The Making of an Ethiopian Feast: Shopping at Zuma

I used to live just down the street from Zuma, but I had never been there. The non-descript store front failed to call me in, and I knew where to get good Ethiopian food, and was just as happy to drive across town for it. But as I prepared to cook my Ethiopian feast, the fact that Zuma claimed to be a grocery store as well as a restaurant turned out to serve me well. I went in just after they opened, around 10:15 in the morning, and found the place empty except for a small child playing with his toys. There were two large fridges, one filled solely with giant ziploc bags of berebere, the Ethiopian spice mixture I had come for. The second was filled with a mish mash of random stuff and soda pop. On the opposite side of the room were shelf after shelf of various kinds of lentils. I picked out my enormous bag of berebere ($ and asked the friendly woman who had come out of the kitchen about nitter kibe, the spiced butter that my recipes called for. She went in to the back and brought me back a small plastic takeout container of it ($5). “Smell it,” she urged me. I did. As I sniffed the wonderful aroma, I knew my Ethiopian food would turn out well. With something this delicious smelling in it, there was no possibility of going wrong. I asked about injera, the lovely pancake like bread I was looking for to eat the food with. “Oh,” she said, looking concerned, “I’m running a little late, it is not ready yet.” Now, when searching for the freshest ingredients for a delicious feast, there are no better words you can here. She told me they would be ready in ten minutes. I walked across the street to the Greenwood Market where I was able to pick up the rest of my ingredients that I would need to make the feast. Upon my return, I was handed a giant plastic sealed bag still steaming with ten beautiful injera ($6). The fresh injera were so good that I devoured the first one totally plain when I got back to my house. The menu looked good, though I didn’t get the chance to try the food, I did notice they had kitfo, my very favorite Ethiopian dish.

 

Here is a photo of the final product. More posts to come with the recipes.

La Consupo: Barbacoa y Mas

The lack of “good” Mexican food in Seattle has long been lamented, but today I present to you evidence slightly in the contrary. My most vivid memory of food from my stay in Mexico was not the homemage guacamole by the Senora of the house (though that was mouth wateringly smooth and delicious), nor was it sneaking pieces of the freshly made cheese or perfectly spiced ‘al pastor’ meat in to my mouth while working the line at Abuelita’s Pizzeria. No, it is of a Sunday morning, when we all piled in to the car and took a drive in to the mountains for a brunch of barbacoa.

La Consupo, on Greenwood, just north of 85th, doesn’t have any grannies out front hand pressing tortillas on a giant griddle while grinning at you with no teeth, instead it has a store, filled with typical Mexican goodies. In the back, though, it is like entering the world I remember. Seated at our table we were clearly the only non-Mexicans in the place, and my poor blue eyed blonde haired boyfriend the only one who did not speak fluent Spanish. A waiter came and took our order: one pound of barbacoa, please. It’s alot of meat, but I had other plans for that later. We also ordered a consume each. The consume is huge. A meal in itself, if you so chose. It was somewhat greasier than I would have preffered, made with the non-edible pieces of the lamb used as the meat for the barbacoa. Digging deep, I came up with tasty grease cutting pieces of hominy, soaking in the flavors of the fiery red soup. If ever a hangover cure existed, this is it, grease and all.

B at this point got up and served himself a Mexican Coke from the fridge nearby which held a variety of Mexican refrescos, or soft drinks. If you have never had Mexican Coke, and which to try it, I encourage you to do so, so long as you don’t have diabetes. The sugar flavor is far more overwhelming than American Coke, yet in that strange way that sour candy is good, the extra sugar kind of makes you smile.

Soon our barbacoa landed, just as I remembered it, a pile of meat chopped up and served on a piece of paper. Also came a dish with a few limes, a bit of chopped white onion, some cilantro and hot tortillas. Ripping of a piece of tortilla, I used it to grab the meat, tearing it from the pile, sprinkling condiments and shoveling it whole into my mouth. Yes, this is the flavor I remember. Transported to the crowded dining room north of Queretaro, I smiled. The meat is tender, it pulls away easily with your tortilla, as it should, and provides all the flavor needed, with some extra crunch from the onions.

Packing up our extra meat, I immediatley began planning future meals with it: On monday, I added it to wild mushroom filling for my tamales and on tuesday I sauteed the meat and added a few tortellini at the end for a new texture, similar to Mark Bittman’s recent NY Times article on adding pasta as the lesser player in a vegetable dish.

Barbacoa was truly the meal that kept getting better and better. But one note, like in Mexico, I believe they only serve this one on sunday mornings–and after church treat.

74th Street Alehouse

My first shock regarding the 74th Street Alehouse was that when I walked in at 7:45 on a wednesday evening, the place was absolutely jam-packed. After getting over this initial shock, I managed to snag a small table for two from a departing couple. A waiter was over almost immediately to clear and wipe the table. I very much appreciated this, because nothing is worse than sitting at a dirty bar table full of someone else’s dishes.
Our drink orders were nearly immediately taken by a somewhat crazed waitres–crazed in the good, ‘all over the place’ kind of way, but it did take a little while to get the point across that I wanted my appetizer platter as quickly as she could bring it out, as oppose to when the others were getting their food.

Our drink arrived in a timely manner and continued to do so all night, despite our rather confusing switcheroo as our group grew and we table hopped to larger and larger tables.

The food was very different than your average pub grub. I had a meditteranean platter with pita (very good, surely from one of the many great Greek restaurants within a few blocks) and a dipping sauce that had some sort of amazing tangy bite–not citrusy, but just straight tang. Unlike anything I had tried before. It also came with a greek salad, which was dressed differently than a normal greek salad–a little bit less of vinegar bite to eat, but still with the same flavor. I enjoyed it very much.

B was less pleased with his gumbo, as he felt it was sacrificing too much flavor for a spice effect, luckily he had ordered it with a side of the goat cheese salad.

This goat cheese salad deserves its own paragraph. I was impressed after trying it that he was willing to sacrifice the bite he gave to me. Basically it was a bread crumb encrusted baked goat cheese on spring greens, but some how the mix of ingrediants came together in this warming but fresh flavor profile that really could have been described as a perfect salad for a cold winter night by the fire or for a sunny summer afternoon on the patio. This was what salad should be like–simple (I could barely detect a dressing) and rich.

Szechuan Bistro

First I think I should admit to having ate their food twice in two days. Now I can continue.
We stopped in here because we wanted something hot and spicy due to the illness contracted by the ol’ bf. It advertised hot and spicy, and that wasn’t really what we got. The service was quick at first (probably because we went in at 5pm) but slowed down as the phone started to ring and people came in. Most people took the food to go, which is unfortunate because I had a sizzling plate of noodles and the best part was definetly the sizzled bottom! Brett had the mongolian beef which was good, though nothing out of the park. It was all hot and tasty enough, but nothing exceptional, other then the sizzled part of my hand shaven noodles.
Being a sucker for hand shaven noodles as I am, I then indulged in a little delivery action from them last night. I had the fried dumplings, which were good but not great, though the dipping sauce was exceptional. Anytime a restaurant differs from the traditional dumpling sauce I am pleased, this was a reddish spicy sauce. The salt and pepper pan cake, however was like chewing on tasteless cardboard. I also tried the spicy hand shaven noodle house special chow mein. The noodles were good (though not as good as the sizzled ones, but the meat was somewhat frightening and there was a lack of any vegetables. Furthermore the delivery took almost an hour.
That said, they are dirt cheap (under $7 for most entrees) and have hand shave noodles, two things I love in a chinese restaurant. The third thing I love in one? Delivery to my house. So I will go ahead and say yes to Szechuan bistro…though I might try to stick to noodles!