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From the Spice Drawer: Berbere and Awaze

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Berbere is a staple spice blend in Ethiopian cuisine. Made up of a number of spices that are roasted and ground, the primary components seem to be fenugreek seeds, cayenne pepper and paprika. The ratio of cayenne to paprika control just how hot the berbere becomes.

Sometimes written as ber-beri (which gives you an idea of how to pronounce it, almost like ‘Burberry’), it imparts a warm red colour to any dish that uses it as the primary seasoning.

Berbere (Ethiopian spice blend)

Berbere is also used to make a strongly flavoured condiment, called Awaze. A mix of berbere, garlic and wine, it is a deep, dark, spicy paste that can be used for dipping. This condiment is one of my favourite additions to my Ethiopian platter, adding an extra kick in combination with the injera (bread) and stews.

Watch for the Friday post for details of my attempt at making an Ethiopian platter! Sooo good!

Awaze - Ethiopian Spice Paste
Awaze – a deep and spicy paste to liven up your meal!

Awaze Paste

original recipe can be found here

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup berbere (mild red chili pepper spice blend)
  • 1 tsp mitmita (hot chili pepper spice blend) *optional, only if you want it to be REALLY spicy
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
  • ¼ cup dry red wine or dry sherry or Tej (Ethiopian honey wine)
  • ½ cup water
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  • ½ tablespoon fresh ginger juice
  • ¼ teaspoon black pepper
  • Salt to taste

Preparation:

  1. In small bowl, mix the berbere, mitmita (if included), garlic powder, black pepper.
  2. Add wine (or sherry or tej), oil, lemon juice, ginger juice, water, salt to taste; whisk it well.
  3. Keep in the fridge; serve it cold.
About Food, Challenges

Food Waste Reduction Challenge 2010: Week 3

Food Waste Reduction Challenge - February 2010

Week 3 is done!!

Week 3 was clouded by my cold, but I still managed to cook a bunch. Not much tossing of food happened here… mostly shoveling.

We’re now in the home stretch, and I think this has been a great test. I’ll post the wrap-up for the month next week in my Monthly Mélange!

This week’s wins:

  • Gooooooaaaaaal!!! I finally started a freezer bag of veggie ends for making broth – and then I used it up to make broth! Didn’t take me long, and that’s just fine, because it’s better to use it up!
  • I also managed to use up one of the four types of squash I had in the freezer.

This week’s casualties:

  • A sadly rotten jalapeno. All of the other jalapenos were fine… but one decided to depart early.
About Food

I Love a Man with Mussels

This is a post about love, romance, and eating weird little creepy things out of their shells.

Some people have a hate-on for Valentine’s Day, and I used to be one of those people. I’ve eased up a little since then, realizing that every holiday (like every other day) is what you make of it. I choose to make it all about food. Surprise!

This past year, we’ve been opting for less fancy meals out for some of these ‘romantic evenings’, and have often ended up at our new favourite place to get mussels, The Fat Belgian. It’s cute, and not at all pretentious, with a great selection of beer (Erdinger and Fruli Strawberry on tap, woo!) and mussels. I’ll admit that I haven’t actually tried any of their other food, because we ALWAYS get mussels, frites and beer… and the odd dessert.

Moules

Lots of yummy mussels, in a broth filled with gruyere, walnuts and leeks.

To top it off, we almost always get the same friendly waitress, who shares my name and alma mater but only knew me as ‘purple hair’ until our last visit (unfortunately, she no longer works there, so we didn’t get her this time). The view from the second floor is unfortunate, looking out to a bright green tire place on one side and a boob/owl-themed stinkbar on the other. I won’t hold it against them – they can’t choose their neighbours.

Mussels are a very strange thing. Unlike some other seafood, mussels are often paired with very flavourful things, at least partly because the mussel meat has a stronger flavour that can handle other strong flavours. Most of the time, you will find mussels steamed with very flavourful broth, often including some kind of alcohol, and only a scattering of thinly sliced veggies (if any at all). This is best paired with some fresh frites and/or artisan bread (like sourdough).

We had a great Valentine’s meal.

I took the plunge last year, and finally tried making them myself. It was as easy as friends had reported, and now I’m trying to make a chart o’ fun. Basically, I have some of the basics down and am coming up with a few variations on the basic steamed mussel dish. My recipe/chart o’fun will be featured in an upcoming post!!

About Food

Crêpes d’Amour

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Crêpes. They’re the kind of dessert that you can pretend are a meal. At least, that’s how I do it.

My valentine breakfast included some of these buttery, pliable treats filled with homemade crème pâtissière and raspberry rhubarb sauce. They were sweet, sour, creamy and delicious.

Empty Plate

They were so good that I forgot to take a picture.

I swore to take a picture of round 2, later on.

Crêpes

3 Dessert Crêpes

Round 2 crêpes were filled with three different fillings: my usual favourite, nutella and banana; nutella and cream cheese (tastes like a cheese cake!) and the rest of the custard and rhubarb sauce from breakfast. Sooooo good!!

This time, I used a crêpe recipe from the Martha Stewart site. Next time, I’m going to try one from Vegetarian Times as a comparison. The main difference between the two is the number of eggs (three) and inclusion of butter in the Martha batter. The VT version only contains one egg, which should affect both the texture and flavour.

I’m also going to have to try savoury crepes, or galettes, using buckwheat flour. These could be filled with just about anything, cheeses, pesto, spinach, mushrooms, peppers. Yup, still lots of fun to be had!!

Recipes (from the Martha Stewart website):