three bowls

(Your songmelier recommends the below tune by the Sensation Band to accompany this post.)

When it comes to food, my cravings are easily triggered.

In the early oughts, when, as the newscasters always says, tensions ran high between India and Pakistan over the disputed region of Kashmir, I once turned on the radio midway through the newcaster saying the name of the region. Upon hearing "-shmir" I immediately thought, "Hmm. I'd like a bagel."

So as you can probably imagine, since I started volunteering at the East African Community Services, I have been thinking about East African food a LOT. Most of the folks there are Somali, but I don't know much about that cuisine, so instead, my appetite drifts a little to the northeast and lands in Ethiopia.

I first had Ethiopian food on a visit to Cleveland, and ate it in the traditional fashion of sitting around the basket table lined with injera. That was several years ago, before I'd really started learning about food and cooking, so I went in with no expectations.

I loved it, though. Of course I did: many of the dishes are spicy heaps of vegetarian mush eaten with a relatively plain starch. What's not to love?

I've had it a few times since then, and since I started volunteering, find myself thinking about it quite frequently.

So with this Ethiopian food obsession on constant simmer, a couple weekends ago I took a trip down to Amy's Merkato to find a pre-made berbere mixture and just poke around. The store shelves are somewhat bare for most products but well-stocked with what you would probably go there for anyway: Ethiopian spices and injera.

I always feel a sort of conflict when I go into Real Deal ethnic market. On the one hand, I find the lack of familiar products exciting and full of possibilities. On the other, I don't know what the heck I'm doing, and generally go into my usual retail-induced ADD fog, forget everything I know about the cuisine, and find myself wandering around in the hopes I can recognize a word on a label somewhere.

And that's why Amy's was a little tricky: nothing was labeled. Now that's some Real Deal. Luckily, the woman working there that day (maybe the actual Amy? dunno) was very helpful, and we overcame our language barrier enough for her to show me which one was berbere and how to use it.

She then described using another spice mixture, and to be honest, I didn't actually catch it, in good part because I'm just a little deaf anyway, and after the second repetition, I was too shy to ask her again what she was saying. I know it is something you sprinkle into a dish at the end. I've since researched it at home and think it might be Wot Kemem? (That is what is now labeled with in my house, question mark and all).

Now armed with one key spice component, I set out to make another, the clarified spiced butter called Niter Kibbeh that is the base for many dishes.

My cooking has been improving a lot lately. I had one big improvement that came with the Taste-and-Season epiphany of a while back. But the next bump has come from a mental shift that I am calling Investing in Flavor.

My impatience used to make it impossible to consider the idea of infusing butter with spices for an hour before I even got to cooking the dish.

But my beloved Mark Bittman Roasted Vegetable Stock has made so many previously watery and unsatisfying vegetable soups and stews so much richer and more delectable that I no longer balk at spending two hours to make it before I can even start the dish it's going to go into.

And what underscored my own direct experience was reading the stock section of Michael Ruhlman's The Elements of Cooking. His impassioned argument that the home cook use veal stock, "one of the most powerful tools in professional kitchens, one of the biggest guns in the professional chef's entire arsenal" made me feel all...wrapped on the knuckles with a ruler for my frequent kitchen laziness (which usually results in culinary dissatisfaction).

I'm not about to start making/using veal stock, but after reading all that, now when I read a recipe that says "6 cups of vegetable stock or water" where I used to feel a sense of relief that I could just use water, now I'm dragging out my roasting pan and pulling my saved up bag of mushrooms stems out of the freezer to make some stock.

So with this new frame of mind, I was happy to make the clarified butter, hoping this would give me a shot at getting a little closer to the delicious I'd had in restaurants. Itwould also allow me to achieve some Cooking Resolution #2: Resourcefulness by using up some underutilized spices like fenugreek and tumeric.

Other than the time, the niter kibbeh process is simple as could be, simply simmer the spices in the butter over the lowest possible heat for an hour or so. Pour through cheesecloth and you are done.

The finished product can be frozen, so you can make a big batch all at once. The recipe can be loosey-goosey with the spices. I saw some with onion, some without, so I opted to not use it. Some include nutmeg, some don't, There is a vegan version using soy margarine.  Basically, don't get too worried if you don't have them all or don't like a spice or two.

Once that was done, I used it to make Yemiser Wat/We't, a lentil dish with brown lentils, tomatoes and peas that are cooked in the flavorful butter, with onions, garlic, ginger and that berbere.

Cooking the onions, ginger, garlic and berbere in the niter kibbeh

There were a couple less-than-ideal issues with this particular version of it that I made. Not enough tomatoes, so it did not have quite the tang I was looking for. But the overall flavor profile was definitely a departure from what I usually cook, and I am looking forward to trying this again with more tomatoes. It was still tasty over some basmati rice.

I just made another batch of the butter today and hope to attempt either it or a spicy red lentil dish called Mesir Wat.

If you are also a fan of Spicy Heaps and haven't ever tried Ethiopian, I'd highly recommend giving some of these recipes a shot. If you don't have access to an Ethiopian market at which to buy some berbere, the pretty-available company India Tree makes a blend, or you could attempt your own.