Ethiopian Cooking

I have a lovely, rustic ‘Exotic Ethiopian Cooking’ book*, that my brother bought for me in Ethiopia. It has loads of information about food culture in Ethiopia, as well as hundreds of inspiring and interesting recipes, including some for fermented drinks.

A lot of the recipes require ingredients I can’t get in France, so the first recipe I’ve tried requires callaloo (collard greens in American), which I have growing in the garden, along with other very simple ingredients. The results were outstanding.

The recipe is for ‘Collard Green Mixed In Spiced Cottage Cheese’. Sounds very simple, but you need to make your own cottage cheese, because shop-bought stuff won’t work at all.

So, starting a few days in advance, I bought raw milk and let it go sour for a couple of days on a warm windowsill. Then, you shake the milk in a jar, until it turns into [exceptionally wonderful] butter. Put the butter in the fridge, and then heat the buttermilk really gently, until the curds separate. Once cool, refrigerate, and you now have homemade cottage cheese! It is amazing. It tastes like mozzarella, and, when heated, behaves like it, too.

Homemade cottage cheese

For the dish:

• Chop callaloo (you can also use spinach) and boil for a few minutes
• Mix black pepper and butter with the cottage cheese
• Stir in the hot callaloo.
• Serve with injera or other thin flatbread, or as a side dish

You can also mix in spices, like chili, caraway, cumin, cardamom, coriander seed etc and I felt it needed some salt, too.

This is a really special dish. I can’t wait to try some more Ethiopian recipes, and Ethiopia is very high up on my list of adventure destinations…



*Book by D J Mesfin, published by Ethiopian Cookbook Enterprises.

Indonesian Beef Rendang Daging

The lovely Julia invited me and a friend over to try some of her expert Indonesian cooking. She had learned the cuisine from a street food seller, having committed to getting up at 4am everyday of her stay in Indonesia, to spend time cooking with the bemused lady.

Last night we had this scrumptious, rich rendang daging; beef cooked slowly in coconut milk, with herbs, spices and chillies, and served with caramelized shallots sprinkled over the top.

Authentic beef rendang daging


We also drank Clarette de Die infused with apricots as an aperitif, then had a superb starter of Mexican prawn ceviche. After the rendang daging came a cheese selection and salad, and everything was washed down with litres of rosé.

Arabic Cured Beef

Pirran (bro) came back from Qatar again today, with another excellent present for me; delicious Arabic cured beef. It is strongly infused with a cocktail of aromatic spices, and is very soft and tender. I haven't tasted anything like it before - it's comparable to pastrami, although I don't like pastrami and this amazing stuff is cured raw rather than hot-smoked.

Arabic cured beef

Cold, Curry & Caribbean - 4th September 2007 & Beyond

Crap airplane food throughout the night, and a 5a.m. landing were not ideal preparation for the sunny but absolutely bloody freezing weather at Gatwick.

Driving to my parents’ house in Sussex, everything was just so tidy and sterile. The culture shock was more so than it would have been in my adopted country of France, and, driving down the green lanes and smoothly tarmacked roads of Sussex, there were NO PEOPLE ANYWHERE. No-one walking, selling, carrying things on their heads, pushing cars, laughing, waving, shaking hands, cooking, or hanging out. Just shiny new cars driving to jobs, in order to support the huge, tidy, empty houses - no actual life. And no-one shaking my hand, asking my name, or enquiring “how di body?”

After a couple of days at my parents’ and the obligatory mouth-watering curry we have every time I visit (poppadums, peshwari naan, Bombay duck, and various wonderful freshly cooked curries, from the Magna Tandoori in Arundel), I began to adjust.

An evening out in London with a meal at a Caribbean restaurant helped, too. I drank Guinness punch (mega rich drink containing Guinness, spices, cocoa, condensed milk and sometimes egg), with roti (the fajita principle, with chicken curry inside a heavy pancake. The roti dough is usually made with flour, baking soda, oil, corn meal and seasoning). My companion had ox tail stew (rich, dark and flavoursome) with rice and red peas (kidney beans) - all delicious but very filling, and massive portions.

Then it was back to my life in France

Two days later, I got a text from a French friend who knows Freetown – he asked “miss gemma! how di body?” ☺



One last word; don't go to Sierra Leone without a guide, or at least experience of travelling in Africa. The country is officially 'encouraging' tourists (so why are visas so hard to obtain?), but there is nothing to help anyone find their way around or understand the place. Like no signs in the airport and no roadsigns in Freetown.