Week 4 – Ethiopian Cuisine
This Week’s Dishes:
Atakilt Wat
Recipe
Highlights from Cooking Classes at Indwell
Tuesday Class
Thursday Class
YouTube Cooking Tutorials!
Ingredients:
Two (2) Tablespoon olive oil
Two (2) Garlic cloves
One (1) Ginger finger
Two (2) teaspoon turmeric powder
One (1) teaspoon cumin powder
Half (½) Red Onion
Three (3) Carrots
One (1) Potato
Two (2) Cups Water
Half (½) Cabbage
Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions:
Heat up the oil in a pot for 30 seconds.
Add minced garlic and minced ginger, the turmeric and cumin for 30 seconds.
Add the chopped onions and saute for 1 minute until the onions get brown.
Large chop the potato and the carrot. Add potato, carrot and the water to the pot.
Let it simmer and reduce for 10 minutes.
Cut the cabbage into bite-size pieces. Add the cabbage to the pot and let it simmer for 5 minutes with the lid on.
Ready to serve.
All the dishes that we have featured from around the world so far are unique and have their own style to them and place in their respective culture, but Ethiopian cuisine has quite an interesting system that differs to what we are used to in western culture. In Ethiopia, dishes are divided into a number of different categories that include wat (thick stews), tibs (meat and sautéed vegetables), and kinche (porridge), as well as dishes from different regions of Ethiopia, such as Sidama, Gurage, and Oromo. For our purposes, we’ll be focusing on the wat, specifically the plant-based dishes. One of the most widely known Ethiopian wats, and the one that we’ll be covering in this week’s class, is the atakilt wat, is an all-vegetable stew that is made from cabbage, carrots, and potatoes. Traditionally, the name atakilt wat is used to describe a specific stew called dinich'na caroht wat, which translates to “potatoes and carrots stew”, but the name atakilt wat can be used to refer to all vegetable dishes, if one chooses to. As you may have already noticed, each type of wat is named based on the main ingredient(s) found in it!
Usually, a spice blend called berbere is used to season wats and consists of chili pepper, coriander, ginger, nutmeg, cumin, cardamom, and so on. This gives a wat a signature spicy flare, but if you don’t prefer spice, berbere is often substituted for turmeric to make the wat a lot more mild! We’ll be sticking to turmeric and cumin for our atakilt wat, but feel free to turn up the heat by adding berbere! When all cooked together, a wat is usually served with a type of sourdough flatbread called injera, which I imagine helps to combat the heat of a spicy wat and gives an additional base to a meal! The tenants really enjoyed this stew at our Second Tasting Party, so we invite you to learn more about Ethiopian cuisine by making some atakilt wat!
Sure, you might say that I’m speaking only from my perspective and that this is all hyperbole but no! I think the tenants will agree with me that there was definitely a party going on in our mouths with each bite; who would want to set aside their plate while eating something so warm, filling, and satisfying like atakilt wat? And Thursday’s class always has the best food because in Chef Lucca’s words, he’s “perfected the dish” by that point. And it really shows because the different between our Sunday recording session and Thursday evening is out of this world. The smells that escape the kitchen are delightful and the tastes that enter our mouths are nothing short of amazing! And guess what? Without the plant-based meat, this dish literally costs $2.50 per serving! Isn’t that surreal? You can have plant-based meals (or mostly plant-based if that’s what you fancy) for so cheap and have it taste flavourful and inviting with each bite! As someone who really wants to learn how to cook for themselves and try out all sorts of foods and recipes, Lucca’s Plant-Based Cooking Adventure has been so inspirational and I have none other than Lucca to thank for that!
Looking back on Tuesday’s cooking class this week, I honestly found this to be quite the enlightening one, and displayed a lot of the positivity that can come from curiosity! Today, we had a new tenant arrive that was new to our classes and he was honestly so kind and friendly, and not shy to be around us at all! As Lucca demonstrated the various techniques he had for chopping vegetables, peeling ginger, and cooking a delicious pot of atakilt wat, this tenant asked Lucca all kinds of questions about his career as a chef and his time in his culinary arts program. It was fascinating to hear Lucca talk about his study environment in cooking class and the way he interacted with instructors and peers. We got so many great stories out of it, especially about the adventures he’s had preparing for cooking tests. I think that a wonderful way to strength a bond with someone is to tell stories, given that we were preparing food together in a stress-free environment, I think that’s a double-whammy if you ask me!
I think this highlights the good that can come out of stepping out of your comfort zone and interacting with new people. It tends to lift your spirits and educate you about the world around you, while also leading you to learn more about the life of individuals that you speak to. Meeting new people isn’t about probing them with question after question to get to know them better; instead, I find that when you engage with new individuals, it’s the gradual increase in comfort between you and the other person that really makes the difference. And because we make an honest effort to ensure our cooking classes are encouraging, kind, and fun places to spend your time, the tenants open up to us on their own, without much effort required on our end. If that isn’t beautiful, I don’t know what is! We’re helping bring people out of their shell little by little and that speaks to the charm that this cooking program has and the power that food and a little compassion can have!
Lately with these blog posts, I haven’t been talking much about the food that we cook and you know what? I think that might just have to change right now! So I am a big lover of food and will try almost anything you present to me, and Lucca’s cooking has been no exception. The ataklit wat that Lucca cooked this week was scrumptious from start to finish and I honestly have never had minced ginger added to a soup or stew before in my life. And let me tell you, it was phenomenal! I love ginger. Like l o v e . So, if you add it to cooking it is absolutely divine, in my opinion. And can I gush over the softness of the root vegetables that were added to the wat? Incredible! I really enjoy vegetable soups as a whole, and to have those root vegetables cooked to perfection in the wat was such a treat. It’s like the pleasure centre in your brain is firing on repeat with no end in sight. And what’s crazy too is that I’ve never had a plant-based meatball before, or what one would call a “meatless meatball”. They definitely don’t taste the same as ground beef, but different isn’t necessarily bad. Actually, those meatballs, cooked in with the carrots, potatoes, cabbage, ginger, garlic, turmeric, and cumin tasted out of this world! Who said ball of plant-based material couldn’t be delicious?!