Ethiopian Cuisine: Rewarding for those not easily squicked-out.

As a grown man, I think one of my first true love affairs with a cuisine was with Ethiopian. I don't remember the first time I tried it, but it was probably a few years after moving back to NYC from college. Up to that point, the most adventurous I've gotten was with the discovery of different styles of pizza and ice cream. I went to dinner with a college friend who to this day is leagues more sophisticated and worldly than I, and it shook my food-world off it's axis forever. It was like food beamed down from another planet.

By the mid 90s, I was intimate with Indian food from living abroad in England for a year, an old hand at Chinese, Pad Thai was a new thing but not too far removed from lo mien. A few dark years as a vegan helped me open my palate slightly more. African food, though?

Three things about the Ethiopian made it unique in my culinary experience up to that point:

1. Method of eating: Most everything is served in little piles on a large sheet of thin spongy injera bread, made primarily with a fermented grain called teff. Tear off a piece, scoop it up, pop in mouth. No utensils, just hands, bread, and maybe a wet wipe towards the end of the evening. The bread itself was very strong tasting, a bit like sour rye, and I loved it from first bite.
2. Flavor profiles: Like Indian and other hot-climate cuisines, there are some strong-ass spices in the mix, and the spice mix in Ethiopian was like Indian curry....if India was Mars. Berbere is a spice mix with chile, fenugreek, basil, garlic, ginger and some things I wouldn't recognize or try to spell. What does it taste like? Well, it varies from spot to spot, but over all it tastes like...Ethiopian food. And like any flavor profile that has had 1000s of years to evolve in a relatively poor place, it is more bullet proof than what any food scientist at a corporation could invent. 
3. Mouth feel: Most of the foods in this cuisine are long-cooked stew-like pastes of a variety of consistencies, from firm glue to soupy starch fluid. The bread itself is spongy and soft. With a few exceptions, the vegetables are cooked to soft. I know writing this it sounds disgusting, but it is absolutely wonderful, because in the softness there is the texture of firmer lentils, chickpea balls, the remaining structure of the vegetables. Meats, too, if you're into goat or chicken.

Stuffing a handful o injera-wraped mush in his mouth would be much more sensual. Well, for me, anyway.

Real talk: back in the late 90s and early Aughts when I was Internet dating, the goal was usually to take the near-stranger lady out to dinner, as I've never been a fan of alcohol. I try not to hew too closely to gender convention, but I usually chose where we were to have dinner, and I usually paid, too.  At a date a week or so, my go-to was Ethiopian food because:

• If a lady was squicked out by eating with hands, she wasn't for me.
• If a lady was squicked out by oddly spiced but delicious food, she wasn't for me.
• If a lady was squicked out by gloriously weirdly soft but interestingly textured food, she wasn't for me.
• If a lady tried to use the "but I'm a vegetarian" or "but I'm a vegan" line to justify a boring palate, it won't work.
• It was cheap, but not too cheap, and the spots were usually relatively mellow, conducive to conversation.
• Ethiopian beer is nice and light naturally.

On an early date with a woman who I ended up dating and then being good friends with for decades, she totally dug the food but oddly resisted the injera: it was Passover, and she didn't want any leavened breads in her system. She was/is a gal of strange juxtapositions, and I was pretty much smitten from that moment on. And it's not for nuthin' that Ethiopian became one of the favorite foods of the (sadly vegetarian) woman I married.

Don't be sad, Sad Vegetarian -- eat some Ethiopian!

What I knew most about Ethiopia was that many people there were starving from a lack of food -- I think a few years into my affair with Ethiopian cuisine, I took my parents to an Ethiopian restaurant. When I suggested it, my mom said something like, "Ethiopian food, whats that, where you go to eat and you come back hungrier?" Mom jokes, like Dad jokes but less sensitive.

When I took a good friend from England, who is the sweetest gal you'll ever meet but not the most adventurous when it comes to putting things in her mouth, she turned several shades of green and watched in disbelief while I ate everything placed in front of us. For years, she referred to it as the night I ate a big plate of "baby sick". On a recent exploratory post of Facebook, this theme reemerged quickly, but the injera seemed to rise to the top...

Identities hidden to protect the suspicious.

In 2014, Ethiopian food is more common in NYC, and a little bit more expensive, but still mostly produced by Ethiopian expats in small-scale independent restaurants, though I wouldn't be surprised if I were to see a "Chipotle of Ethiopian" concept open up in the next decade. In the years since discovering Ethiopian food, I've gone to culinary school, cooked and ate foods even more exotic than miser wat or timtim fit fit. But like with Indian or Chinese food, I don't really bother trying to make it at home -- it's deceptively complicated to make, heavily dependent on cultural-specific technique, equipment and the freshest of particular indigenous ingredients not available at the corner grocery.

Ethiopia ain't a wealthy country, without a big restaurant culture -- most agriculture is subsistence, meaning a large population of people there spend their time growing the food  so they can cook it themselves. That directness definitely has an influence on what this food says to me -- it's clear and direct. And traditionally you wash your hands before you sit to eat, and you use only your right hand on the food. I don't need to explain that one, do I?

I suspect my kids will be squicked out by Ethiopian at least until they're older teens, but that's ok, more injera for me. If you want to separate the men from the boys and the women from the girls, Ethiopian can be your divining ride. It hasn't let me down yet.

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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2807

Monday was a day on the Amtrak from Montreal, ate a good deal of overpriced dreck. 

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TUESDAY COUNT: 2,955

SLEPT: 12am - 5am, 5 hrs
Corn is in season. Technically a vegetable, but more like a starch, equivalent to the vegetableness of a damn potato.

AM SNACK: 5:15am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 8:45am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10am, Fage whole yogurt with honey, vanilla and almonds, 500 cal

LUNCH: 12:45pm, falafel and hummus, chicken soup, health salad, pickles, 660 cal

PM SNACK: 3:45 pm, momma salad, Grazebox flavored cashews , 320cal

DINNER: 6:45pm, Cod, roasted asparagus,  2 ears corn, cheetos, poppa salad with Ranch dressing, 1015 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:45pm, homemade popcorn, +/- 300 cal

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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2,405

SLEPT: 9:30pm-4:30am, 7 hr
Good eating day, kept the cravings in check. Helped that I was motivated to get to bed early to ride in the morning.

AM SNACK: 4:45am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH: 12:45pm, chicken meatballs, mushroom masala, steamed string beans, pickles, 600 cal

PM SNACK: 3pm, momma salad, Grazebox nutmix, 320 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, poppa salad with ranch dressing, 170 cal

PM SNACK: 6pm cashews, 340 cal

DINNER: 8:30pm, shiritaki noodle stir fry with shrimp, shitaki mushrooms and oyster sauce, 365 cal
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BIKE CREDIT: 600 cal
THURSDAY COUNT: 3100

SLEPT: 9:15pm-3am, 5.75 hr
Excellent AM ride, despite getting rained on for a bit. Coincidence that the calorie number of the cyclometer near matches up with the calorie count of the 2 small granola bars that fueled the ride...

AM SNACK: 3:15am, granola bar, 150 mg caffeine, iced green tea, 300 cal

BIKE SNACK: 4:45am, granola bar, 300 cal

BREAKFAST: 6:45am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9:45am, Fage whole yogurt with honey, vanilla and almonds, 500 cal

LUNCH: 12:45pm, sautéed chicken breast, roasted brussel sprouts, quinoa, pickles, 710 cal

PM SNACK: 2;45pm, momma salad, Grazebox nuts n' pretzels, 260 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, poppa salad with ranch dressing, 170 cal

DINNER: 5:30pm, tasting menu at Pig & Khao, +/- 1000 cal

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, corn chips and chocolate chips, +/- 300 cal
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FRIDAY COUNT: 2770

SLEPT: 9pm-4:30am, 7.5 hr
Chill Friday.

AM SNACK: 4:45am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 6:45am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9am, fruit smoothie, 500 cal

LUNCH: 12:45pm, almond butter and grape jelly on whole wheat, roasted broccoli, pickles, 630 cal

PM SNACK: 2;45pm, momma salad, Grazebox rice crackers and mango chutney, 180 cal

DINNER: 5:30pm, hotdog, fries, ice cream, +/- 800 cal

DINNER 2: 7pm, 2 slices streetza, +/- 500 cal