Tackling a Classic

Had I made it past the first round of Project Food Blog, this would have been my second post.

The challenge was to tackle a classic dish from an unfamiliar ethnic cuisine. Being a huge fan of fusion food, I've already dabbled with flavors from most Asian and European countries, and a bit of the Americas. Africa however, was pretty much wide-open, uncharted territory for me.

There are so many countries in Africa of which I know nothing - Burkina Faso, Gabon, Zambia - so the question became "which has a compelling cuisine?" I immediately thought about Namibia, because Anthony Bourdain had filmed an episode of No Reservations in that country on the Southeast coast. My next thought was the memory of his dining on warthog anus, a special delicacy bestowed on him as a guest. It seemed easy enough to prepare: slaughter a warthog; remove its intestines; give a quick grilling after an even quicker cleaning, and enjoy al dente. But should I ever want to dine on the digested fecal matter of Phacochoerus africanus, I think I would be hard-pressed to find it in the local supermarket.

Needless to say, I don't want.

My friend Pam's husband is originally from Nigeria, and I briefly deliberated whether I should contact her for recipes before I decided that I should prepare something slightly more familiar. I have eaten authentic Ethiopian food exactly once, about fifteen years ago, at a little hole-in-the-wall that's no longer in business. It was overly hot to my palate, but the method of eating was intriguing. Injera, a crepe-like bread made from the grain teff, was used as both the serving platter and the utensils. A quick trip across teh innernets revealed that injera didn't seem that difficult to make, and I was sold. Within minutes, a bag of teff flour was winging its way from an online purveyor to Casa Minx.

Because I am challenged to make an authentic dish, I dismissed the idea of making fellow blogger John's extremely inauthentic and possibly sacrilegious Bacon and Pancetta Wot. I have tasted it and can attest to its deliciousness, but it would simply not do for my purposes. Instead, I decided to tackle Doro Wat, a classic stew made with onions and chicken and seasoned with the predominately fenugreek-and-chile-flavored spice mix known as berbere.

First, I made the injera, using this recipe. The result was an unmitigated disaster. While the batter fermented nicely within 2 days, cooking it was another matter entirely. The batter stuck to the pan, even when using oil. The texture was extremely delicate and tore in multiple places when I tried to move it to a platter, and even though it seemed done (by recipe directions), it had an unpleasantly mushy "raw" quality to it. And when the pancakes cooled, they became brittle.

The injera disaster. Nice bubbles, though.

With a minor crisis on my hands, not to mention mushy bread dough on my fingers, I scrambled for an alternative. This bread wouldn't stand up to being used as an eating utensil, plus it didn't taste very good. And as the other dishes were cooking already, a solution had to come quickly. Perhaps if the injera was more like a French crepe, it would be more pliable? I tested my theory with a new batter using a 1:1 proportion of teff and wheat flour, plus milk and eggs.

It worked like a charm.

The new bread didn't have the characteristic air bubbles, but it held together and was fairly easy to manipulate to pick up morsels of food.

Perhaps inauthentic, but more authentic than having to eat with a fork!

Because man does not live by crepe-like bread (and chicken) alone, I also made a vegetable stew, Yetakelt Wat, and a salad of tomato, cucumber, and lettuce dressed simply with olive oil and lemon juice.

Although the bread caused problems, the rest of the meal came out beautifully. Piled onto an injera-lined platter (some pieces of the original batch went down first, to lend a stronger teff fragrance), it looked relatively authentic, and tasted FABULOUS. Seriously. The chicken was tender, very spicy and hot, but the heat was tempered a bit by the teff crepe. The vegetables, although similarly spiced, had a different, somewhat sweet, flavor profile due to the tomato paste.

Being unused to such messy finger food made eating a bit awkward, but Mr Minx and I soon got the hang of it and finished up every last delicious bit. Except for the bottom-most layer of all-teff injera, which was sadly relegated to the trash can.

While my experiment wasn't 100% successful, I'd say it was pretty close. And now that I have leftover berbere and the spiced butter known as niter kibbeh, I'm very likely to make Ethiopian cuisine again in the near future. Even the injera (although I'd try another recipe, perhaps this one). Of course, the way my mind works, I'm more inclined to take the flavors of Ethiopia and apply them to Western dishes.

Berbere-spiced spaghetti and meatballs, anyone?

Project Food Blog Voting is Open!

Please vote to advance MinxEats to the second round of the Food Buzz Project Food Blog 2010 competition! There are 1,737 contestants in the first round, and only 400 will move on to compete in the second, so I really need your support!

Thanks in advance :)

My first round post can be found here: http://www.minxeats.com/2010/09/project-food-blog-challenge-1.html
Click here to vote: http://www.foodbuzz.com/project_food_blog/challenges/1/view/265

Project Food Blog Challenge #1 - Minx, the Food Blogger

My very first food memory is of eating egg yolk.

My mom would fry up an egg, over-easy, and feed me bits of buttered toast that had been dipped into the runny golden goodness. To this day, I get great pleasure out of the flavors and textures of a humble fried egg sandwich, particularly if it is oozing with butter and yolk.

Eggs, over-easy, on a toasted bagel spread with a little bit of bacon jam.

I was always a good eater. Perhaps too good. Even as a child, I showed no hesitation when it came to trying new things; blood sausage, sauerkraut, bone marrow, and beets were all part of my early childhood diet. Later, exotica like hot and sour soup, fried calamari, and tacos were added and even, on occasion, craved.

Many of my early memories revolve around food: near-daily trips to Siemek’s and the Broadway Market to purchase meat or fresh vegetables for the evening’s meal; family outings which usually culminated in dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant; sharing a thermos of canned tomato soup at the park with my new best 5th grade friend. Visits to my Aunt Stasia’s coffee-scented home always involved a feast of some sort, whether it was braciole and meatballs with pasta, or a simpler but no less hearty spread of fragrant corned beef and roast brisket from Attman’s deli served with rye bread from Levin’s bakery, with ice cream sodas for dessert. The one all-family dinner that my older cousin Johanna prepared provides the vivid memory of my first-ever taste of bleu cheese. Weekly excursions to Baltimore’s once-flourishing downtown shopping district with Mom required a lunch at Hutzler’s basement dining room where I experimented with Reuben sandwiches, chef salads, and utterly inauthentic chicken chow mein with lots of crispy noodles.

I kept a diary during the family trip to London and Paris. Rather than marvel over the castles and museums, instead I kept track of our meals, particularly the scones, full English breakfasts, croissants, and copious sweets we enjoyed. I was ten.

Later, I started to experiment with cooking. I would fry up vegetable tempura for my family while my mother fretted that I was going to burn down the house with boiling oil. A high school French club pot luck inspired me to prepare a rather fussy recipe from Cuisine magazine--one of my favorite reads at the time, along with Gourmet.

A more recent experiment - watermelon and tomato salad with feta.

Looking back, it makes sense that, when I became an adult, I would have something to do with the food world. After graduating from art school, I realized that culinary school would have been a more appropriate choice. By that point in time a back injury and lack of cash prevented me from righting my path. Somewhere inside, however, I held onto the goal of being involved in the food arts. Of being a professional foodie. So I did what I could to keep the dream alive, including throwing theme parties that largely revolved around food and sharing my opinion of local restaurants with all who would listen. I even considered applying to be food critic for the Baltimore City Paper back in 1998, but had missed the deadline by a mere 24 hours.

Soup at my favorite Chinese restaurant, Grace Garden

And then in the '00s I discovered...blogging. MinxEats began in 2005 to fill my need to talk about food. It became a personal soap box where I could share my recipes and dining experiences, both past and present. In 2008, I began recapping my favorite foodie TV show, Bravo's Top Chef, a move that started to get MinxEats an actual readership. Blogging with an audience of ten was fun for me, but having my thoughts read by hundreds of people was even more rewarding. I then started recapping The Next Food Network Star and other Food Network shows because I understood that my snarky sense of humor had appeal. However, while I do enjoy infusing my blog with a good dose of the funny stuff, my real passion is eating good food and sharing that experience with others, either through words, or by cooking for them.

from my Top Chef recaps

I like to think that what sets MinxEats apart from the rest of the thousands of food blogs out there is its well-roundedness. There's something for everyone: those folks who like to read about the local Baltimore restaurant scene get my honest opinion about what’s good and not-so-good; those looking for a recipe or who have an interest in cooking can read about my successes – and mishaps – in the kitchen; and fans (or not!) of food-based reality TV are offered plenty at which to laugh. Recently I celebrated five years of MinxEats and asked readers why they love my blog. While several commenters pointed out that they liked my recaps, I was gratified to see that several others mentioned enjoying my recipes and my views on restaurants.

While I am no closer to becoming a “professional foodie” now than I was five years ago, I feel that my blog has developed my continually-growing interest in food by forcing me to think more about what I cook and eat. And thinking about food makes me want to write about food. It’s a vicious – and delicious – circle that I hope continues spinning along for years to come.

Project Food Blog

As a FoodBuzz Featured Publisher, I am eligible to enter the Project Food Blog 2010 competition. The grand prize is $10,000, and I'd love to call it mine. Starting next week, I'll be posting my entries for the competition and hopefully, with your help, I'll make it all the way to the final.

Please support MinxEats! Thank you!