Since heavy thunderstorms were forecasted for Memorial Day, the grill stayed covered. Instead, I made an Ethiopian Feast, using the newest cookbook in my collection, Kittee Berns' Teff Love.
I began the day before, making the ye'qimem zeyet (seasoned oil) and berbere (seasoning blend) that are used in most of the recipes.
The book contains so many Ethiopian recipes I'd never come across before. But to start off, I went with the familiar dishes I typically eat at Aster's. First up, spicy ye'misser wot (red lentils).
A milder protein for the kids was this ye'ater kik alicha (yellow split peas.)
Ye'atakilt alicha (cabbage, potatoes, and carrots) elevates simple cabbage to something I can't get enough of!
I gotta have my ye'abesha gomen (garlicky collard greens.)
Ye'bamya alicha (okra and tomato) was new to me, but I love okra. It was delicious.
I was glad to find a recipe for timatim fitfit, a spicy tomato salad made with crumbled bits of spongy injera bread. I made mine super spicy and used it as a condiment for the dishes with less heat.
Kittee's book offers dessert suggestions as well, like teff snickerdoodles and mocha teff brownies. However, I didn't actually have any teff flour on hand, since I bought my injera bread from Aster's. I have made my own injera once before, but I didn't want to mess with it this time since I was making all the other stuff.
Anyway, instead of making an Ethiopian dessert, I went with the Sweet Potato Chocolate Cake from Plant-Powered Families, mostly because I've been dying to try it. An entire huge sweet potato went into this cake and its frosting. Crazy talk you say? No. Amazing, fudgey, brownie-like cake topped with a rich, Nutella-consistency frosting. This went quickly!
The storms were kind enough to wait until after we had finished feasting, but they did come eventually.
Our backyard turned into a pond. We had a tornado warning and had to put the bike helmets on the kids and shelter in our first-floor bathroom for a bit. Luckily, we did not actually get a tornado.
Freaky strong storms, and a cake made from sweet potatoes. A memorable Memorial Day.
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