Easter in Addis - Part 2

Wuhib has a wonderful view from his home. The cool mountain breezes and warm sunlight made for a comfortable and homey Easter meal. It is a good thing too, because we ate outside.

We began with what they called a "treat" some of the most tender part of the sheep. Ended up it was the backbone, boiled up in spices and a chili pepper they call Berbere. It was certainly tender, but there was not much of it.

Then came the Doro Wat, Ethiopian Stew. There were two types, white (lamb) and red (chicken). The chicken version was made from the chicken that Wuhib's sister had found the day before, five hard boiled eggs, about three pounds of onions and then, garlic, lemon juice, salt, ginger, fenugreek, cardamom, nutmeg and a spiced butter. All is cooked down to a thick stew and then the berbere is added. LOTS of berbere. Man is it hot. So until my taste buds get used to it (or they burn off) I dilute the berbere with some soup juice when i can. Berbere is alot like our cayene chili powder and the locals use it as a dip on almost everything. I asked what it was made from and they rattled off a list of spices as long as my arm. The white doro wat is a lamb stew with MUCH less berbere. Huwot gave me some regular white bread. When I tried to eat it, she stopped me and showed me that I was to use it to wipe the berbere off the chicken so I could eat it. Even Ethiopians do not respect "wasper nest" bread. She then brought out the Yemarina Yewotet Dabo, or honey yeast bread. It was about 2 feet across, 6 inches thick and had been baked the day before in a huge clay pot over charcoal. Of course there was injera as well.

The celebratory drinks were made there as well. Talla, Tej and Arakae. Tej is an ancient, golden, honey-based wine, Talla is a local beer (that to this day still tastes rather nasty to me) and Arakae is Ethiopian moonshine, white lightning with a slightly different flavor and all of the kick.

As a follow-up we had "tibs". The cut a thin strip of lamb such that there are chunks of meat held together by a strand of sinew. This is then quickly fried in butter with onions, garlic, hot green peppers and a little berbere (of course). It was then moved to the "fry daddy" that Nanci had purchased the day before. It is eaten by pulling off the chunks you want and eating with bread or injera. Yummy yummy yummy! This was a hit for sure.

It was dessert time and the crew was treated to American chocolate cake and southern fruit cobblers. They were fascinated with the cake, primarily because it was so sweet and so richly chocolate. I discovered that the most common form of sugar used here is glucose, rather than sucrose. Sucrose is about 3 times sweeter, so their sweet treats are hardly sweet at all. They use chocolate sparingly (more to darken the bread it seems) so this cake would have knocked their socks off, if they wore socks.

Then came the coffee ceremony. Ribka performed it for us. I'll go through that process next blog, but in short, they roast, grind, and prepare coffee right there and MAN is it tasty! There is truly nothing like it.

Finally came the most fun part of the day. The dancing! Wuhib tried his best to teach John, but to no avail. In the end he is still a testament to the phrase "white guys can't dance". Of course I was likely just as bad.

Thus ended the Ethiopian Easter feast. I doubted that I would ever experience another event like that. I was wrong. The following Sunday is also an Easter holiday and we did another feast at Ribka's home. Details to follow later.