Injeera Class Chaos

[lydamorehouse]

Last night was my injeera class. Injeera, for those of you who may not know, is an Ethiopian flat bread. It's usually the "plate" that a meal is served on, sort of the original bread bowl, if you will. 

Shawn and I are huge fans of Ethiopian food.

When we were in college, we were on Minneapolis's West Bank (also known as the Cedar-Riverside area.) In 1985-89, the neighborhood was shifting from the last bastion of hippie culture to include new immigrants from Ethiopia and Somalia. We spent a lot of time at the various shops along Cedar and Riverside--I'd go to Midway Books or Evenstar or to check out music down at the Cedar Cultural Center (or, before that, even,) to the Coffeehouse Extempore.  At some point, we stumbled across Odaa, our first experience with Ethiopian food.

We were hooked.

Shawn is not normally bit into spice, but she loves Ethiopian.  I think a big part of what she loves is being able to eat with her fingers and the injeera. We used to regularly have to order more rolls of it. 

So, when St. Paul Community Ed offered a Zoom course on cooking injeera, I HAD to sign up. It's taught by "Mimi" who teaches a lot of cooking classes through St Paul Community Ed, and... her mom. Mimi's mom was the best part of the class? She was a classic grumpy mom who gave Mimi a lot of grief about her cooking, while clearly being very supportive and trying her best to answer our questions about "How much are you putting in?"  Unfortunately, a lot of her answers were classic grandma? "This much!" Then she scoops up a bit in her hand, "Like this. I show you!" And, meanwhile all of us on the other end are just shaking our heads and writing down "A cup, maybe???" I mean, they did provide us with a recipe, but part of why you take a class like this is to get the secret arcane knowledge that ONLY GRANDMAS KNOW. 

I suspect if we had been in person, it would have been amazing.

I did get a recipe out of it and some tips, but I am not feeling confident that I will successfully make injeera when I next try it. But, hey, it's a pandemic project!!

I'm all about those in 2021.

Comments

[pameladean]

Oh, we loved Odaa so much!

I've made a number of Ethiopian dishes, interestingly mostly from blogs kept by people who had adopted kids from Ethiopia, many of them old enough to remember the food and have extremely strong opinions about it. The recipes are delicious. But I've never tried making injeera. A lot of the people posting Ethiopian recipes, including some adults from or still in Ethiopia, say they just get it at the bakery.

Still, a recipe from a grandma has to have special properties, I think.

P.

[lydamorehouse]

I feel like, after the plague is over, you and I could eat somewhere. I once saw you (but didn't feel I knew you well enough at that time) out for dim sum at that place by where Gaylaxicon has its con? Clearly, you have taste!!

But, yes, I agree grandma recipes are the best. My wife is actually on a Facebook group where they trade handwritten recipes / heirloom recipes. We've been saving some of those too.

[pameladean]

I think you're absolutely right that we could eat somewhere. We should bear it in mind.

The dim sum place -- Jun Bo? I disgracefully have never been to Gaylaxicon, but the main dim sum places I might go to were Jun Bo, before it got shut down; Yangtze, which is by what I think of as the Fourth Street hotel though it now also has Minicon; and, um, maybe Mandarin Kitchen if that's a place, though I've only been there once. I am hard to have dim sum with if nobody else wants shrimp things or everybody else is very meat-centered; but mostly it works out.

P.

[sabotabby]

Aww too bad. I'm pretty lucky in that I can get it easily and don't have to make it myself.

[lydamorehouse]

We can get it here, too? I was just curious how hard it is to make (answer: HARD. It's technically a sourdough!)

[yhlee]

Ahahahaha I know exactly what you mean about grandma-style cooking. My mom is like that - in fact, she has outright stated to me that if it's regular cooking (i.e. not baking pastries/cakes/bread) and you touch a measuring implement or use a recipe, it's not really cooking, you should just know. I just nod and smile, and use my measuring cups and my cookbooks. :)

[lydamorehouse]

Yes, I can do SOME intuitive cooking? But, not like a grandma. I need to know HOW MUCH exactly.

[bibliofile]

Odaa was popular amongst my friends, too. Yum.

My grandma didn't have recipes for her baking at all either. Sometimes she used a teacup to scoop out sugar; my mom was very sad when her matching teacup broke.

(I have since found -- but not yet tried -- recipes for those very baked goods. I will have to experiment, someday.)

[lydamorehouse]

That was a real thing I watched happen in the class. Mimi's mom would be saying "teaspoon" and she was LITERALLY USING A SPOON FROM HER DRAWER. And, I was like.... uh, I think maybe you just use that one to stir your tea, because normally we call the ones we eat with tablespoons, but it kind of depends on how big that REALLY is????

So, anyway, yes.

[kore]

OMG, Mimi's mom doing classic Grandma Cooking over Zoom sounds amazing.

[lydamorehouse]

10/10 WOULD AGAIN.

It was fantastic. Chaotic and probably ultimately not useful*, but I had a blast.


*Not every experience needs to be measure by what you get out of it that's a PRODUCT, IMHO. But, I bet there were plenty of people watching this class who were mad because there's really no way to duplicate what was demonstrated.

[sraun]

Speaking of Ethiopian, we had delivery from Mesob Ethiopian Restaurant the other day. It was great! It's a little hole-in-the-wall just south of 39th and Hiawatha, currently only doing delivery or take-out.

We had the Popular Meat and veggie samplers (Feed 3-4 persons) - Beef awaze tibs, beef derek tibs, chicken tibs, doro wot, key wot, lamb alcha wot, cheese, egg, and 4 veggies. (Chef's selection 12 items), and got five person meals out of it. Dinner the night we had it, two lunches for Irene and one for me.

[pameladean]

*feverishly makes notes* P.

[oracne]

Mmmm, injeera.