MEAT AND VEG...
on Tara's Ethiopian Adventure (Ethiopia), 11/Apr/2010 10:32, 34 days ago
A traditional English roast might include meat, potato and two veg.‘Meat and Veg’ are often the first things you think of when preparing a meal and then later decide whether to serve it with pasta, rice, potato etc. In Ethiopia the phrase‘Meat AND veg’ is almost unheard of! They might suggest Meat OR Veg but more likely Meat NO Veg! Actually this is not strictly true...there is in fact a dish called‘Atikult bi Sigar’ which literally translates as vegetables with meat. This dish generally consists of a lump of meat (probably lamb) on the bone served on a bed of sour cabbage. It actually tastes a bit like German‘Sauerkraut’ and the times I have had it is has been so greasy that I don’t really feel I am getting any goodness from the vegetable. The Ethiopian’s love their meat so much will invariably chose a meat dish over a vegetable one and apart from the above mentioned dish they do not mix the two. I learnt this the hard way when I invited some friends round for dinner. I know they love meat so I made a real effort to ensure I made a meat dish. I thought chilli con carne would be a good option as Ethiopian food is also quite spicy. One of my friends was very polite and ate it all but the others spent their time picking the meat out and leaving the kidney beans. Apparently they like kidney beans but the thought of eating them with meat was too alien to them!Although I like the Ethiopian Meat dishes I normally come away from a meal feeling like something was missing...and that something is vegetables. It just feels so unhealthy having a plate of meat (sometimes cooked in a sauce) with ingera and I also get bored of having the same texture and flavour. For this reason my favourite Ethiopian dish is‘Bayaynette’. This is a vegetarian dish consisting of about five or six different types of veg served on ingera. With this dish there is therefore a lovely mixture of flavours and textures and some yummy vegetables. I find it crazy that they only save this dish for fasting (no animal products) days because it is delicious! My Ethiopian friends don’t generally agree with me on this and while Maggie and I have really enjoyed the last 55 days of fasting leading up to Easter they struggled through day after day of eating bayaynette. Ambo has a fairly even mix of Orthodox and Protestant Christians as well as a reasonable large Muslim population. The Protestants and Muslims here don’t have any rules about not eating meat (instead they abstain from alcohol), therefore on fasting days it is still possible to buy meat and other animal products in most cafes. This is not the case in every town. My friend lives in Debre Markos, which has a much bigger Orthodox community. On fasting days she can’t even get milk in her coffee. Apart from the major fasting seasons (leading up to Christmas and Easter) Orthodox Christians generally‘fast’ (abstain from animal products) on Wednesdays and Fridays. These have therefore become my favourite days as they are the only days I can get my favourite dish. My colleagues are quite aware of this and find it hilarious that their least favourite days of the week are the ones I get excited about! I was therefore really disappointed when this week (just after Easter) I couldn’t find any cafes selling bayaynette on Wednesday or Friday. What was going on? I couldn’t understand...was no one fasting?! After visiting 8 cafes on Friday night I finally gave up asked a friend to explain why I couldn’t find it anywhere. I then learnt that for 40 days after Easter the Orthodox Christians are exempt from any fasting (perhaps symbolic of the fact that Jesus has set them free from the binds of religion and tradition?). OH NO! No Bayaynette for 40 days! It seems my fasting season has just begun! It is not a serious problem as Maggie and I generally cook at home anyway and there are still plenty of vegetables for sale in the Market. However, as Maggie is a vegetarian, it does mean that if we do want to eat out at all then we will probably have to go eat at one of the more pricey hotels in town. It seems crazy that, if they can serve meat during the fasting days, they can’t sell vegetables when it is not a fasting day! But I guess the only ones buying the bayaynettes would be Maggie and me...and that wouldn’t be great business!