Fake Abesha Cooking

My cooking skills are not world-renowned. My Abesha cooking skills are even worse.

However, in a pinch, I can fake it enough with some American substitutes that the hubby doesn’t seem to mind (too much) because it sort of makes him think I am trying.

1. Kitfo and injera: Taco Bell meat and flour tortillas. OK, clearly, this is only for the the 3-year old. But, desperate times call for desperate measures, especially if you are newly home from Ethiopia and have no idea how to make the child eat something besides bananas and bread.
2. Ethiopian Dabbo: Boboli pizza crust. Not really close, but the shape is correct. Plus, I live near a Brownberry outlet, so the price is right also.
3. Mit’mita sauce: Frank’s hot sauce.  The hubby said it was close.  I wasn’t even trying to trick him on this one.
4. Sambusas: Lentils cooked with onion and curry powder, deep fried in wonton wrappers. Asiaopian actually.  I said it was fake Abesha cooking. I admitted that from the start! 
5. Shiro wat: refried beans with berbere powder. OK, this was a trick to get the 3-year old to eat the refried beans. It really doesn’t taste the same at all, but it is pretty much the same color and sorta the same consistency. Plus, the rest of my cooking is so crap that he doesn’t really know what good food is.
6. Roasted peas (the kind you get from the girls selling them on the side of the road): roasted peas in a bag. You can get them in the nut section of some supermarkets or in Asian food stores.
7. Doro wat: OK. This one I actually start cooking the right way. But, I don’t like skin and bones so I just throw in some semi-shredded cooked chicken breast. Also, a trick with the hardboiled eggs is to prick them all over with a pin before you drop them into the sauce. That way the sauce/berbere-ness is absorbed further into the egg. You can serve it with fresh Italian (or Portuguese-style) bread that is sorta like the ET bread you get at the shops (if you don’t have an injera source).
8. Popcorn:  Egads.  You have to make the popcorn in a pot with oil on the stove.  No microwave popcorn.

Remember:  If you are Ethiopian or looking for authentic Ethiopian food, do NOT use these suggestions.  And, do NOT ever think this is real Ethiopian cooking. 

And, if you are Ethiopian and thinking that I’m insulting your culture, I am not.  My cooking is awful all around.  You don’t even want to know how I make Chinese or Italian food.  My American food barely even passes for American.

Let me know if you’ve come across some other substitutes that might work.  Remember, we live in a community without a lot of food options.