Ethiopians, explains my guide, a young PHD student from the university in Addis, don’t need street-names or follow maps as everyone knows where everyone lives. In the town of Bahir Dar on the shores of Lake Tana in the Ethiopian uplands, this turns out to be not entirely true.
On assignment in 2008 for Food & Travel at the invitation of the Tourist Board, I'm free to go wherever I want - within reason. Within reason is relative. There's an itinerary to be followed and a government-approved minder to keep an eye on the journalist-farange and make sure I don't go off-track.
Off-track, always a challenge, is the reason I'm here. My student-guide, it turns out, takes his assignment most seriously the closer we are to officialdom. But in Bahir Dar, a thousand miles from the capital with phone-connection intermittent, my young guide is off the leash and anxious to show his country as inclusive and welcoming to strangers. I, naturally, am equally anxious to escape from my billet in a government hotel offering trips to a waterfall that may or may not be the source of the Blue Nile, and the confines of an itinerary.
A mutual need to escape government control is the reason my guide and I are driving up and down the suburbs of Bahir Dar, making enquiries of passers-by as to the whereabouts of his cousins. Through some form of invisible communication and a stop-off at a honey-beer bar where ladies are not encouraged, the cousins send runners to lead us - left, right, straight on - to a door in one of the walls, where an enthusiastic welcome awaits.
A typical Ethiopian household, explains my guide, is multi-generational. The cousins, several families of varying ages with children and old folk, occupy single-room dwellings that form three sides of a central courtyard. The fourth side, the communal living-room, gives access to the street and is furnished with elderly sofas and armchairs pushed against the walls. This, says my guide, is the public area where travelers may rest and sleep and the coffee-ceremony takes place.
Cooking and all other domestic activities happen in the courtyard where preparations for the midday meal are already under way. The men gather the firewood and light the cooking-fire, leaving the preparation of the meal to the women. Today it’s the turn of one of the younger matrons, Sara, to prepare the commjunal meal. For the instruction of today's important guest, Sara has agreed to demonstrate the preparing of injeera, a flatbread that forms the centerpiece of the meal, while her cousin provides the commentary.
Sara settles herself on a step at the entrance to one of the single-room dwellings with a bowl in her lap and measures in handfuls of teff, a tiny millet-grain that's endemic to Ethiopia, from a close-woven basket. She picks up a smooth stone and begins to work with a smooth circular movement of the wrist till the grains are reduced to a fine powder.
Meanwhile, my student-guide explains the process (I keep notes!).
This grinding-stone is the most useful implement in anyone’s kitchen and is often brought with her to a husband's house by a new bride. It can be used for many other purposes such as crushing lentils, beans, barley and certain nuts which can be ground for oil.
Meanwhile, Sara has finished the grinding and is stirring the contents of a wide-mouthed earthenware jar. Set ready alongside is a tightly-woven straw-platter with a domed covering, and a round bakestone as wide as a man's arm.
The kindling has already been lit and branches arranged round the edge like the spokes of a wheel. This, explains my guide, is so that the ends can be pushed inwards to make a circle of embers, and when there are sufficient embers to heat the base of the bakestone, the cooking can begin.
The batter in the jar was prepared three days earlier to allow it to ferment and this is what will be used to make today’s batch. When the bucket is empty, Sara will mix the new flour with water to make a batter which will ferment with its own yeast and be ready in three days, although fermentation is more vigorous and flavour more developed when there’s batter left in the jar from the previous batch.
Sara pushes the logs further into the growing circle of embers, then whisks the batter with a forked stick, releasing a puff of a fragrance that I'm already beginning to recognise - beery and sour and a little sweet. Placing the bakestone over the heat, she tests the temperature with a hand held palm-downwards over the surface. Once satisfied, she ladles the batter into the pouring-gourd.
Another test of the bakestone is that when the batter is delivered to the hot bakestone from the pouring-gourd it must set immediately. Sara must work decreasing circles from outside to middle. This is because the heat is concentrated where the embers are hottest. If you were cooking on any other flame such as a gas-cooker, the heat would not cook evenly and the injeera would be spoiled. The skill is in the smoothness of the pouring and the proper degree of heat so the batter sets in an even layer. A cook is judged by her skill in pouring with perfect smoothness and producing a perfectly even pancake.
As soon the bubbles begin to rise and make holes in the surface of each pancake, Sara transfers the injeera to a bleached cloth on the carrying-basket, covering it with the dome.
Now it's my turn.
I have told my cousin you are skilled in your own tradition but not in ours. You will try but it is expected you will not succeed because children and farange are permitted to make mistakes.
An enthusiastic audience emerges from the various doorways. The pouring of injeera is not for the unsteady of hand or eye. Wives have been disowned for incompetence.
I accept the pouring ladle, pour the batter, as instructed, in decreasing circles till I reach the middle. Gaps appear between the rings. I mend the gaps with a trickle of extra mix. The audience sighs in sympathy. The batter rises, belches, bubbles and rises to a single wart-like blister in the uncooked middle.
I’m aware that I have ruined a proportion of a batch that cannot be replaced till the next harvest (teff, Eragrostis abyssinica, is harvested by hand three or four times a year - the stalk on the right in the sketch is a sprig of teff).
The audience laughs, claps and disperses, confident in the knowledge that farange and children are permitted to make mistakes. Meanwhile, Sara discreetly rolls up my failure and hides the evidence under an embroidered cloth.
To make use of leftover injeera, tear it in pieces, dry it in the sun and reheat it in sauce left over from the w’ett to eat for breakfast. To temper a pot so it will last for two or three years, cook split-peas, tip out and replace with oil-seeds, heat again and rub till the surface is coated and smooth. Injeera with w'ett is National Food, everyone eats the same and you are grateful for whatever is given.
Today, as a communal meal, a succession of bread-pancakes - ready-prepared injeera plus little dabs of stew, lentils, greens and so-forth spooned round the edge - are served on a clean cloth spread on the beaten earth. Participants taking their place in a circle, ceding their place to others as soon as they finish. No one speaks and the food is eaten with well-washed fingers, right hand only, with remarkable rapidity. There are no implements or plates to be cleared and transitions are swift.
It is good manners to eat quickly and make room for others for reasons of family harmony.
Indeed so. A lesson for us all.
p.s. the above account is based on notes that formed the basis for an essay included in Squirrel Pie and Other Stories (Bloomsbury, 2017)
p.p.s. I’ll add the recipe for potato w’ett for paid-subscribers (deep gratitude for support and encouragement offered herewith!) just as soon as I get the measure of how the pay-wall works.
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Wonderful. Loved the story about injeera. Sounds challenging! Lucky they sell it at a local market here. Will make the Chicken W'ett.
Several years ago, I was catching a taxi in Washington, DC. and had the taxi driver, who was from Ethiopia, give me the long story on how women make the spice berbere that is used in many Ethiopian dishes. He gave me some. It was very flavourful and hot! Here is a description:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berbere
There was an interesting feature on African food 2 days ago on the Food Chain programme from the BBC World Service; basically saying how the old foods are dying out as more people move to the city and don’t have the time to prepare the indigenous dishes, many of which take a long time to prepare.