About us Valeriana’s recipe kitchen: culinary excursions!

The way to a person’s heart is through his or her stomach. And just like with love, there’s also a lot we can learn about each other in the kitchen. That’s why today we’re taking you on a culinary journey to Ethiopia, where two of our employees’ favourite dishes come from.
 
The first recipe comes from our employees Selemawit and Nardos. The dish is called Tibs: a meat dish that is usually eaten with Injera, a soft, leavened flatbread made from Teff flour, which often replaces cutlery.
 
These days, we’re already constantly washing our hands anyway — so why not use them for eating as well and have an authentic Ethiopian culinary experience?
 
Tibs ingredients:
640 grams of meat (e.g., mutton or beef)
4 cloves of garlic
2 onions
2 tomatoes
Tesmi (Ethiopian seasoned clarified butter)
Fresh rosemary
Neutral tasting oil
Salt, pepper, ginger and optionally some chili to taste 
 
Preparation:
Heat frying pan with oil, cut meat into cubes and fry in oil until hot.
Add finely chopped garlic.
Cut onions and tomatoes into cubes and season with rosemary, salt, pepper, ginger and optionally some chili.
Reduce heat of frying pan, add seasoned onions and tomatoes to meat and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring regularly.
Done!
 
For a vegetarian/vegan taste explosion, our employees Haimanot, Almaz and Fikadu recommend their favourite dish Shiro Wot: This is THE Ethiopian national dish and uses Shiro flour as a base, which we had previously never heard of! Shiro flour is made primarily from chickpeas and is then refined with a colourful blend of onions, garlic, black and white cumin, basil, cardamon, ginger, rosemary, salt, cinnamon and cloves.
 
Shiro Wot ingredients:
3 onions
5 garlic gloves
2 chopped tomatoes
3 glasses of water
5 tablespoons of Shiro powder (available on Amazon for example) 
Neutral tasting oil
 
Preparation:
Chop onions into small pieces and fry in heated oil.
Chop garlic into small pieces and add to frying pan.
Do same with chopped tomatoes.
Then add 3 glasses of water.
Once water starts to boil, add Shiro powder, pinch of salt and black pepper.
Simmer for another 30 minutes. 
Done!
 
In Switzerland, you can buy all the listed ingredients at the Osina Afro Market online shop. With this in mind, we wish you a delicious weekend! And if you happen to take pictures of your attempts at Ethiopian cuisine, then we would love it if you shared them with us via hallo@valeriana.ch

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