Ethiopian Archives - A Vegan Obsession

The Best Artisan Food Market In New York City! Smorgasburg Street Food.

January 9, 2014 by India Leigh

The Best Artisan Food Market In New York City! Smorgasburg Street Food.

Following up on my recent trip to New York, I wanted to tell you about Smorgasburg (see what they did there..). It is an open air local artisan food space, located on the Brooklyn side of New York. In a gentrified hipster area of once was dockyards and now a place where the good, the great, the gorgeous and the gorging gather. It happens at weekends at two locations; Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 5 and Williamsburg. So, decide when and where. Rock up with a gnawing appetite, go on a once-around-the-park recee of what is on offer. Choose your dining experience for today, and then grab a sit or stand at the water’s edge and gawk at the Manhattan skyline. It’s right there. In front of you. All around you actually. I almost forgot there was all this awesome vegan food being prepared right behind me!

I made my way there for a bit of indecent food appreciation. There are over 60 vendors there each week. These were all my vegan and gluten free finds.

Bunna Cafe now with an ‘under roof’ location, too.

Kombucha made in Brooklyn. They sell at outlets and you can also buy one of their kombucha making kits. When I’m not travelling around I usually have a large jar of kombucha on the go. It is a wild, weird and wonderful thing. I whole heartedly recommend!

The Best Artisan Food Market In New York City! Smorgasburg Street Food.

Buddah bowls from Mamak

Drip Coffee

Was it National Check Shirt Day?!

Bombay Sandwich Co. The sign says it..vegan*local*vedic

Fine & Raw with samples of their delicious raw chocs.

Incredibly good raw chocolate from Fine & Raw

The 3 Nuts Goodness stuffed into jars. Nuts with benefits.

Salted Caramel Peanut Butter - Yep!

This was my choice from Chickpea & Olive (current ‘rave’ of the The Gothamist), a vegan pop-up diner. I feasted on a Phatty Beets Slider with aubergine ‘bacon’ on griddled gluten free bread. Pinch me!

I made this a place to stroll too for brunch on a couple of weekends. When the temperatures drop wickedly in winter, Smorgasburg and Brooklyn Flea (clothes, jewellery, vintage, art) all huddle up, cozy in their winter location until March.

I met with a very interesting artisan vegan ‘kitchen biologist’. I’ve got that post coming up for you in 2014.

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Want some more of this?..here are a couple of my recent NYC articles.
Healthy Eating In NYC
Yeah Dawg

Thanks for reading! x

Injera Wraps Stuffed with Citrusy Split Peas (Kik Alicha)

September 16, 2013 by India Leigh

I first tried Ethiopian food when I was in LA. A great little health food store in Los Feliz neighbourhood, up by the Hollywood Hills, kept them in the chiller to-go. The curious grey/brown spongy wrap and sunlight yellow peas looked so appetising. I was setting off on a ‘road trip within a road trip’ down to Joshua Tree to be alone in the desert and stare at millions of glistening stars. I grabbed them and a bottle of kombucha and headed out. I devoured them whilst driving in LA traffic (not a good idea folks, don’t do this at home…well at home yes, but not in your car). The flavours and textures were an instant hit. Every road trip I took, beginning at this point, then always began with a mighty roll of tangy injera bread and lemony legumes. When I’ve eaten them in other places since, they always transport me back to sunny California and dusty deserts.

Even though I’ve been hooked on Ethiopian cuisine ever since, it has taken me years to get around to making injera bread. I was a bit scared of it. Silly really, fermentation is not really something to be feared, like say rip tides or leg waxing. I guess it’s all timing. I decided Vegan MoFo 2013 was a wonderful excuse to have a go.

Injera is teff flour mixed with water and left to ferment for 2-3 days (mine took 3 days..it will depend on the warmth of your house). It has a mildly sour taste. Teff belongs to the genus of ‘love grass’. Reported to be rich in iron and complex carbs ( thought to regulate blood sugar), high in calcium, gluten free and, well, someone once told me all those Gold medal winning Ethiopian runners eat plenty of it, so it must be good.

Injera Wraps Stuffed with Citrusy Split Peas (Kik Alicha)

3 cups wholegrain teff

4-5 cups water (I found a recipe that says use non-chlorinated water for the fermentation, which makes sense as the yeasts don’t like chlorine..I’d try spring water next time)

oil for the fry pan/skillet

Pink salt to taste. I used about 1 tsp.

Mix the teff flour and water (NOT the salt)into a bowl, cover and leave in a warmish spot undisturbed for 2-3 days. See the picture below for how it should look. I kept looking at it all the time, like you would watching soil for seed to sprout. I was so excited when it started to look cracked and then bubbles appeared on the surface. I admit to talking to it then, and encouraging it a little (I never professed to be sane!.) When it is fermented, mix in the salt. You may need to add more water, I did. Look for the consistency of a moderately runny batter.

Pour the batter like you would a crepe in a heated, oiled pan (there is a special electric pan or clay plate, to make injera but I only had a non-stick frypan..beggars can’t be choosers when housesitting!) The tell-tale craters appear pretty quickly. Once the edges are turning whitish then pop on a suitable sized lid for a minute or so, the steaming process finishes off the cooking. Pop onto a plate and then cook the remainder. Pile them on top of each other, using parchment paper to separate. I was a virgin injera maker. My results were a bit hit and miss and reminsecnet of the goldilocks story. The first was way too thick, the second too thin and, yep you know the rest. I only ended up making four. If I’d have used the correct amount for each one I’d have probably doubled this. The pan I was using was huge too. Practice makes perfect. I’ll update you when I make them again. I’d say I came 90% of the way of recreating my road trip injera. I’d say that was not a bad result. They’ve probably made 1000’s of them.

Kik Alicha

1 cup dried yellow split peas. soaked over night. 3 cups of water to cook. 1 1/2 tsp pink or sea salt. Cook until soft but not completely mushy. It is good to have a bit of texture. 35-40mins. Cook then set aside. If they are too wet the strain off some of the water. See the photo below for how they should look.

5 medium cloves garlic minced
1/4 onion grated (the original recipe didn’t use onion but I used it as a buffer for the garlic so it didn’t burn)
1 1/2 inch fresh ginger minced (use my method of mincing in a garlic press..discovered this for myself last week)
1 tsp turmeric
Put all the ingredients into an oiled pan. Quick fry for 2 mins. Stir constantly.

Pop the garlic, ginger paste into the beans and stir. Now squeeze over the juice of 1-2 lemons, depending on size and juiciness. The acidity of the lemons make the flavour of the beans zing.

Cover the surface of the bread with a layer of the kik alicha (the name of the puree/stew) and then roll. Perform this for all.

I made a red split pea wat to go with it. Super easy, spiced with exotic berber spices. I ate this hot, but served the injera wraps chilled, as this is how they were when I first encountered them.

Lovely. I will never fear the injera again!

See you tomorrow! x

Ethiopian FAST food

December 28, 2010 by India Leigh

Road Trip! I was driving, ten hours, to Arizona. I didn’t want to end up searching a 7 eleven for something suitable (yeah, right! like that is going to happen) so I went to Nature Mart in Los Feliz the day before, to get Road Trip supplies. I picked up an Ethiopian wrap, made with injera bread (teff, barley & wheat flour, which is fermented for two days) and stuffed with bright yellow split pea paste. The filling was flavoured with garlic, turmeric, ginger and lemon juice. The spices were very mild and just lifted the peas enough not to over power the tangy, kind of sour flavour of the bread.

The texture is so unique and the bread is so delicate and the filling smooth with the occasional pea, still intact, bursting in my mouth. Jesus, it was good. Food to make you smile and satisfied. I washed it down with a cold bottle of Virgil’s Diet (6 cal sweetener free) Cherry cream soda. Sweetened with Stevia Virgils
Fizzy, not too sweet and the cherry flavour packs a punch
.
Rahel vegan Ethiopian supplies the wraps in Whole Food also. They have a restaurant but I have not yet been fortunate to go there. The food on the website looks delicious. If you get to go there, let me know so that I may live vicariously through you!!

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