Category: My America

Doro Wat Ethiopian Dinner (My America)

January 29th, 2023

The combo of doro wat (spicy, smoky Ethiopian chicken stew) and fossolia (carrot and string beans in a sweet-spicy onion stir-fry) struck me as a good starting dish to make from Kwame Onwuachi’s new cookbook “My America.” An added complication was the need to serve the doro wat with Injera, a spongy micro-pocketed sour earthy flatbread made from a tiny grain called Teff. You may have had a version of this flatbread in Ethiopian-American restaurants, but it was probably made with mostly wheat and barley and has a spongier, less stretchy texture than the real McCoy. I figured I would try the 5-day fermentation with some teff flour I ordered online. I also had to order some dried koseret, an herb related to Mexican oregano. According to Wikipedia, it smells “camphorous and minty.” I also ordered some Maggi seasoning cubes.

My attempt at fermenting teff-flour into injera batter (based on a recipe from TheDaringGourmet.com) seemed to be working well by days 2-3, but by days 4-5, it was clear something was amiss:

Day 5 of fermentation

The white film on the surface would have been fine (likely a type of yeast), but the black spots (combined with a musty, sewage-y, unappetizing smell) indicated mold. I had to toss this batch of batter. Quickly, I looked up a fast-Injera recipe on Cookshideout.com, and threw it together an hour before dinner. I used 100% teff and it was fine – no need for the suggested wheat here. The resulting flatbreads were nice, but less sour and less pocketed than the injera I’ve had in restaurants and seen in pictures (maybe add a touch more vinegar than suggested). Next time I’d like to either ferment this is a cleaner environment or pitch a sour-dough starter (which I would borrow from a baker) and let it ferment for only 24-hours – I think I found this technique discussed in the comments online and as a former brewer, I think it makes sense that one could achieve the desired result much faster with a sour-culture starter like this. The fast recipe worked well enough though.

The doro wat featured a lovely, smokey-spicy Barbere seasoning, used to dry rub the chicken overnight and near serving:

The spices in this blend are smokey and bold and make the dish. An addition of pure ground black cardamom also happens later in the preparation! As part of the stew, you will have to make niter kibbeh, a spice- and herb-infused oil. Traditionally, niter kibbeh is made by clarifying butter, but Kwame thankfully uses grape-seed oil here, so my lactose-intollerant friends can enjoy without modification. Note though, the niter kibbeh oil must be simmered over very low heat so as not to burn the spices. To give you an idea, in clarifying the butter of a traditional recipe, the milk solids should not darken much, so don’t darken your spices! My niter kibbeh oil was definitely burnt and I wonder how much more fragrant the dish would be if I hadn’t made that mistake. Something to work on for next time.

Also, as a fluid dynamicist, I have to take this opportunity to share with you these lovely convection cells that were made visible as I heated by niter kibbeh oil. The little black dots are some of the burnt ground spices, and they each indicate a point of convergence at the bottom of the oil, above which the oil is rising. If this were the atmosphere, vultures would be circling a draft above the dots and avoiding downwelling between them.

Similar to groundnut stew (from this book, see below), a single recipe makes a huge amount of food (about a gallon by volume). I originally thought that this meant there were more servings of food than the listed 4; however, I calculated that the double batch of stew, the fossolia, and the injera only added to about 8000 calories. If my calculation is accurate, the recipe correctly lists about 4 meals worth of food (unlike the groundnut stew.)

The resulting dish was rich, moderately spicy, smokey, salty. I think the injera, despite not being fermented, was a highlight. It was pleasantly stretchy and had a nice fresh yeast and slightly sweet and nutty grain flavor. It went really well with the stew. The fossolia was fine, nothing particularly special in terms of either the pairing or as a standalone dish. The meal was one of the messier ones I’ve prepared. It was difficult to figure out how to pull off pieces of chicken, break up the egg, rip apart the Injera, and get them all into a bite without getting wrist-deep in the dish. It makes sense that this dish is meant to be eaten by hand.

Joe’s Rating: 6/7/7 (Fossolia, Injera, Doro Wat)
Difficulty: 5/4.5/6.5
Groundnut Stew with Fufu (My America)

January 23rd, 2023

When I saw Kwame Onwuachi had a new cookbook, my interest was piqued. Any Top-Chef-favorite cookbook is going to get serious consideration in my kitchen, if for no other reason than it reinforces the lessons and ideas featured in the show, which I’m already invested in. Kwame’s cookbook, My America, was an easy choice to buy and try because it features regional recipes from the American South, Caribbean, and Africa. For example, the recipe featured here is from “Nigeria/Ghana/Senegal.” When combined with the handful of other recipes from this region in the book, you then have a straightforward menu for an impressive dinner party.

Rather than jumping into a full-fledged dinner party, I opted to give the cookbook a test run with some everyday cooking. Groundnut stew (essentially peanut-beef stew) from West Africa must be served with fufu (lest it be inauthentic or incomplete.) Yay – this is a big reason why I chose the recipe as fufu pops up occasionally on Top-Chef and I’ve always wanted to try eating and making it. The meal is also gluten- and dairy-free.

The groundnut stew took about 5 hours to make (yikes!) and I still had to abridge a recipe for the “Peppa Sauce” by making it in a mortar and pestle. My America will feature many such pantry recipes that are suitable for a kitchen that is devoted to this book, rather than standalone recipes for a hobbyist moving among many books. So far, none of these pantry items / ingredients seem very difficult or involved to make.

Fufu is made most traditionally and centrally with cassava flour, but variations can also include green plantains (very common), as well as true yams or malanga. I found about 4 different ways of making fufu. My America has a recipe that uses fufu flour, which I couldn’t find at my market, so I opted to use a recipe from AfricanBites.com, which chops, boils, and processes the ingredients. Another common method is to chop, process, and boil the starches; this is appealing because the chop-boil-process technique definitely overworked my food processor and I found the texture less gummy than I’d like (this can be improved by further cooking, hopefully). Finally, the most traditional and laborious method would be manually working the starching in a mortar and pestle. Next time I would like to try Kwame’s fufu-flour method.

The resulting stew was super rich and probably will last me more like 6 or 7 meals instead of the advertised 4. It also goes well with bread if you run out of fufu. The stew is of medium-mild spiciness, I would say, so don’t be alarmed by the scotch bonnets. Do watch the salt levels, as I could imagine it being too much if I hadn’t been careful to use unsalted peanut butter or taken the additional step of wiping the rub off of my beef shanks before searing them (good choice). The flavor has peanut notes, but is not monotone and has considerable complexity, and, again, above all, is rich. I did find myself wishing there was more textural variation in the stew though; I’d consider adding more meat or carrots or something too. As I mentioned before, my fufu was also not as gummy as I’d like (bordering on mashed-potato texture.) Still, it is an appealing flavor vehicle and I hope to improve the texture by further cooking.

Update: cooking the fufu did indeed thicken it (especially after it cooled); however, watch out as this stuff burns super easy! Also, note that fufu has around twice the amount of starch and calories as mashed potatoes. It’s easy to eat a lot then feel really full like 20 minutes later. The fufu and stew are kind of addicting even when cold. I bumped both ratings by 0.5 after this update.

Joe’s Rating: 7.5/6 (Stew/Fufu)

Difficulty Rating: 7/4

Category: My America

Doro Wat Ethiopian Dinner (My America)

Groundnut Stew with Fufu (My America)