Pancakes = E Squared - I'm on to Eritrea and Ethiopia

I'll start this post off by saying I forgot to mention in my last post on Estonia why I skipped Eritrea and moved on to Estonia.  The reason for this was because I couldn't find teff flour anywhere locally.  Also, because the Eritrean pancake batter takes 3 days to ferment, and I just didn't have the time to do this, I decided to move on to Estonia temporarily.

However, this weekend I not only had my teff flour in hand, but I also had the 3 days it takes to make these pancakes.  So I'm now off to Eritrea and Ethiopia.  I've decided to consider these pancakes both Eritrean and Ethiopian for many reasons.  Here they are:

1. Eritrea and Ethiopia both make a bready pancake called injera.
2. Both of their injera recipes call for teff flour
3. Everytime I looked up the recipe I used for the lentil stew to go with it, some of the recipes that would show up were listed as Eritrean, and some of them were listed as Ethiopian.
4. Both countries use a sour teff batter to make their respective injera.
5. And last, they are right next to each other on the map.  So my assumption is going to be that each country's respective injera recipe is basically the same and stems from similar cultural and food avialbility in the region.

Now some might argue that injera is actually a bread because it has yeast in it, but I would argue that it's not since it doesn't have the stretchy bread dough that bread is usually made from.  This is definitely a batter.  I would agree with what many call it, which is a flat bread, but techinically, isn't a pancake a flat form of bread also? 

O.K., now we're ready to dig into making injera and it's accompanying tsebhi bersen (lentil stew).  You will need 3 days to make the injera.  So if you want injera for Sunday, you need to start making the injera batter by early afternoon on Friday.  To make the injera, you will need the following ingredients:

3 1/2 cups of teff flour
1 cup of all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of yeast
4 1/2 cups of water
1 teaspoon of salt

1 additional cup of water for day 3, plus extra for thinning if necessary.

Now on to making your batter.  First, I have to start off and say that I didn't order enough teff flour.  I thought I did, but when I actually began measuring it out, I only had 3 cups of teff flour.  So I just added an extra half cup of regular all purpose flour to balance out the amount.  I'm sure this changed it a bit; however, since I ran across many different recipes that used different variations of the teff to all purpose flour ratio, I felt O.K. in doing this and not postponing it for another week while I waited for more teff flour to arrive. I probably wouldn't substitute more than 1/2 cup that I did though.  Also, you technically should let your batter catch wild yeast from the air to make true injera.  However, I didn't want to take the chance that there might not be any or enough wild yeast floating around my house.  So I decided to add some yeast to get things started.

On day 1 of the process, this is what you'll want to do:

As you can see in the above pictures, I added the first 5 ingredients to a large bowl and gave them a whisk until I had a smooth batter.  After you have a smooth batter, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it set aside to ferment for the rest of day 1 and all of day 2.  As the days go by, you should notice a dark brownish liquid starting to form on top of the batter.  It's a little bit hard to see through the plastic wrap though.

On day 3, you're ready to start making tsebhi bersen and injera.  I would start with making the tsebhi bersen, as it takes an hour to cook it.  While it's cooking, you can finish preparing the injera batter and cook the injera, and it should all finish up about the same time.  So, to make tsebhi bersen, you will need the following:

250 grams of red lentils
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons of berbere spice mix
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon of cumin
1/2 teaspoon of cardamom
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 cups of boiling water + more to add as necessary to make sure the lentils are cooked all the way through

The first thing you'll need to do is chop your onions and fry them in the vegetable oil until they are golden brown and soft.  I used a large saute style pan that had a lid.  Make sure your pan has a lid that can cover the top.  You'll need it later.   In the picture below, my onions aren't quite done yet.

Once your onions are cooked, add the berbere spice and cook for about 5 minutes.

While this is cooking for 5 minutes, you can crush your garlic.  I am cheap and lazy when it comes to garlic, so I just buy the big jar of chopped garlic at Costco and use it for everything.  I'm sure fresh garlic would have more flavor, but as I said, I'm cheap and lazy.  So, I took my three cloves of chopped garlic and put it in my mortar so that I could crush it.  Here it is pre-crushing.

By the time you're finished crushing your garlic, 5 minutes should be up.  Now you're ready to add the tomatoes, cumin, cardamom, and garlic to the pan.

 

Give it all a stir, and let it cook for another 5 minutes.  Make sure to get your three cups of water boiling during this time.  When 5 minutes are up, add the red lentils and 3 cups of boiling water.  Mix it all up, cover it, and let it simmer for 1 hour.  You'll want to check every 15 minutes or so to make sure that it hasn't cooked completely dry before the lentils are cooked all the way.  I had to add about another 1/2 cup of hot water.

When it's finished cooking, this is what it will look like:

While the tsebhi bersen is cooking, you can finish preparing the injera batter.  First, uncover the batter and pour off the brown water that is on top.

Now bring 1 cup of water to a boil.

Once it's boiling, add 1/2 cup of the teff batter to the water, whisking constantly until it's a thick consistency.

Now set it aside for about 10-15 minutes and let it cool down until it's lukewarm.  As it cools, it will continue to thicken.  Once it has cooled enough, add this back into the teff batter and whisk until it is all incorporated back into the batter.

Cover once again with plastic wrap and let it set for 30 minutes.  Once 30 minutes are up, you're ready to begin making injera.  I needed to add about another 1/2 cup of water to thin the batter out a bit.  The batter should be slightly thicker than a crepe batter, but not as thick as a pancake batter.  I used my crepe pan to make the injera.  You'll need to heat up your crepe pan, then ladle some batter on it while you're swirling the batter around in the pan.

Now cook on one side only until the top is completely dry.

Continue cooking in the same manner until all of the batter is used up.  I got 12 injera from this recipe.  Allow to cool completely to room temperature before stacking the injera.  I thought this next picture was quite interesting since you can see the steam rising from it as it cools.

In order to facilitate cooling of the injera, I covered the counter top with parchment paper and laid the injera on top of it.

Once it's cool, you can stack your injera and store it in a freezer bag.

O.K., now I have to say that even though I'm blogging about this now, I haven't really eaten them.  I started making them too late, and by the time I realized it, I only had time to make them, but not eat them.   I decided to just put these away and reheat everything for dinner.  I did taste one of the injera, and at first I wasn't sure I liked them.  It was an unusual flavor.  As I continued to eat it though, I began to really like it.  It has a sour flavor, as you would expect from sourdough bread, yet it's spongy like a pancake.  

I also tasted the tsebhi bersen as I was cooking it to adjust the salt for taste, and I will say that it was yummy.  I'm looking forward to combining the two dishes and eating them for dinner shortly.  

One final note, these are definitely worth taking the time and spending the money on the teff flour to make them.  I am going to freeze some of them, and hopefully they'll taste good when I pull them out of the freezer at a later point in time.  Out of all of the pancakes I've eaten so far, this is definitely one of my favorites!

Update: I have now eaten my injera and stew. It was just as yummy as I expected it to be.