Yummy Gluten-free "Pancakes", Or How I Get My Children To Eat Squash For Breakfast

I know I've been a little heavy on the recipe posts lately, but I'm just so excited about the way our diet has changed since the first of the New Year that I can't help myself! Every time I find a new way to cook veggies that my kiddoes will EAT, I just have to TELL someone!

My latest concoction is based on a 21 Day Sugar Detox staple-- the banana pancake. It's called a pancake because the banana makes it sweet-ish, but it's really more of an omelet. It relies on the egg to give it some texture and bulk.




It's super fast-- way faster than regular pancakes-- and I can simply add ingredients to the bowl in approximate amounts as I begin to run out of batter (if I need more). And here's Judah's endorsement of the recipe!! Have you EVER seen such an enthusiastic grin on the face of a kid eating BUTTERNUT SQUASH before???




Ingredients:

Cooked butternut squash or pumpkin (I roast mine in the oven, cut in half, flesh side down in about 1.2 inch of water, at 350 till soft)
bananas
eggs
cinnamon
nutmeg
ginger
cloves

In a ratio of 1:1:2 (so, equal amounts of banana and squash, with two eggs per banana) mash up the veg and fruit together and add eggs. Season to taste. Mix vigorously, pan fry in butter till brown.

NOTE: The lower the heat you use and the longer you cook it, the more pancake-like a texture you'll get. A hot pan and a quick browning gives you something puffy and light-- more like an omelet, but it will fall fast. I top with home-made whipped cream and strawberries.

YUMMY!

What Picky Eaters? Or, How My Children Ate Six Different Vegetables In One Meal

The rainy season has started with a vengeance here in Central Florida and this means I am making lots of soup. Because when it's pouring, grey and chilly I need lots of soup. LOTS of soup.

Here's a recipe for one of our recent favorites. I made a giant batch of it in my Vita-Mix yesterday and was thrilled to announce to the boys that they were eating SIX different kinds of vegetables for lunch. YUM! This recipe can be tweaked to make it Paleo/21 Day Sugar Detox/Primal/Gluten-free/Dairy-free/What-have-you. AS an extra perk, you're getting almost-raw veg! The essential thing is a really good blender. Everything else is negotiable! I'm going to give you instructions specifically for a Vita Mix blender, but it's pretty much the same for any other type, I imagine. This recipe is based on an instructional demonstration at the Vita Mix kiosk in Costco. Totally not kidding.

Healthy Chicken Tortilla Soup
(feeds about 6-8 adults for lunch, or 2 little boys for about a week)


1 carrot
1 stalk of celery
1/4 med head of cabbage (green, purple or savoy. the purple cabbage turns the whole soup a lovely pinkish color with bits of purple "confetti". or use spinach, kale, green leafy of your choice)
1/4-1/2 med onion
1 or 2 cloves garlic
1/4 sweet pepper
1/2 yellow or green squash
1 tsp cajun spice mix (or you can just sprinkle in a mixture of chili pwd and cumin)
cilantro
1 large tomato, cut into wedges
3-4 cups hot broth, or water and bullion cubes (I use chicken stock, because I usually have it on hand, but any veg or bone broth will work fine. I've also used plain hot water in a pinch)
2 oz sharp cheddar cheese
1/2- 1 avocado  (I usually chunk in a whole one because we love it and I'm not avoiding natural fats)
1/2c frozen corn
1/2 can black beans
cooked chicken breast
taco chips OR plantain chips
shredded cheese

Ok. The above list contains all the possibilities I've tried over the weeks that I've been developing the recipe. I add and cut out and substitute to please my palate, diet and available resources. Feel free to do the same! This recipe tolerates tweaking quite well.

1) Put carrot, celery, green leafies, onion, garlic, squash and any other veggies you want to experiment with into the Vita Mix. With the dial set to 3 (which is med-low-ish), pulse chop till you've got a nice even slaw-like texture. Or you can go for a smaller dice, too, if you prefer a soup with less texture. Basically, mash that puppy up how you like it.

2) Turn the dial down to lowest setting and toss in spices and tomato wedges.

3) Once the tomato is fully blended, and with the blender still going, pour slowly in (through that nifty little hole in the Vita Mix lid) the hot water or broth. Slooooowly.

4) Sloooowly turn up the speed to #7 (med-high). Toss the avocado and the cheddar in that nifty little hole. Now you just let it spin a bit of a while. The avocado and/or the cheese are going to make your soup get all nice and creamy. You can use either one or both (both is yummiest). Once you see the soup get nice and thick with some froth on the top, turn the dial back down to lowest setting.

5) Now you're going to add the beans and corn and possibly the chips. There is a raging debate in our house about whether the chips ought to be added at this point, or crushed in the bottom of the bowl with the soup ladled over top of them. Judah prefers the soggy-ish texture of blended up chips (*gag*) and I have to admit that the original recipe called for this. I, on the other hand, prefer my chips crisp and crunchy. So. You choose.

6) Up to this point you've had a lovely and dishwashing-friendly one-dish meal thing going on, but now you have to pour it all into a pot and warm it back up. The original recipe claims that you can serve it straight out of the blender, but I have never had success with that. I think probably because I added in the frozen corn and a bunch of extra veggies. Anyhoo. It's just as well, because while your soup is re-heating on the stove-top, you're going to chop that chicken breast into about four pieces, toss it in the Vita Mix and give it a whirl at the lowest setting. You should end up with a nice taco-grade shredded chicken. Scrape it out into the pot and get it all nice and hot.

7) Ladle over crushed chips (or not) and sprinkle with cheese (or not).

YUMMY!

Grain/Dairy/Egg-Free Thai Chicken "Pasta"

I know I keep promising to post and explain our new wheat-free (and for me, sugar-free also) diet, but I just never seem to get around to it. Or any blogging at all, lately. But now it's Lent. Facebook is OFF for 40 days, so maybe this blog will get a little more attention.

This still isn't a post about our diet, but it IS a wonderful new Paleo-*21DSD-Friendly recipe that even my children ate fairly cheerfully-- even though it contains no less than THREE different veggies they normally have to be force-fed. SCORE! The recipe I made is loosely based on this one I found online.



Grain/Dairy/Egg-Free Thai Chicken "Pasta"

• 1 med spaghetti squash
• 1 lb. fresh asparagus, tough ends removed and sliced into 2-3" pieces
•  garlic pwd, sea salt, marjoram, pepper, sage to taste (I just used what I had on hand)
• 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (or equivalent in other cuts)
• olive oil for stir-frying

• For the sauce:
• 2 T. corn starch
• 3 T. cold water
• 1 1/2 cups coconut milk
• 1 cup plain almond milk
• 1/2 t. salt, or to taste
• juice of 1 lime
• 1/8 t. garlic powder
• 1 tsp cardamom pods, crushed (you could probably just use pwd cardamom, if you don't have the pods)
• red pepper, to taste ( I used my berbere that I use in my Ethiopian dishes, and I added about 2 tbs-- we like it SPICY around here)
• 2 cups fresh baby spinach, washed and stems removed

The only downside of this recipe is needing to cook the spaghetti squash ahead of time. I tend to have them on hand-- we eat a lot of spaghetti squash these days. I bake mine at 350 for about 30-45 minutes. Scrape the "pasta" into a dish and season with salt, pepper and butter.

Bring a pot of salted water to boil and blanch the asparagus pieces for about two or three minutes. Drain and layer on top of the spaghetti squash. Cover and keep warm.

Heat a frying pan with enough olive oil to cover the bottom. Season the chicken breasts with spices listed (or play around with your own), and add them  to the pan. Cook for 3-4 minutes on each side, or until the breasts are golden brown on both sides. Remove the pan from heat and transfer the chicken to a cutting board. Cut the the chicken breasts lengthwise into pieces about 1-2" thick, then return the pieces to the pan and return the pan to the heat. Cook until the pieces are just cooked through, just 2-3 minutes more. Transfer to a serving dish and keep warm.

Now for the sauce. In a small bowl, stir together the corn starch and water until smooth. Set aside. In the same pan you used to cook the chicken, combine the coconut milk, almond milk, salt, lime juice, garlic powder, red pepper and cardamom pods over medium-high heat. With a whisk, stir briskly, bringing it just to a simmer.. Add the corn starch mixture little by little, and stir constantly until mixture thickens to desired consistency. (You might not need the whole 3 tbsp. I think it depends on the brand of coconut milk you use and how thick it is.) Turn the burner off, add the spinach and stir till the spinach wilts slightly.

At this point you have some options... The original recipe calls for you to add all the other ingredients to the pan and stir to coat with the sauce, but I've found that spaghetti squash doesn't respond well to lots of stirring around in sauce pans. Blech. So I took three dishes to the table; the dish of spaghetti squash with asparagus, the bowl of chicken pieces and the dish of sauce. Then I "assembled" everything on the plate: veg, chicken layered on top, sauce spooned over all. This also enabled me to separate everything for my OCD children who can't stand to MIX their food. Weirdos. Also, for the children's sake, I kept back the berbere and added it to the sauce pan after I had served their plates. They don't really do spicy.

D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S.

Let me know if you try it out :)






*That's the Twenty One Day Sugar Detox Diet. That's the thing I'm doing. I pinky promise, I really will post about it soon.

Red Beans, Fried Cabbage

Here's the basic recipe I started with for my Red Beans and Rice. I stick fairly closely with it, but we don't eat celery, so I'm not going to buy a whole bunch just to chop one stalk for one recipe, so, nix the celery. Kielbasa was on sale this week, so we subbed that in for the smoked turkey sausage. I'll probably skip the green pepper, unless I just happen to have some leftover-- the kids pick it out of their dishes (one of the few things we don't make them eat), so again, not worth putting in to start with. I'll do a little research on Cajun seasonings and pull together what I have in my spice cabinet to approximate that taste the best I can.

I think this is my mom's fried cabbage recipe, but I'm not actually sure where I learned it...

Fried Cabbage:

1 head Cabbage, sliced thin (not chopped, just sliced)
onion to taste (I use 1/2 a med sweet onion)
butter
celery seed
dill seed
salt
pepper



Heat the butter till sizzling, but not brown. Add onions, cook through. Add cabbage all at once, add seasonings to taste. Stir frequently, cook until tender crisp. DO NOT OVER COOK. The key to good fried cabbage is to still have some crunch to the cabbage when you serve it. Keep in mind, it'll keep cooking inside right up till you're eating it, so... Under-done is better than over-done.

Grilled Peasant Bread

Crusty bread (or rolls)
Olive Oil
Sea Salt
Cracked Pepper
Italian seasoning (basil, oregano, rosemary)
minced garlic

Heat olive oil in a cast iron frying pan till hot, add seasonings. Lay bread slices or sliced rolls in the pan-- face down. Grill till browned. Add additional oil and seasoning as needed for all your bread.

YUM!!

Bean Salad

(the original recipe calls for dried beans, cooked each according to it's own kind-- 1/2 dry of each)

Salad:
1 can Black Beans
1 can Red (adzuki) Beans
1 can Black-eyed Peas
1/2 lb green beans (use frozen or fresh, cook to tender-crisp)
1 small red onion

Dressing:
1/4 c balsamic vinegar
2 tsp Dijon (sometimes I use honey mustard instead, depends what I have in the pantry)
1/2 c Olive Oil (spring for the high quality stuff, it's totally worth it)
sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Combine beans and onion in a serving dish. Mix dressing ingredients together and pour over. Chill and serve.

Thank you!

Boy, I got so many great ideas from y'all last week when I asked for new recipes! If you haven't taken the time to look through the comments on that post, you totally should! You might get some new ideas yourself :)

In addition several people were kind enough to email me some suggestions and I wanted to post them as well.

Here's a Chicken Curry Recipe from Hosanna:

This is not a real complicated curry, and I used the crock pot to do it. It was pretty tasty; but not as spicy as I like. So I am going to be trying another recipe that is far and away more complicated; with the ginger root and the lemon grass and all. But this is cool for busy weekdays. I halved it for just the 2 of us, though.

1 chicken, cut up; or equal poundage or things, breasts, or leg quarters. ( About 2 -3 lbs)
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp. chopped garlic (I get it in a jar. I'm a cheater.)
1 tsp. peprika
3 Tbsp. curry powder
1 tsp. sugar
1Tbsp. tomato paste
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. red pepper

In a skillet, fry onion in a little olive oil until just browned. Keep stirring over med. heat. Add cinnamon and bay leaves. Add all other spices except lemon juice and red pepper. Add tomato paste. Place in crock pot. Add chicken pieces and add just enough water to barely cover the chicken. Cook on High until done. (4-6 hrs.) Before serving, add the lemon juice and red pepper.
Serve over hot brown rice. (Or white. I use brown though)

If you don't want to go the crock pot route, do this in a dutch oven, bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until chicken is done; an hour or so.

And she sent me an idea for making my own sour cream!

Make sour cream: 1 cup buttermilk, 2 cups heavy cream: mix together, leave sit at room temp. for 12-24 hrs

Here's a fish recipe from Laurie-- a taste combo I can't wait to try, since I'm stuck in a rut of always using citrus when I cook fish...

The recipe is for Broiled Tilapia Parmesan but you could really make it with any kind of mild white fish, like flounder, or something else.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Broiled-Tilapia-Parmesan/Detail.aspx

My recommendations: I don't pay any attention to the amount of poundage of fish I am buying, I just buy one large fillet for Matt a smaller one for me and the smallest I can see for Joey. I make the topping exactly as the instructions say for whatever amount of fish I buy and then if I have extra to spread on, it just tastes richer! (If I were going to serve more than about 4 people, I'd probably double the ingredients, but just for us I always make it the same!) Also once you actually have the topping on, they should only broil a few minutes and watch closely! The cheese on top makes it more prone to over-browning/burning.

And a new chicken one that makes my mouth water!

This is super easy too, it is Feta Chicken. mmmmm!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Feta-Chicken/Detail.aspx

My recommendations: I read many of the comments and the best combination seems to be: Use garlic and herb feta instead of tomato basil. Also cut up a small amount of sun-dried tomatoes (in oil, that's usually how they come) and add a few leaves of real basil. This is so easy.....crumble up garlic and herb feta, add a few sliced up sun-dreied tomatoes and a few leaves of fresh basil and then cover in the bread crumbs and bake. Sometimes I drizzle some of the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes over the finished crumb-coated chicken pieces before they bake, it helps to soften up the bread crumbs. You could also melt some butter and drizzle that on top. It's a very easy recipe but usually needs to cook for longer than recommended. I don't think I've ever been able to cook it in under an hour. If you want to save time, you don't even have to pound out your chicken breasts, sometimes, if I have really thick ones, I just cut them most of the way through and then stuff the inside and close them up with toothpicks. You can stick in as many toothpicks as you need (just remember to pull them out!) the entire time they bake. I can't do it without at least 3 toothpicks per piece of chicken....

Laurie also recommended this Chicken Pastina recipe from the Food Network:

Italian Baked Chicken and Pastina

And then, all by my lonesome self, I found this jewel!

Penne With Vodka, on Recipezaar

I predict it will be a new family favorite-- even J loved it and had LEFTOVERS-- TWO SERVINGS-- for lunch the next day. Can anybody say "Winner"???

Thank you all so much for sharing! I'll be sure to post once I try each of the suggestions and don't forget to go check out the comments to see all the other good ideas :)

What we had for dinner

Remember my Facebook status the other day? Well. This is what we had :) Although, to be fair, I'd made it the day before and we were just eating the leftovers...

This is an amazing way to cook venison! My parents have been supplying us with generous amounts of venison this year, so I've been searching out new ways to cook it that can help mute the gamey taste that so many non-eaters-of-venison complain of. This recipe takes the crown, so far.

Here's the recipe with my alterations written in, because I never have everything I need for any recipe I try-- even if I did just go shopping for all the ingredients. Also, I did the metric conversions for you.

Olive oil, for cooking (I used plain cooking oil, but I would normally have olive oil on hand)

150g (I used about six slices) smoked bacon, chopped

1kg (2lbs) boned leg or shoulder of venison, cut into large chunks

3-4 tbsp plain flour, seasoned

250g shallots, peeled and roughly chopped (I used about six green onions)

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed (I totally know how to crush a garlic clove now! I rock!)

2 large carrots, peeled and roughly chopped

2 sticks of celery, roughly chopped

1 medium swede, peeled and roughly chopped (a swede is the English name for a rutabega. ESSENTIAL to this dish. DO NOT substitute. It has a really unique, smoky/earthy flavor that you will definitely miss)

Few thyme sprigs (I used dried sage. Only thing even remotely similar that I had)

2 bay leaves

1 tsp mixed peppercorns, crushed

500ml (2 cups, I used a Cab Sav) red wine

500ml (2 cups, I used chicken bouillon) brown chicken or beef stock

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1-2 tsp raspberry vinegar, to taste (couldn't find raspberry vinegar in the grocery, so used basalmic-- and about 2 tblsp-- but taste carefully and add slowly!)

20-30g (2 oz) dark chocolate (70 per cent cocoa solids), grated, to taste

1 Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 (350 degrees F). Drizzle a little oil into a large ovenproof casserole dish and sauté the bacon for 4-5 minutes over a moderate heat until lightly golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

2 Put the chunks of venison in a large bowl or plastic bag with the seasoned flour and toss well to coat. Shake off the excess flour. Add a little more oil to the casserole and fry the venison in batches over a moderate to high heat, until browned on all sides. Remove from the casserole and set aside with the bacon.

3 Add a final drizzle of oil to the casserole dish and tip in the shallots, garlic, carrots, celery and swede. Sauté the vegetables with the herbs and crushed peppercorns for about 8 minutes, stirring frequently, until the shallots are soft and golden.

4 Return the bacon and venison to the casserole and pour in the red wine. Give everything a good stir with a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom of the dish to loosen any sediment. Bring the wine to the boil, then pour in the stock and add some salt and pepper. Return to the boil, then cover with a lid. Transfer to the oven and cook for 1½ hours, or until tender. (I simmered mine on the stovetop, because I had sourdough bread in the oven)

5 Remove the casserole from the oven and strain the meat and vegetables through a large sieve or colander, set over a saucepan to catch the sauce. Discard the bay leaves and thyme. Tip the meat and vegetables back into the dish and cover to keep warm. (I just spooned the veggies and meat out into a bowl and called it a day)

6 Add the raspberry vinegar to the sauce and reheat gently. Take the pan off the heat and whisk in the chocolate until it melts and the sauce is smooth. (If it turns grainy, pass it through a fine sieve.) (I just turned the burner low and carefully stirred the chocolate in. It didn't get grainy.)

7 Taste and adjust the seasoning, then pour the sauce over the venison and vegetables and stir well to coat. Serve immediately with creamed cabbage and mashed potato. (We skipped the cream cabbage)

Try it out and let me know what you think!

My Way Better Than Oatmeal Recipe

I really hate oatmeal. Really. Hate. Oatmeal. So does J. In fact, we just pretty much didn't eat it ever until we had kids. But then, oatmeal just seems like one of those things you feed kids. Like pbjs. What kind of parent lets their kids grow up without pbj or oatmeal? I ask you.

So I began to fix oatmeal. And found it wasn't quite as bad as I had remembered, but still not my favorite. J still hated it. Then enter my mother, with all the new research on soaking your grains to get better nutrition and all that. So I started soaking my oatmeal over night. Definitely made it taste better. And then. Last week. My sister revealed to me a whole new world of oatmeal. An Oatmeal Nirvana, if you will. Oatmeal from Heaven. Here is that recipe--complete with some minor changes to make it my own:


Way Better than Oatmeal

Soak oatmeal overnight in enough liquid to cover. You can use 1) water with a tablespoon of vinegar, 2) whey, 3) yogurt, or 4) kefir (my personal favorite).

In the morning, heat up about 1/4 stick of butter in a large frying pan (cast iron works great) till sizzling. Add sloppy, soaked oatmeal. Smoosh it up around the pan till the bottom of the pan is covered and sprinkle with salt. Stir and flip occasionally, adding more butter when needed, until the oatmeal is cooked into small, crispy chunks. Basically, you want to treat it like scrambled eggs.

Serve hot, plain or with a trickle of maple syrup.

You will never think about oatmeal the same way again!

Ethiopian Recipes: Alicha Wat

This lentil dish is the wat I make most often. To the best of my understanding, adding chicken or hard-boiled eggs to this dish would turn it into Doro Wat, but I usually make Tibs to accompany this instead. Guess what recipe I'll be posting next time??? :)

To make this dish really authentic, you need to find red lentils. Not green, yellow or the normal brown kind. The taste and texture of red lentils is completely different from any of those others. However, that being said, if you are desperate, and don't know what the good stuff tastes like, brown lentils will be fine.

Rinse your lentils, cover with water and simmer until softened. Add more water as needed.

Chop tomato, onion (lots of onion!), press several garlic cloves and chop up some fresh gingeroot. Throw it all into a saucepan and add a little water or olive oil. Cook until onions are tender.

Add cooked lentils to veggies. Add spices. Here's the deal with the spices. I pretty much add whatever combination sounds good to me at the time. Sacrilege, I know. Sometimes I keep it simple with just a little cardamom. Sometimes I go all out and add tumeric, cardamom, and this cool mustard Mina gave me (not regular Walmart dry mustard, believe me.) And I often stir in a little of the niter kibbeh when it's done cooking. Oh yeah, and the chili. Ahhh, the chili. I have no idea what kind it is-- but it's yuuuummy. I almost always add that. It's more like cayenne than mexican chili powder like you'd use for tacos, in case you're looking for a substitute. And, of course, salt to taste.

After you add the spices, go ahead and cook a few more minutes to give them some time to settle in. Serve and enjoy!

Tip: be sure to keep adding water as needed. You want a stew-like consistency in the end.

Ethiopian Recipes: Niter Kibbeh

So basically, niter kibbeh is a clarified butter, similar to ghee (Indian cuisine) and highly spiced. You pretty much chunk it into anything and it makes it taste better! I've even used it as a bread spread and in bread as an oil substitute.

Mina made mine for me with all kinds of super yummy stuff, but she also told me how to make it myself with spices I can find in a normal, American grocery store. I'll give you that version :) Mina says use unsalted butter, but I'm a sucker for salt, so I just use the regular salted stuff. Your choice!

First you melt down your butter in a heavy saucepan. Do not burn it. Word to the wise. Cook it for a bit and you'll start to see the fizzy-fuzz of cooking butter (scientific term, of course) cook away. Eventually you're left with a clear, oily liquid-- this is clarified butter, in case you ever wondered. Now add your spices. Mina suggests the following:

Oregano
Cardamom
garlic
salt (unless you're like me and just went ahead with the salted butter to begin with)

Now turn off the heat and just let it sit a bit on the hot burner. Do not let it burn. Again, word to the wise. Remove from heat, pour into whatever you're going to store it in. I suggest some sort of heavy glass container. Mina put mine into a canning jar. If you're feeling all professional and adventurous, you can strain it through a cheesecloth. I am lazy and simply let mine settle out before I used it.

If you have an international grocery store near you, look for these spices as well:

Black or White Azmud
Koseret

The Azmud will need to be ground before adding to your butter. We used our electric coffee grinder. (and then wiped it out reeeeal good ;) )

Next time: Alicha Wat

(I think that's right. Alicha means "white", or "not the hot spicy red wat", but I also have "doro wat" written down in my notes. I think that doro wat is what it becomes when you add chicken or eggs to the dish.)

Ethiopian Recipes: Carrots and Potatoes

Mina, chime in in the comments and tell us what this is called, will you?

You're gonna have to just eyeball quantities with this one. I have absolutely no idea about any measurements. Sorry. I'm one of those cooks...

Chop onion and fresh tomato into small pieces, mince a couple garlic cloves, mash up about a half inch of ginger root. In a saucepan, bring enough-water-to-cover-the-bottom-of-the-pan to a boil, add all that chopped up stuff. Sprinkle with Tumeric.

Chop up (maybe) two medium potatoes and three medium carrots into one inch chunks. Add to onions and etc. Sprinkle with salt to taste. Cook, adding more water (sparingly) when necessary.

Once potatoes and carrots are soft and cooked through, turn the heat off and stir in a couple tablespoons of niter kibbeh.

Haha! You will have to wait till tomorrow for that recipe!! :D See how I'm reeling you in? Keeping you coming back for more?? Hahaha, that's all part of my evil plan for world domination!!!

ahem.

Sorry.

Next time: Niter Kibbeh

(see how much better it sounds when I actually know the Ethiopian name for the dish?)

Ethiopian Recipes: Injera

Ok. This is the best I can do. Not the real thing, for sure; that involves a long complicated process, a special yeast called 'ersho' and a locally brewed beer. Mina's explained it to me several times and I still haven't quite gotten all the steps down in my head. But this works fairly well for us. The quantities feed our family of four for one meal.

1 cup white flour
1 cup wheat flour

OR

2 cups teff flour

2 tsp baking soda (approx-- I usually just dump a little in)
1/2 c vinegar (ditto)
water (or soda water) to achieve desired consistency

Mix all ingredients together and add enough water to form a consistency like a crepe batter. Set aside at room temp for an hour or so. The batter should be nice and fizzy and bubbly at this point. Heat either a well-seasoned cast-iron pan (my personal choice) or a high quality non-stick pan (this stuff sticks like a stinker, so none of those cheap-o pans will work) on a low to med heat. Too low or too high will cause the batter to stick. I put my electric burner on "3".

Okay. Now the tricky bit. You have to stir down the batter, scoop out a bit (amount depends on the size of your pan) and pour it into the pan. Quickly pick up the pan and swirl the batter till it covers the bottom of the whole pan with a thin film. As it cooks through you'll see bubbles pop and the top will look all pitted. Once the whole top is pitted and firm, flip it out onto a plate. You don't have to cook the other side if you get the batter the right consistency and swirl it thin enough.

Some tips;

Don't be afraid to add water or vinegar as your cooking along. Sometimes the first two injera are total flops and I have to adjust the batter consistancy as I go.

Taste the first one as it comes off the pan to be sure you've got the right amount of vinegar. The tast of that local beer I mentioned is hard to reproduce :)

If you're using cast iron, you may have to lightly oil the pan every few pieces. I use a paper towel dipped in olive oil.

I don't notice a difference between using plain tap water and using soda water myself, but try both and see which one you like better


Next time: Carrots and Potatoes

(if I knew the ethiopian word for this dish, it would be much more dramatic...)