Injera (Amharic: ?n?ära ???? [?nd??ra]; sometimes transliterated as enjera; or "taita"; Tigrinya: ???; Somali: Canjeero) is a sourdough-risen flatbread with a unique, slightly spongy texture. Traditionally made out of teff flour, it originates from and is the national dish in Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea.
Injera, also known as taita, is a traditional Eritrean, Ethiopian and Somali bread. It is central to the dining process as in those cultures, bread is the most fundamental piece of any meal. While it had been specific to Ethiopia and other parts of the Horn of Africa, it has spread to Israel with the migration of Jews from the Horn of Africa.
Video Injera
Preparation
Injera is usually made from the tiny, iron-rich teff. However, teff production is limited to certain middle elevations and regions with adequate rainfall, so it is relatively expensive for the average household. As many farmers in the Ethiopian highlands grow their own subsistence grains, wheat, barley, corn, and/or rice flour are sometimes used to replace some or all of the teff content. Teff flour is gluten free, therefore injera that is made only with teff flour has higher demand. There are also different varieties of injera in Ethiopia, such as tekore (black), nech (white), and sergegna (mixed).
To make injera, teff flour is mixed with water and allowed to ferment for several days, as with a sourdough starter. As a result of this fermentation, injera has a mildly sour taste. The injera is then ready to be baked into large, flat pancakes. Unusual for a yeast or sourdough bread, the dough's viscosity allows it to be poured onto the baking surface, rather than rolled out.
In terms of shape, injera compares to the French crêpe and the Indian dosa as a flatbread cooked in a circle and used as a base for other foods. The taste and texture, however, are unlike the crêpe and dosa, and more similar to the South Indian appam. The bottom surface of the injera, which touches the heating surface, will have a relatively smooth texture, while the top will become porous. This porous structure allows the injera to be a good bread to scoop up sauces and dishes.
Ingredients
Traditionally, injera is made with Eragrostis tef: an ancient grain from the highlands of Ethiopia. In order to understand the origin of injera, one could look to the origin of the grain made to make it, but there is little written and known about its origin. There is debate about this amongst those writing about the subject, but it has been stated by some that the production of tef dates back as far as 4,000 B.C. When tef is not available, in both Ethiopia and outside of its native country, injera can be made by fermenting a variety of different grains. Injera has been known to be made with barley, millet, and sorghum when tef is not available, usually because of location or financial limitations. Ideally, injera is always made with tef.
Cooking method
The cooking method for injera has changed little since its origin. The concept is the same: the grain is mixed with water and fermented for a period of time which may vary depending on which grain is being used. Traditionally, those are the only two ingredients and the mixture is thinly laid onto a giant circular griddle, or mitad, which has been found at archaeological sites dating back as far as 600 A.D. during the 5th and 6th century. A mitad today does not necessarily have to be made out of clay, but it is still a large, circular griddle on which the injera mixture is baked.
Baking surface
Baking is done either on a specialized electric stove, or more traditionally, on a large, black clay plate over a fire. This set-up uses a griddle called a mitad (???) (in Amharic) or mogogo (???) (in Tigrinya).
The clay plate can be difficult to use, produces large amounts of smoke, and can be dangerous to children. Because of this inefficient cooking method, much of the area's limited fuel resources are wasted. However, in 2003, an Eritrean research group designed a stove which uses available fuel sources (including dung, locally called kubet) for cooking injera and other foods efficiently, saving the heat from the fuel. This cooking method was intended for designing a new type of stove. Several parts of this new stove are made in the central cities of Ethiopia and Eritrea while other parts are molded from clay by women in local areas.
However, many women in urban areas now use electric injera stoves, which are topped with a large metal plate. In the United States, injera is most often made on an electric Bethany lefse grill, now marketed as "Heritage grill".
Maps Injera
Consumption and contemporary use
In Ethiopia and Eritrea, a variety of stews, or sometimes salads (during Ethiopian Orthodox fasting, for which believers abstain from most animal products) and simply more injera (called injera firfir), are placed upon the injera for serving. Using one's hand (traditionally only the right one), small pieces of injera are torn and used to grasp the stews and salads for eating. The injera under these stews soaks up the juices and flavours of the foods, and after the stews and salads are gone, this bread is also consumed. Injera is thus simultaneously food, eating utensil, and plate. When the entire "tablecloth" of injera is gone, the meal is over.
In Ethiopia and Eritrea, injera is eaten daily in virtually every household. Outside of the Horn of Africa and Israel, injera may be found in grocery stores and restaurants specializing in Ethiopian, Somali and Eritrean cooking.
Injera, as previously mentioned, is the most important component to any Ethiopian meal. It is often both the serving platter and utensil for a meal. Hearty stews such as Wat (food) are placed on top of the bread and then the meal is eaten by tearing pieces of injera off and scooping up the stews. While injera's literal use has not changed since its creation: to be the base and staple of any Ethiopian meal, its symbolic value has taken on new meanings. For starters, different varieties of injera can be found in the highlands vs. lowlands of Ethiopia. In the lowlands injera is often made with sorghum and in the highlands it is more commonly made with barley. Either way, because it is made with something other than tef its symbolic value has already decreased compared to the symbolic value of injera made with tef. There are symbolic value differences with types of tef as well. White-grained tef is more expensive to buy and thus symbolizes a higher status than its cheaper counterpart, red-grained tef.
Variations
There are similar variants to injera in other East African countries like Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan. The variant eaten in Somalia and Djibouti is called Canjeero or Laxox, the variant eaten in South Sudan and Sudan is known as kisra. In Somalia, at lunch (referred to as Qaddo), the main meal of the day, injera (known as Canjeero) might also be eaten with a stew (Maraq) or soup. Canjeero, the Somali and the Djiboutian version of injera, is a staple of Somali and Djiboutian cuisine.
Outside Ethiopia and Eritrea
United States
Homeland Security's 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics shows that before 1930, there were no Ethiopians in the United States with legal, permanent resident status, and there was a massive spike in numbers between the 1980s and 1990s. This is largely because the Refugee Act was passed in 1980. While that does not give specific detail as to the appearance of injera in Chicago specifically, it does give a starting time frame for when it was possibly appearing- no earlier than the 1980s.
Tef is now being produced in the United States by the Teff Company in Idaho, making tef more accessible to expatriate Ethiopians.
There are between ten and fifteen Ethiopian restaurants in the city of Chicago as of present day. The earliest information for the very first comes from a newspaper article. In 1985, Iris Krasnow wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times which stated that, at the time, there was only one Ethiopian restaurant in Chicago. She had spoken to the owner of Mama Desta, which appears to be Chicago's first Ethiopian restaurant. At the time of the article, she writes that the restaurant is only eighteen months old. So, the first Ethiopian restaurant and the first place to see injera in Chicago opened in the late months of 1983, or the early months of 1984.
See also
References
Further reading
- The Deep Dish on Chicago Ethiopian Companion website to Kloman's book: Mesob Across America
- Injera's Journey To Chicago The Red Fork, Chicago food blog entry
- Here, Eat This: A Beginner's Guide to Ethiopian Food A Houston Press article that outlines all the basics for Ethiopian cuisine
- Crang, Philip; Cook, Ian (1996). "The World on a Plate: Culinary Culture, Displacement and Geographical Knowledges". Journal of Material Culture. 1 (2): 131-156. doi:10.1177/135918359600100201.
- de Solier, Isabelle. Food and the Self: Consumption, Production, and Material Culture. Bloomsbury Academic. 2013
External links
- Mesob Across America: Ethiopian Food in the U.S.A. A book about the history and culture of Ethiopian cuisine
- Ethiopian Food: Mesob Across America A blog about Ethiopian food
- Ethiopian Restaurant Guide Includes video visits to some restaurants
- Ashden awards: Local construction of efficient stoves
Source of article : Wikipedia
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