Simplifying the Drudgery of Ethiopian Food

I like Ethiopian food. I hate cooking. For years my dislike for cooking won this internal argument.

10 years ago (thanks for the record, blog!)  I started doing experiments with a slow cooker to figure out if there was a way to sautee onions (to death, a la Ethiopienne) with minimal effort. The blog post says I found the process tolerable, but in practice, I never tried to make qulet like that again. Why, you may ask? Chopping was a b**ch, to be honest!

Fast forward 8 years, one of my friends went back to live in Addis and got a lady who'd come in and cook for her a few times a week. Some of her cousins disapproved, telling her that the whole luxury about living in Ethiopia is having your food cooked fresh every day. Apparently, my friend disagreed then, and still disagrees now. I think I'm in the same boat.  Imagine how much time Ethiopia is wasting as a nation while millions of women are chopping and maqulalating them onions every day?  

If we want women to progress in Ethiopia, we need to find 1) A 1-click solution to chop and sautee onions in bulk in every household.  2)  An injera machine that takes teff four and outputs injera (it should manage its own damned irsho and absit , not my problem) 

You notice that I left out the step following the qulet which is also time-consuming. That's because I think the solution already exists. Sometime last year I found internetz buzzing about this .... pressure cooker called the Instant Pot. After some research, I realized it appealed to my lazy sensibilities. It turns itself off? Check! It has pre-set buttons for frequently utilized functions? Check! It allows you to sautee and pressure cook in the same pot? I wasn't sure what that was about exactly but, check! 

Let's say now I can hire somebody to chop and maqulalat onions for me in bulk, maybe once a month. I may even be able to find somebody to cook habesha food for me occasionally but thanks to COVID-19, I've accelerated my rate of experimentation with the Instant Pot. 

After successfully making Dal Tadka with the Instant Pot in 2019 with very minimal effort, my first Ethiopian experiment was Misir Wot. This was actually pre-Covid. The recipe was different for what I was used to (some impressive berbere substitute was given as an option. My mind was blown, but I stuck with my stash of berbere), but it did the trick.  I would have tweaked the recipe a bit, I'd thought at the end. Then I forgot to write that down. 

The second time I made misir,  post-COVID, I got too cocky and I didn't even re-read the recipe. I overcooked my misir by about 8x the recommended time. When it came out my better half thought it was shiro. Oops!

The third time I made misir with the Instant Pot, early this week, I went back to dig up the recipe and that's when I realized I'd set the Instant Pot for 40 min instead of 5 min. This time I followed the recipe again, and the outcome was good but I thought again, I'd tweak the recipe. 

And that's why I'm here. Before the cycle repeats, here's a reminder to me (changes in bold): 

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter or ghee 2 ladles of vegetable oil  (1.5 is fine but like they say, misir qibat yiwedal!)
• 1 large onion chopped fine  1/4 a cup of qulet (you can push it to 1/2 a cup if you love onions, like me)
• 1 tablespoon ginger-garlic crushed: 1/2 inch ginger + 2 cloves garlic OR 1/2 teaspoon Ginger Powder + 1/2 teaspoon Garlic Powder
• 1 tablespoon Tomato Paste (beTam optional)
• 1 cup Red Lentils rinsed 2-3 times
• 1 1/2 cups water  (2 cups, if you don't want your misir to be more Tadka Dal like consistency)
• 1 teaspoon salt; if using Berbere, adjust salt based on spice blend contents
• 1.5 tablespoons Berbere Seasoning (2 tablespoons minimum ere, CHeguarachihu kechalew!)
• Few drops of lime juice garnish before serving (Ere yemin lomi? I didn't even attempt it, to be honest, so I shouldn't even comment)

Instructions

1. Throw all ingredients into Instant Pot. Make a mild attempt at mixing in the berbere, but if it doesn't mix well, don't fret.
2. Turn on Instant Pot, hit Manual, High-Pressure for 5 minutes. Wait for Natural release of pressure.
3. Walk away. 
4. Come back ~30 min later (10-15 min for pressurization + 5 min for cooking, 10 min for natural release), open if the pin has dropped, mix (don't worry if you see patches of berbere, remember the lazy instruction in #1? just mix well) and eat. 

I didn't take a photo of any of my misir wot outputs. Best evidence I can share is siga wot I made today, also in the Instant Pot.

Hopefully, I'll come back and document what I did for siga & doro weToch soon.  

Maybe in 2023.