Ethiopian Cooking Part II... Berbere

Some of you may remember a hundred years ago when I started to say that I would teach you how to cook Ethiopian food.  An idea which had merit but was obvioulsy lacking in execution as here it is... a mere....millenia  17 months later and we are finally getting to Part II.  Please revisit Part I here.  So the bad news is that I dropped the ball, this is no surprise with my time restraints these years days.  The good news... here is Part II and I've given you an easy link back to Part I... and with these two ingredients you can basically make half of all Ethiopian dishes.  The Nitter Kibbeh is a spiced clarified butter, and the Berbere is a spice mixture... both of which are in almost everything.  I have heard that you will never get it as good unless someone brings it to you from Ethiopia.  Well being fresh out of Etiopian connections I will have to make due.  And since I don't know what I'm missing... I thought this was pretty darn good.... better than good.  Fantastic in fact.  And once you add this to your heating Nitter Kibbeh you will be in aromatic heaven.  Once you are all good little students and make these two I will divulge my recipe for Doro Wat.... it's not pretty but it is soooooo good it will plant ideas of traveling through Africa just to taste the food.  Does anyone else notice I make a lot of ugly food.  That would have been a great catchy name for a blog.  Ugly Food.... hmmm... I like it.

My spice next to the photo in the cookbook which is full of gorgeous recipes.  The monkey likes to open it and go through it page by page and tell me what he likes and what he wants to eat.  And why yes that is a handy dandy kids take and toss container.  Note to self... do not use this container to store baby food in the future.

Berbere
adapted from Soul of A New Cusine

Ingredients

1tablespoon Fenugreek seeds
1/2 cup dried serrano chilies or other dried chilis
1/2 cup ground paprika
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoon ground onion powder
1 tablespoon cardomom seeds (I bought mine whole but out of the pod)
1 tablespoon freshly ground or grated nutmeg
1/2 tablespoon Garlic powder
1/4 tablespoon Ground cloves
1/4 Tablespoon Ground cinnamon
1/4 Tablespoon Ground allspice

Method

Ground everything together in a coffee or spice grinder.  I recommend grated the nutmeg ahead of time as you are not about to grind one of those giant rocks into a fine powder otherwise.  I did my stuff in batches because my grinder is small.  And be careful when doing the chilis... once again I got to experience what it would be like to mace myself.