Bob, you’d probably love the book that I was writing about where I used the food picture as illustration. It’s called The Chains of Heaven, about a guy who takes a long walk through the Ethiopian back-country. Anyone who likes good travel writing would like it, or just a tour of a profoundly weird and stimulating place.
On Amazon: http://goo.gl/4AOzO -T On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Bob W <[email protected]> wrote: >> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of >> Tim Bray >> >> For anyone who hasn't been to a good Ethiopian restaurant, I totally >> recommend it; the food comes on a big share-plate covered with a bread >> platter. Warning: Some dishes are severely spicy: >> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/08/24/- >> big/IMG_0195.jpg.html >> > > Ethiopian food is what brought me on to this list, way back when. At the > place where I was working we had a monthly dining club, and chose a > different nationality of food each month. When it was something well-known > and popular we'd get 12-15 people turning up. > > One month we decided on Ethiopian, and only 3 of us turned up, but the food > was utterly delicious and the whole experience was completely out of this > world. I'd been thinking about Ethiopia for some time in any case, because I > found it hard to reconcile the images of famine and war with the stories of > an ancient culture, Prester John and so on. The food just deepened my > intrigue, so I booked a month's holiday and went travelling there in 1996. > > It's a completely wonderful country, and the people are very friendly and > interesting. The food is generally better over here though than it is/was in > the countryside outside Addis Ababa, except for the injera. Real injera in > Ethiopia is really unlike the stuff we get over here, even though some of > the restaurants do fly it in fresh ever day. > > Anyway, I had some camera problems (MX and Super-A) while I was there, so I > found this group and subscribed so that I could ask for advice. I ended up > buying 3 LXes, which I took to Ethiopia on my second trip there. Had > problems with those cameras too, so all in the all the PDML was pretty > useless and very expensive, but there were some good flame wars. > > On that second trip I went back to Lalibela where I was told that a new > restaurant had opened - a French restaurant. This of course fascinated me, > so I went one evening. It was exactly the same as every other restaurant in > Ethiopia, so I asked what was French about it. They told me it was because > the woman who owned it had once spent a week in Paris. > > The 'big share plate' is called a mesob. The 'bread' is injera. They do this > thing called gursha if they like you - they break off a bit of injera, scoop > up some of the stew and feed it to you into your mouth. It sounds strange > but it's a very nice friendly custom. > > B > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
