Niter Kebbeh

In the never-ending search for new dinners to prepare, I've now came across a selection of Ethiopian meals to create. They sort of blur together with this general idea of what I picture Indian food to be, which is basically anything composed of vegetable, grain or meat and any spice that could potentially be in a garam masala. However, it gave me an excuse to buy even more dried lentils than I already have in my cupboard. It's possible I've already done Ethiopian, but I haven't done these specific recipes, so here we go.

The lentils were purchased for Amhari Mesir Wat, which I'm calling Ethiopian red lentils from here on in. I like red lentils because they get sort of creamy like split peas instead of like brown lentils, which just sort of retain their shape. Maybe I'm imagining that. They're cooked simply in a tomato onion sauce, which does not really set them all that far apart from any other curried lentilish dish I've made this year, the main difference being that they're red lentils and do not contain ginger, I suppose.

I also made Ethiopian Potatoes, which I think someone might be pulling my leg on because they're basically boiled potatoes with jalapenos. It's hard to go wrong with potatoes, but I'm hardly blown away by this not so amazing recipe. To fill up the rest of the plate I attributed a recipe for niter kebbeh, an Ethiopian spice butter, as a way of cooking chicken. By that I mean I figured if I cooked chicken in the niter kebbeh recipe, it would turn out incredibly delicious. That was not true at all, because aside from a mild flavor of curry that was quite overpowered by cardamom for some reason, the Niter Kebbeh Chicken really didn't taste like much other than chicken fried in butter. Oh well.