Eritrean Cuisine

The photo to the left depicts a traditional Eritrean meal. This photo was taken at the Blue Bird (formerly the Blue Nile) restaurant near our office in Asmara. On this day, we had "shiro" with vegetables and "spris" with fileto.

Spris just means "mixed," so I would assume the name has something to do with the mixture of spices that go into the dish. "Fileto" is some sort of cut of meat. I don't think they even care what kind of meat it actually is. I would guess this was probably goat because it is most common. The "spris" is flavored primarily with berbere, which is by far the most popular spice in Eritrea. I'm not sure what berbere actually is, but it is red and spicy and pretty tasty. Berbere is also the most important ingredient in zigni, another common meat dish in Eritrea.



The orange stuff is shiro. Shiro is made from dried and ground up chick peas. Once the chick peas are ground, they are mixed with berbere to make an orange powder. To prepare shiro, you simply mix the powder in a pot with water and chopped tomatoes, onions, garlic, and peppers. Shiro is the one Eritrean dish I have learned to prepare, but it's a good one.

Eritreans eat with their hands. In this case, the dishes are served on a bed of injera, a type of flat bread. The injera is used both as a filler, which is does quite well, and as a utensil. Injera is a sour dough bread, which is traditionally made from a grain called teff. However, Eritreans will use sorghum when they're desperate. See the holes? Those are called the eyes. Ideally injera should have lots of eyes, but I'm not sure why. I do, however, have to agree that it tastes better with lots of eyes.



As mentioned in a previous post, injera is made in a kind of stove or oven called a mogogo. Since that last post, I have learned a little more about James' mogogo project, and it sounds really fascinating. Apparently the man he is working with at the Ministry of Energy and Mines here in Asmara won some sort of award for his energy efficient design. I actually heard rumors that it was a Nobel Prize, but I can't find any independent confirmation of this. I also heard that he met Bill Gates as a result, so maybe the award came from him. In case anyone is interested in learning a little more, here is an article on these mogogos written by the former Reuters reporter in Asmara.

Although most traditional Eritrean dishes are served with injera, there are some that are not. For example, "ful" is a dish made from mashed beans mixed with oil, berbere, onions, tomatoes, hot peppers, and either boiled eggs or cheese. Ful with eggs is known as ful masala. I don't eat that one. Ful is eaten with bread resembling dinner rolls. You rip the bread into pieces and dip them in the ful. Ful is actually a lot like bean dip. It is typically eaten for breakfast or lunch, although we did have some for dinner in Tesseney.

Fritata (scrambled eggs with onions, tomatoes, and peppers) is also a common breakfast food and is eaten with the same kind of bread used for ful.

Eritrean food is very similar, if not identical to Ethiopian food. So, if you've ever been to an Ethiopian restaurant, you should already have a pretty good idea what Eritrean food like. But some Eritreans have told me that Ethiopians are better cooks than Eritreans; that they care more about the food they prepare. This is saying a lot, because most Eritreans will never admit any sort of Ethiopian superiority.

In addition to all of the traditional food, Italian food is also readily available. In fact, the two most enduring influences from the colonial period seem to be the architecture and the food. Anyway, pasta can be found almost anywhere you go. I even had pasta in Barentu and Senafe. But Eritreans do pizza particularly well, which is really nice.

That's it for now. I'll try to come back to beverages, with a focus on coffee ceremonies, another day. Happy Holidays!