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A meal in Ethiopia is an experience. When you have dinner in
an Ethiopian home or restaurant, you eat the tablecloth!
One or two of the guests are seated on a low comfortable
divan and a mesab, a handmade wicker hourglass-shaped table with
a designed domed cover is set before them. The other guests are
then seated round the table on stools about eight inches high
covered with monkey fur.
A tall, stunning woman with characteristically high
cheekbones and soft skin, dressed in a shama, carries a
long-spouted copper ewer or pitcher in her right hand, a copper
basin (which looks like a spittoon) in her left hand, and a
towel over her left arm. She pours warm water over the fingers
of your right hand, holding the basin to catch the excess, and
you wipe your hands on the towel that hangs over her arm.
The mesab is taken out of the room and returned shortly with
the domed cover. She removes the dome and the table is covered
with what looks like a gray cloth overlapping the edge of a huge
tray. But it is not a "tablecloth" at all. It is the Injera, the
sourdough pancake-like bread of Ethiopia. Food is brought to the
table in enamel bowls and portioned out on the "tablecloth!"
When the entire Injera is covered with an assortment of stews,
etc., you tear off a piece about two or three inches square and
use this to "roll" the food in-the same way you would roll a
huge cigarette. Then just swoop it up and pop it into your
mouth. Your host might "pop" the first little "roll" in your
mouth for you. It takes a bit of doing to accomplish this feat
but once you master it, you cannot help enjoy It.
Our server returns with individual long-necked bottles from
which you drink Tej, an amber-colored honey wine. It is put on a
little table close by. Or she may bring a weakly carbonated
water or Tella, the homemade beer.
You learn that you are eating Chicken Wat and Lamb Wat-two
peppery stews- Iab-cottage cheese and yogurt with special herbs
giving it an acidic lemon flavor; and Kitfo-ground raw beef,
which we are told is considered the dessert of the meal.
No other dessert is served. Coffee comes in on a tray in tiny
Japanese cups served black with sugar.
Dinner is concluded with hand-washing again and incense is
burned. |
