I don't think words can describe the taste of this Ethiopian dish, but then I guess Ethiopian food flavors are hard to describe in general. In one word: Wow. (Hey, and my word's a palindrome...so you know this recipe is pretty special.)The sauce starts out from humble beginnings: vegetable broth, olive oil, and tomato paste mixed together. Then you add spice after spice after spice--some curry, cayenne, thyme, and cumin, some unexpected Hungarian paprika (I used smoked paprika) and cloves, and others I'm forgetting. This is the first time in maybe ever that I didn't have one of the spices the recipe called for--cardamom. I just omitted it and didn't try a substitute.
You coat halved mushrooms in this thick sauce and bake for 20 minutes. I used slightly less mushrooms than the recipe called for so I could save some for a tofu scramble later in the week. So it came out very saucy, and the recipe said the mushrooms were supposed to be thickly coated. I like the sauciness better. It tasted amazing, so good that I sopped up all the sauce with some whole-wheat toast. I plan to make it again and serve it over brown basmati rice with some baked curried tofu as an entree. Two thumbs up!
Oh wow, (to use yr word) these sound great. I think I'm going to have to actually get some cardamom, which I don't have either, because I keep seeing it in recipe after recipe and I need to know what I'm missing.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely on the list.