Doro What??

So, yesterday being Mother's Day and me having the best husband in the world and all...not only did I get creme brulee french toast for breakfast, an endless supply of hugs and kisses from my 3 favorite guys, and an afternoon alone to do some of the gardening I've been futilely attempting to do in 20 minute increments all week...I also got surprised with a super secret* homemade Ethiopian meal!

The "*" is because Steve is the worst secret keeper in the world (a quality I adore in a husband!) and spilled the beans a couple weeks ago.  I still appreciate the sentiment and the inclusion of our future daughter in my day none-the-less!

So...unless you're a very cultured eater, you might be wondering what exactly is Ethiopian food? 

The national dish of Ethiopia is called wat.  It's a very spicy stew that can be made with a variety of meats, grains or vegetables.  Doro wat is the chicken version and probably the most popular.  The stew is cooked with berbere, a red pepper sauce with a ton of  yummy spices.  You can use more or less berbere, depending on how spicy you want it.  (Or in our case...use a little bit to get a nice medium spice and then serve more on the side for the member(s) of our family that lost all their taste buds to habanero dares in college.)

The best part of eating Ethiopian though, is there are no utensils!  A crepe-like sour bread called injera is used as your "fork".  Since we eat alot of meals like that anyway, it's right up our alley.  ;)  Below is a picture of a lady making traditional injera.

So, back to my wonderful Mother's Day meal!  Steve made Sik Sik Wat (beef) and it was delicious!  We've yet to try one of the many local Ethiopian restaurants here, so I don't know what it's supposed to taste like...but it was so good.  Next time we'll have to use less berbere though so Colby can try some too.  (Don't worry, the recipe will be in our cookbook so you can try some for yourself!)

Don't tell any traditionalists, but we Americanized it and served it over rice.  We also used store-bought Naan for the bread since Steve was out of town and didn't have a chance to get to the International Market or have 4 days to make the Injera from scratch.  He also made a lentil dish that was okay, but we both thought it wasn't quite right. 

I'm so excited now to reach some kind of milestone with our adoption process so we'll have an excuse to go check out the real deal at one of the restaurants!  Then we can sample all the dishes and figure out which ones we want to start making at home.  There's also a place here that does cooking lessons, which I think would be so fun!

The one thing we learned is that Ethiopian cooking requires LOTS of dishes!  You know I would have loved to have helped out...but it was Mother's Day afterall.  ;)