When I started Sticks’n’String at The Global Cafe, little did I realise how much the Ethiopian Food served there on Tuesdays would come to feature in my week.

I am not the only blogger to have noted the Ethiopian food; a couple of weeks ago I discovered Joanna’s post about the wonderful Misr Wot and Injeera that can be enjoyed in The Global Cafe and when Ellen came from Oxford to attend Sticks’n’String she exclaimed ‘Oh THIS is the place with the Ethiopian food.’ The Ethiopian food is infamous.

This week because I was not well I missed The Global Cafe’s fine repast as well as failing to begin a knitting project following the success of the recent gloves and bag. The knitting issue is easily remedied by some industriousness at the weekend, but the pressing need for Misr Wot and Injeera sent me scurrying to Google for recipes.

Injeera are large, leavened pancakes cooked in a skillet and traditionally made with Teff flour, (quite hard to find in the UK) while Misr Wot is a kind of traditional, lentil-based stew. The Injeera are used like cutlery, to scoop and hold the stew while eating. The Misr Wot, I’ve learned, is somewhat easier to make than the Injeera which definitely require experience-based- knowledge or a knack, like all leavened breads.

The basic recipe for Injeera is this:

1 teaspoon Dry yeast
2½ cup Warm water
4 cup Flour
1 teaspoon
Baking powder
Oil

1. Dissolve the yeast in the water, add it to the flour, and mix. Let this mixture stand at room temperature overnight. (In winter it takes 2 days to allow fermentation.)
2. Stir in the baking powder and let the mixture stand for 10 minutes.
3. Put about 1/2 teaspoon oil in large skillet, add about 1/2 cup of the batter, and fry over low heat for 1 or 2 minutes. When bubbles appear, cover the skillet for 15 seconds.
4. Turn out the pancake to a dish.

Prepare all the pancakes this way, frying on one side only. The injeera are served at room temperature with meat and vegetable dishes.

Firstly, I didn’t leave my mixture overnight, so it didn’t get the sour, slightly fermented flavour I was hoping for and secondly, I used quick bread yeast, which I think is a bit of a no-no. I found the mixture extremely solid and difficult to manipulate into a flat pancake; it’s too sticky to press with a spoon and too solid to flatten out by itself. But in the end, this is what I got:

The photo is a bit dark, but hopefully you can see the nice, bubbly texture that occurs on these pancakes.

I want to try again with a better flour (I used some extremely high-gluten polish flour I picked up from the local store and not the plain flour required by the recipe…) and with more fermentation time and perhaps using a different yeast or some sough-dough starter if I can make some.

The Misr Wot was a roaring success, owing mostly to the wondrousness of Chow. Chow is a seasoning paste you make up in advance and then add to your Misr Wot; it can be made easily in a pestle and mortar. I love the nuances of cooking; how slightly rearranging the order in which things are added or changing the temperature at which things go into a meal completely revises the end result. With Chow, all the seasoning that I would normally add at the frying stage of cooking lentils are added towards the end and this has the effect of creating a much enhanced flavour. The garlic and ginger remain pungent. I slightly adapted the recipe I found online as I couldn’t see a jar of watery stuff not getting wasted/turning mouldy in the fridge and I don’t own any sumac. For my adapted Chow, this is what I did. Into a pestle and mortar I put:

1 garlic clove
1 tsp freshly-grated ginger
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp cardamom seeds (I took the seeds out of the green pods)
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/4 fresh hot chilli, pounded to a paste
1/4 tsp sweet paprika

I then pounded all that stuff until it was pasty and fragrant and put it to one side to add to my Misr Wot later.

1 cup Dry red lentils
4 cup Water
1 medium Onion (chopped)
1 tablespoon Corn oil
1 tablespoon Tomato paste
2 teaspoon Chow
½ teaspoon Salt

In pan, cook the lentils in 3 1/2cups of the water over low heat for about 1/2 hour, or until the lentil are soft and the water has almost completely evaporated. Set aside. In a dry pan, stir fry the onions for 2 mins, add the oil and stir fry 2 mins more. Add the remaining 1/2cups water, the tomato paste, chow, and salt and continue to stir. Add the red lentils and mix well over moderate heat for 3 mins until everything is reduced to a thick, well seasoned puree. Serve warm with Injeera.

I put triple the amount of tomato paste in, as my Misr Wot was looking really anemic.

I never took a photo of the finished result of the Misr Wot on top of the Injeera, because I ate it before I remembered!

But let’s be clear; although this ticked a certain Misr Wot and Injeera box in my culinary timetable, it wasn’t a patch on the amazingness of what you can get from The Global Cafe so do come down next Tuesday for Sticks, String and Ethiopian love. It’s so good!