Teff Love: Adventures in Vegan Ethiopian Cooking Kindle Edition

The media could not be loaded.  I like this book. I've tried about 5 recipes and all were easy to follow, no mistakes/typo's found and all tasted very nice and very close to what I'd get in a local restaurant.There are color photos, not many, and each shows a handful of recipes so you don't get a picture of everything right there to look at when you're cooking. They do tell you above some recipes that the photo of that dish is on page such and such.I have some minor issues, more of pet peeves then issues with the recipes themselves. For some reason the author takes easy to find basic spice mixes and ghee (all here at Amazon in Brundo store including vegan ghee), and calls them something you've never heard of. Two of her favorite new names are very similar....ye'gimen zeyet and ye'wot gimem. I cannot remember which is what and therefore I have to keep going back through the book to look up what each was....one is niter kibbeh ghee and the other is mekelesha spice blend. Why in the world she can't call them by the correct name, the name Ethiopians call them and most of us would recognize, is beyond me...and irritating.My next peeve is in using spice mixes, like shiro or awaze or berbere. This is hard to explain so bare with me. She discusses buying these mixes yet in the recipes, she doesn't tell you how much of them to use other than berbere. I have both shiro and awaze and yet when I look at those recipes there is no quantity given for using the premade spice mix, instead, she lists each spice individually. When you see the long list of spices I can't tell which are making up her homemade awaze or shiro, versus which are adding something to the dish. So if I want to use my store bought mix I'm at a loss for how much to use and what to remove from the list of ingredients.I will warn you the quantity of food each recipe makes is about 4 cups on average. That doesn't sound like much but if you want to eat like an Ethiopian, with five or more spoonfuls of various dishes on one plate, you end up with a TON of food. We can't justify making five different recipes, each making 4 cups or more in order to make an authentic Ethiopian platter. Yes, I've tried freezing things but it's never the same.

This is an early review--early because I've just received the book and want to provide my first impressions, though I haven't tried most of the recipes yet. I will update the review after cooking! (EDITED TO ADD: Now I have. See below.)Kittee Berns has written an exhaustive and updated book about Ethiopian vegan cuisine, the "fasting food" that has long been a part of Ethiopian culture. This is a gorgeous book that is well-laid-out and exudes the author's signature sense of homey style. It has tons of information without being fluffy or overwritten, features colorful and inviting pictures, and has common-sense explanations of how to execute traditionally-tricky recipes like injera--the teff-based Ethiopian sourdough that is the basis for the title of this tome. Ms. Berns has organized the book well and has tagged the recipes according to her categorization system; the reader/cook can choose from traditional Ethiopian recipes that form the basis of popular combination plates, quick-fix versions of traditional recipes, and "fusion" recipes with a twist of Ethiopian flavors, among other treats. She provides helpful information, such as how to store ingredients and finished recipes, and how long they will last in the fridge or freezer. Nutritional information is additionally provided, and the book is friendly to those with celiac or otherwise following a gluten-free diet. Every time I was about to ask a question about a recipe, I found the information I wanted in the instructions or footnotes. She demonstrates respect for Ethiopian culture and tradition while bringing her own flair to this style of cooking. "Teff Love" is clearly a labor of love, and--oh, please forgive me--Ajwain to say that I'm berbere glad shirote it.Edits and Updates (for anyone still reading after the bad puns): I don't think I ever previously cooked 6 recipes from a single cookbook in one 24-hour period, but I did so with Teff Love. I think Ethiopian cooking lends itself to a slow prep process: The first week you make your injera starter and make some of the seasoned oil and spice blends, then you start your injera, then you have on hand what you need to whip up most recipes in a snap. (Except the injera. I recommend finding it locally if you can, already made, due to the amount of time required to make the real thing.) I was worried about the spiced oil/butter recipe because it had lots of cinnamon and cloves and I don't like sweet mixed in with my savory, but the flavor of the oil is AMAZING. (I used a container of Earth Balance as the base.) I made a shiro recipe, mild lentils, mild collard greens, toasted injera, and the black-pepper blend. Everything was a winner, with complex and nuanced flavors. I did bother to seek out the specialty ingredients and it made a big difference in the authenticity of the flavors; the author helpfully provides ingredient names in Amharic and Hindi where necessary to help you locate the correct item in a specialty market. This book is a triumphant marriage of clear explanations and explosive flavor combinations. I can't wait to try more dishes!

When I first got this book, I was honestly intimidated by how long the recipes were and how unfamiliar I was with some of the ingredients. Berns does a great job in the introduction of giving an explanation of different herbs and spices and the various names they can be found under. Conveniently, many of the ingredients common in Ethiopian food (so far everything I've needed except koseret and berbere) have been easy to find at my local Indian grocer. (The closest Ethiopian grocer is over an hour away.)Once you have the ingredients, the seasoned oil, and some of the spice blends on hand and prepped, I've found that many of the recipes come together quite easily! I am so happy I finally started cooking from this book. In my opinion, most of the challenge is getting over how intimidating it is to start cooking with new ingredients and locating them, depending on where you live. Happy cooking!

This is my second Ethiopian cookbook, and it's definitely the better of the two. There's a really wide range of recipes, most of which are authentic and some of which are just imaginative re-inventions. I'm a cookbook lover, but this means that I can be very tough on cookbook authors. Kittee definitely delivers. The book:- Has well-tested recipes. I have had success with every one I've tried, which is often not the case with cookbooks these days (and certainly not the case with blogs!).- Draws on fewer exotic ingredients than you might think, given the subject matter. And once you buy a few unusual spices (provided you already have a decent herb/spice collection), you will be able to make a few spice mixtures that are used again and again in the book. Some of the more obscure ingredients are also optional.- Has a useful index that seems to be quite thorough.- Consists of mainly healthy recipes that are simple to make, with a few more indulgent and time-consuming recipes. The 'proper' injera, for instance, takes days to make, but Kittee offers a quick alternative.- Not only is this book vegan, but it is also almost entirely gluten free.- The book draws largely on traditional 'fasting' dishes which are naturally vegan, so you really are getting a quite authentic taste of Ethiopia.Like Kittee, I love Ethiopian but moved to a place where it isn't widely available. This book fills that empty space, and I know I will be using it again and again.

I was disappointed that the author's research appears to have been exclusively via Ethiopian restaurants and people in the United States, she doesn't actually seem to have even been to Ethiopia. I think this would be a starting assumption for claiming expertise in the cuisine of a nation.Also agree with the comments about the pictures, it's really hard to visualise a recipe since you have to find the page with the relevant image and then work out which one in the group it is while remembering the sometimes long Ethiopian names.

A whole new world of Ethiopian culinary adventure awaits in these lavishly illustrated pages, it's really excellent. The only caveat I would add is that these are not beginners recipes and require a certain level of skill. Oh also many of the ingredients required aren't going to be on the shelves of Tesco and you will have to hunt them down elsewhere. But generally if you've got hold of some Teff and some veg you're away. Anyway the results I've got from everything I've tried from this book have been extra yummy.

Although I had Ethiopian 20times in my life, during my last pregnancy I just craved this kind of food. As I live in a country unfamiliar with this cuisine, I had to start from scratch. This cookbooks gives you exactly that - how to do it all at home. Very grateful! All recipes I tried were true to taste as I remember it.

We've had this book a while now and I cannot get enough of it. I'd never eaten Ethiopian food but had heard wonderful things about it, and the instructions are clear and the dishes just taste out of this world. A definite success with all the family! You'll be wanting to eat injera every day all day after buying this.