Auntie Tsehai Cooks: A Comprehensive Guide to Making Ethiopian and Eritrean Food

Clear layout with simple, easy to follow recipes. Full of great dishes that have all, so far, been excellent. Could have used a section for recipes to make your own space mixes but have found these easily enough online. Would definitely recommend - a book made with a real love of food, aimed at sharing that joy.

I’ve several books on Ethiopian and Eritrean cooking, and use them all. Auntie Tsehai Cooks, however, is the best of the bunch: comprehensive wonderful! For one thing, the injera recipes and methods in her book are the very best I’ve ever found, and yield results that are as good as any found in the half-dozen or so fabulous Ethiopian restaurants we’re so lucky to have here. Can’t recommend this book highly enough; in fact, I’ve bought several copies to give as gifts.

First of all I want to emphazise that the dishes are very good described, also the instructions to make this ethopian bread are very good. And my girlfriend loves the illustrations as well as the stories. But as a german 😉 I have to say that it is not structured very well. Instead of separating the cooking instructions from the hole storie content, that is also contained in this book, they mix it up all together. The next disadvantage is that they do not describe how to make the spice mixes.

The recipes in this book are authentic, and the spice level can be varied to your taste. All the classic Ethiopian restaurant dishes are here: Doro Wat (spicy chicken), Yebeg Key Wot (spicy lamb stew), Misir Alicha (mild red lentils), Dincha Alicha (mild potatoes and carrots, Yabesha Gomen (collard greens) Key Sir Tibs (mild roasted beets) Medericha Wot (spicy eggplant), and dozens and dozens more. There's even a section on how to make injera, the steamed sourdough bread--although this recipe takes days, and it's easier to order premade injera from suppliers in major cities. The instructions are very clear, and there are helpful pictures of each recipe--and sometimes of each stage in a recipe. There's an index to help with Ethiopian food vocabulary--which was priceless when I went to order Ethiopian spices from Brundo.com to make the recipes. You'll want to have spice mixes like berbere and finishing spices like Mekelesha and Alicha Kimam on hand for true flavor. Ethiopian cooking uses Mekelesha or Alicha Kimam like Indian cooking uses Garam Masala--sprinkled over the dish at the end for that extra special something. I've been cooking recipes from this book and eating homemade Ethiopian food for dinner for about a month now, and there don't seem to be any weak dishes in this lineup.

I have absolutely loved using this cookbook. The authors break down Habesha cooking and don't assume you're already familiar with the ingredients or techniques. I have found it so helpful in learning to cook the food my husband grew up with for our family.

an outstanding book for those that love Ethiopian food ; especially the section re. injera bread-making . Great photos and descriptions .