Vegan Cook-a-Long

I pity the ful... (part 2)

So for lunch, I served the ful with two dishes from a vegetarian South Indian cookbook called Dakshin. Though Ethiopia and South India are quite different places, their reliance on flavorful and spicy curries makes the two cuisines work together, I think.

If you happen to have that book, on the left is the Vegetable Medley Salad and on the right is the Okra Salad (minus the yogurt). I thinned out the ful to cook it, but I added too much liquid, as you can see.

Then Sare gives me a call later today to say that she'd like to make the injera with me that I talked to her about on Saturday. I discover on Saturday at the street fair that neighbor and fellow vegan Sare likes to bake. She was selling cookies under the name, Tasty Revolution, and they were rad. So we made a deal that she'd come help with the injera.

Before she came over, I went to the coop to pick up the self-rising flour, but they didn't have it. I didn't know what that was, so I ended up (after a bit of conversation with the guys who worked there) buying Barley flour (which we figured might be kinda akin to teff flour (which they also didn't have). Turns out Sare finds out a formula for self-rising flour that involves just regular white flour (which she brings over) plus baking soda, etc. Here we are with the mixture after it has set for an hour.

We look ambivalent in this picture, though I'm not sure if we were yet at this point.

She puts it into the blender (2 cups at a time)

and adds water

and I pulse it until fully blended. Then I went to heat it up. It involved quick movements of the wrist, which Aaron tried to capture.





We were excited that it looked very like injera. But it didn't cook enough on the sides. So we moved to a larger burner and a bigger, nonstick pan (we were using the cast iron and it stuck to the bottom).

started in a new pan

again, looking like injera, but this one came out even worse

we had to roll it off and it looked like this!

So we decided to use oil to fry the bottom and prevent sticking. That worked, but they were very heavy and a little greasy. We didn't take pictures of this process cause by then we were just ready to eat.

Here's a picture of the finished deal (rolled up and underneath) with 3 different dishes from Kitee's website (though I really only followed the recipe to the letter for this one, still my favorite of Ethiopian recipes. I don't know if it's the combination of vegetables, that magical berbere spice or what). The other two are lentil stew (on the bottom left) and red lentils (on the right). But I forgot to reheat the ful! Which is fine, cause there was plenty to eat!

While I wouldn't consider this injera recipe (or my experience with it) a success, it has made me think more about learning to make my own. Rather than buying it like I have often done, making my own at least seems more possible than it did before.

posted by Michelle @ 2:32 AM