Breakfast, Bread, Appetizers & Snacks

Hello well come to my blog today In this article, I’m going to share with you preparations for Breakfast, Bread, Appetizers & Snacks Ethiopian Dishes.

Genfo

The number one breakfast food around Ethiopian is Genfo ,Ethiopians eat a number of breakfast porridges. There’s bula, made from powdered enset, which is definitely an acquired taste; and the more conventional qinche, made with cracked wheat.

Genfo at Queen of Sheba in Washington

But the tastiest, as well as the easiest to prepare, isgenfo, a simple wheat or barley porridge made spicy with berbere and rich withniter kibbee. It’s sometimes called the Ethiopian fufu, the sticky staple western African dish made of pounded yams or cassava. So if you want a filling breakfast, try somegenfo. This recipe is enough for two portions.

1 cup wheat or barley flour
2 cups water
1 tablespoon berbere, or more, to taste
2-3 tablespoons niter kibbee or oil
Touch of cardamom (to taste)
Plain yogurt (optional)

Bring the water to a boil, then reduce the heat and slowly add the flour, into which you’ve put the cardamom, stirring to avoid lumps. Keep stirring until the mixture is well moistened. Remove from heat, mold the genfo into the shape of a bowl, and hollow out a hole in the middle (see photo). If you’re using niter kibbee, melt the butter, then mix the butter (or oil if you’re not using butter) with theberbere. Finally, pour the spicy liquid into the hole you’ve hollowed out in thegenfo, and eat it by the spoonful, dipping each scoop into the liquid center. You can dress up the dish by putting a ring of ergo (yogurt) about the rim.

Kita & Chechebsa

These delicious, easy-to-make dishes are often served as a traditional breakfast. They’re made with the same basic ingredients, but you serve kita (or qita) in the shape of a mini-pizza and chechebsa – which is the Oromo preparation – in small pieces. Both are made rich and spicy with niter kibbee (spiced butter) and berbere(red pepper powder).

 

Barley kita (left) and teff chechebsa

You can use any type of flour, as long as it’s not white flour – which is just plain boring. I use whole wheat, barley or teff. The diptych with this recipe shows barley kita (on the left) and teff chechebsa (on the right). Personally, I prefer chechebsa because it’s more fun to eat, and I highly recommend making it with teff for the most authentic experience. You can click the photo to get a closer look at each variety. The following recipe is for one kita or one plate of chechebsa. Just multiply the quantities to feed as many people as you like.

½ cup of flour (barley, teff, whole wheat)
½ cup of water
½ teaspoon of cardamom (optional)
1 tablespoon (or so) of niter kibbee, or more if you want it richer
½ teaspoon of berbere, or more if you want it hotter

In a bowl, mix the flour and water well, until it forms a batter. Pour the batter onto a pre-heated non-stick skillet, which you can grease very lightly if you like. Let it cook on one side until you can safely flip it over without it falling apart or running. Then, let it cook on the other side until it’s ready to flip again. Keep flipping until it’s fully cooked, with no moist batter inside. While it’s cooking, melt the niter kibbee in a microwave, and add the berbere to the melted butter.

If you’re using a lighter-colored flour, like barley or whole wheat, let it brown just a bit. Teff flour will be darker, so you won’t really see it browning as it cooks.

Finally, when the batter is fully cooked: For kita, smear the berbere-spiced kibbeeon top; for chechebsa, break it up into bite-sized pieces, and toss the pieces in a bowl with the kibbee.

Tip #1: If you’re making kita, and it breaks into pieces when you flip it, no problem – just turn it into chechebsa when it’s done.

Tip #2: If you prefer your chechebsa pieces crispy, throw them back onto the hot skillet after you’ve tossed them in the spicy niter kibbee.

 

A defo dabo wrapped for baking (left), just out of the oven (center), and read to cut and serve.
(Click to enlarge)

Defo Dabo

This is one of the many leavened breads made in Ethiopia, and it has a special ingredient: Before baking, you wrap the moist dough in koba kitel – that is, the leaves of the enset plant, a vital food source in many Southern Ethiopian cultures. You can’t find enset leaf in America, so we’ll use banana leaf instead. Enset is often referred to as “false banana” because it resembles a banana plant.

This recipe is for one loaf of about nine inches in diameter. You can break the batter up to make two small loaves, baked side by side but each wrapped separately with banana leaf – which, by the way, you can find in the freezer of a good Asian market. And if you can’t get banana leaf, you can simply bake the bread without it.

3¼ cups of wheat flour
½ packet instant dried yeast
3 tablespoons of sugar
½ tablespoon of salt
½ tablespoon of ground coriander
½ tablespoon of cumin (or a little more, to taste)
½ tablespoon of cardamom
2 tablespoons of olive oil
About ¼ to ½ pounds of banana leaf
12 ounces of warm water, plus a little more if necessary (see below)

Combine the yeast, sugar and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Pour about 12 ounces of warm water over it, stir to dissolve the ingredients, then cover the bowl and set aside for 20 minutes or so to allow the yeast to activate (by this time the mixture should be bubbling).

Stir in the oil, cumin, cardamom and coriander, then pour in the flour and use your fingers to blend the mixture into a soft dough. Kneed until the dough is elastic, adding a little more water if necessary. You want it to be a bit moist.

Cover the dough and set it aside to stand in a warm place for about 60 minutes. The dough will just about doubled in volume.

When the dough has risen, line the base and sides of a baking pan with aluminum foil and the banana leaf. Knock the dough back (this will happen as soon as you touch it), then pour into the pan and wrap the banana leaf over the top.

Cover the top with the remaining leaves, then set aside to rise for 20 minutes before transferring to an oven pre-heated to 350°. Bake for about 45 to 60 minutes, or until the bread is cooked thorough. Remove from the pan and allow to cool before slicing and serving.

If you want to add a little extra heat to your defo dabo, then cut one or two jalapeños into slices (no seeds), mix some pieces into the dough before you wrap it in banana leaf, and then put a few slices of the jalapeño across the top of the bread.