Finger on the Shutter

By: Jill Finger

Mar 05 2018

Category: Uncategorized

1 Comment

 In January 2017,  I spent a week in Queens taking care of Desi while Daisy worked and Corey went on a birding trip. The last evening, the Daisy, Desi, and I went to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. It was one of the best meals I ever ate and when I found a recipe for Ethiopian red lentil stew in one of my Instant Pot cookbooks, I had to try making it. After a trip to the health food store for red lentils and berbere spice powder, the stew cooked quickly in the Instant Pot.

Ethiopian food is served on a flatbread called Injera and you tear off pieces of it to scoop up the lentil stew, not using a fork at all. A quick internet search (I love google) and the injera recipe was printing out. Traditionally, injera is made like sourdough with a starter taking several days to ferment before the bread can be made. I found that recipe, but also several quicker ones, one using plain yogurt as one of the ingredients to give the slightly sour taste. The bread batter is thin, like a crepe batter and made in the same way by drizzling onto a hot frying pan and cooking for 30 seconds. The pan is then covered and cooked for 30 seconds longr without flipping the injera over. That’s it! I laid the breads out on waxed paper so they wouldn’t stick together and let them cool while I heated up the lentil stew and Wes cooked his chicken.

Wes liked the bread too, and ate a second one rolled up with jelly for dessert.

The best thing is I have enough for a rerun tonight.