian ghee, gives a pure fat that keeps far longer than fresh butter, with the aroma of the spices sealed in.

In the Ethiopian custom of gursha, how does one diner honour another at the table?

By hand-feeding them a bite. The morsel is wrapped in injera and placed straight in the other person's mouth, and one gursha is never enough: the gesture is repeated or promptly returned.

Which yellow spice takes the place of the hot red blend in a mild Ethiopian alicha wat?

Turmeric. The name works as a heat warning in reverse: on a menu, a plain wat is made with the fiery chilli blend, while anything called alicha is made without it.

What is the first step in making almost any Ethiopian wat?

Cook down chopped onions. Unusually, they go into a dry pot with no fat at all and are stirred until their moisture is gone; only then is butter or oil added, and the collapsed onions thicken the sauce.

Ethiopia's festive chicken stew is traditionally served with which whole ingredient simmered in the sauce?

Hard-boiled eggs. They go in peeled but whole for the last minutes of cooking, so the dark, spicy sauce stains and seasons them.

What is tibs?

Sautéed meat with vegetables. Where a wat is a slow, saucy stew, tibs is fried fast with onion and green chilli and may reach the table with no sauce at all.

Legend says an Ethiopian herder named Kaldi discovered coffee after which animals turned frisky on its berries?

Goats. In the tale Kaldi tried the red berries himself, then carried them to a nearby monastery, where, in one telling, the abbot brewed them to stay awake through evening prayers.

Kinche, a cheap everyday Ethiopian breakfast porridge, is made from what?

Cracked wheat, oats or barley. The grain is simply boiled soft in water or milk and finished with seasoned butter, a meal so quick and cheap that it does for supper as well as breakfast.

Azifa, an Ethiopian salad usually served cold, is based on what?

Lentils. Green ones are cooked, then tossed with raw onion and green chilli and left to cool, a sharp counterpoint to the hot stews beside it.

Awaze, served with meat dishes in Ethiopia, is what kind of condiment?

A fiery chilli paste. Cooks blend ground red chillies and spices into a paste, and it does double duty: a dip at the table and a seasoning for meat in the kitchen.

What is fir-fir, a favourite Ethiopian breakfast?

Shredded injera mixed with stew. It is a thrifty breakfast: yesterday's injera, often dried, is torn up and stirred into leftover wat, then eaten, as usual, with more injera.

The top of ambasha, an Ethiopian bread, is decorated to resemble what?

A spoked wheel. Just before the loaf goes into the oven a knife carves the pattern into the dough; the bread comes from the Tigrinya-speaking north, where it is called himbasha.

What is kolo?

Street vendors sell it in paper cones; it is also served with coffee.

What is tej?

A honey wine. It began as a drink of emperors and their courts and ended up with bars of its own: a tej bet is a drinking house devoted to it.

Which leaf, used much as hops are in Europe, flavours Ethiopia's home-brewed tella beer?

Gesho. Sprigs of this native buckthorn both flavour the brew and help it ferment, and the same plant goes into Ethiopia's other great home-made drink.

Areki, known in Ethiopia as katikala too, is what kind of drink?

A home-distilled spirit. It starts from much the same grain mash as home-brewed beer, but distilling makes it probably Ethiopia's strongest drink.

Kitfo, a traditional Ethiopian dish, consists of what?

Raw minced beef in spiced butter. The dish comes from the Gurage people, and a diner can order it three ways: fully raw, just warmed through (leb leb) or cooked.

Kitfo gets its heat from which orange-red Ethiopian spice powder?

Mitmita. Built on small bird's eye chillies with cardamom and cloves, it is hotter than the everyday red blend and is also set out dry, for dipping morsels of meat.

Ayibe, a mild fresh cheese, is put on an Ethiopian platter mainly to do what?

Cool down spicy food. Ayibe has almost no flavour of its own, so a spoonful between bites works like a fire blanket, above all beside chilli-laden kitfo.

Gomen kitfo, a speciality of Ethiopia's Gurage people, is made from which vegetable?

Collard greens. Gomen is the Amharic name for the greens themselves; for this dish they are boiled, dried and chopped very fine, then dressed with butter, chilli and spices.

Gurage families serve kitfo to celebrate which September holiday in Ethiopia?

Meskel. The feast marks the finding of the True Cross: great Demera bonfires are lit, and people who work in the cities travel home to their villages for the family reunion.

Which of the world's two main coffee species first grew wild in Ethiopia's highland forests?

Arabica. The name points to Arabia, where growers in Yemen turned it into a crop, but the plant's wild home is the highland forest of south-western Ethiopia.

What is fatira, an Ethiopian breakfast dish?

A fried pastry with egg. The thin dough is fried with a layer of egg and eaten with a drizzle of honey, sweet and savoury in the same bite.

Which thick Ethiopian porridge is served in a mound with a well of spiced butter in the middle?

Genfo. Diners break pieces from the outside of the stiff barley or wheat mound and dip them into the pool of chilli-spiked butter at the centre.

Ful, a breakfast favourite in Ethiopia, is a stew of which bean?

Fava. The dish came to Ethiopia from Arab kitchens, and unlike almost everything else on the table it is usually scooped up with crusty bread rolls rather than injera.

What is the clay pot used to brew coffee in an Ethiopian coffee ceremony called?

Jebena. Once the brew has boiled in its round belly, the host tips the long-necked pot from about a foot up and fills a tray of tiny cups in one unbroken stream.

An Ethiopian coffee ceremony's third cup is said to bring what?

A blessing. The third cup's name, bereka, means 'blessed'; the same grounds are boiled three times over, so each round is weaker than the one before.

Besides sugar, what do many rural Ethiopians stir into their coffee?

Salt. In the countryside a pinch often takes the place of sugar, and in some regions a spoonful of butter is stirred into the cup as well.

What snack is traditionally passed round with the cups at an Ethiopian coffee ceremony?

Popcorn. Bowls of it go round with the tiny cups, in a room scented with burning incense and strewn with fresh-cut grass for the occasion.

Kuti, a traditional drink in Ethiopia, is brewed from which part of the coffee plant?

Leaves. They are boiled much like tea, often with spices such as ginger, so the drink comes from the coffee bush without using a single bean.

Ambo wuha is a well-known Ethiopian brand of what?

Carbonated mineral water. The fizz is natural: the water rises through a volcanic fissure already charged with carbon dioxide, and has been bottled at springs near the town of Ambo since 1930.

Ersho, saved from the last batch, does what to injera batter?

Ferments. Ersho is the yellowish liquid skimmed from a fermenting batch, alive with wild yeasts, so a little of it sets the next batch bubbling, just as a sourdough starter would.

How is injera batter poured onto the wide round griddle it cooks on?

In a spiral. The cook starts at the outer edge and circles in to the centre, then covers the griddle with a lid while the bread cooks.

Which colour of injera grain is the most sought after by Ethiopian shoppers?

White. The ivory grain has the mildest flavour and is the kind shoppers favour, while darker red and brown seed bakes into a deeper-coloured, earthier injera.

What arrives if you order beyaynetu in an Ethiopian restaurant?

A platter of mixed dishes. The classic version is meat-free, a ring of pulses, greens and vegetable stews spooned onto one big injera, which makes it the standard order on fasting days.

Which US state's Snake River Valley became a pioneering American source of the grain for injera?

Idaho. An American who had lived in Ethiopia found the valley's hot summers much like the ones he had left, and the crop he started let Ethiopian cooks in America make injera the traditional way.

Ethiopia's oldest beer brand, first brewed in 1922, is named after which saint?

St George. The dragon-slayer is Ethiopia's patron saint; his bottled lager arrived as the factory-made newcomer in a land that had always brewed its beer, tella, at home.