Delicacies

Ethiopian cuisine is unique by way of ceremony, flavour, colour and presentation. first decorated metal or clay water jugs are brought to the table and their contents poured over the guests’ outstretched hands into a small bowl below. This cleansing is sometimes followed by a short prayer of thanksgiving.

The first course, which immediately follows this ceremonial aspect of the meal, is usually a mild dish such as curds and whey to cleanse the palate for the more spicy offerings that follow.

Wot, the national dish, comes in many varieties – meat, fish, poultry or vergetable – of hot pepper and spice stews which are almost always accompanied by a fermented form of unleavened bread called injera. Layers of the bread are geometrically positioned in mesobs, or basket tables, and spoonfulls of the different types of wot are then attractively portioned out on top of them. Then it is finger time, tearing off a piece of injera and wripping it around a chosen piece of meat with savoury sauce.

for those not accustomed to such hot foods whose ingredients include red and black pepper, cardamon, garlic and coriander, there is an alternative: alicha is equally delicious but a lot milder and is usually made from chicken or lamb flavoured with green pepper and onions.

Traditional Ethiopian meals are normally washed down with tej, a type of wine made from honey, or tella which is a light, home-brewed beer manufactured from barley. Ethiopia also produces a range of very palatable yet inexpensive red and white wines.

Ethiopians do not traditonally end their meals with a dessert although, it it can be found, a honeycomb dripping with honew is often offered to sooth the heat of the wot. In any event, the end of a meal is not complete without buna, (the Ethiopian word for coffee), the world’s favourite beverage which actually originated in Ethiopia about a thousand years ago.