The Amalgam Pantry: Berbere
Berbere is as ubiquitous a spice blend in Ethiopian households as garam masala is in most kitchens these days. A recipe for mutabal accompanies my introduction to this extremely versatile blend.
February 20, 2024, edit: This edit is long overdue, and I apologize. This post has been on my to-amend list for quite some time, and it is only now that I have found some quiet time to reflect on what has been going on in my news feeds since October of last year.
When October 7 struck, what was painted as a war on Hamas by the Israeli state transformed to a global call for a permanent ceasefire in support of the native Palestinians, who have been enduring a violent 75 year old occupation by the Israeli state and the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces). The brutal dehumanization of a peoples—modern colonization at play—remained largely unknown and hidden by the global masses, until, of course, widespread social media coverage took over through the grassroots efforts of people like Motaz Azaiza, Bisan Owda, Wael Al Dahdouh, and Plestia Alaqad—and their unabashed coverage of the horrors they have witnessed in Gaza. Most of Western media—The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, to name a few—employ a specific syntactical formula when speaking about Israelites in comparison to the way they report on Palestinians, to avoid publicly holding the state of Israel—and its allies in the west—namely the USA, Canada, and England—accountable for the violent and senseless killings of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, all of them civilians, and most of whom are innocent children.
The rise of social media activism in support of Palestinians gave way to the rise of content being produced by Palestinians in the global diaspora, and many of them are showcasing their ancestral crafts and trades as a way to promote their vibrant culture. Food is one of them, and, as I have come to learn, much of their cuisine has been stolen and appropriated by the Israeli state as their own. In one of the many Reels that has been shared in my feeds, I came across the difference between mutabal and baba ganoush, hence, the need for this edit. Mutabal and baba ganoush are very similar, with one key difference: mutabal contains tahini, and baba ganoush does not. What I called baba ganoush for the majority of my life up until a few months ago is really mutabal. I wanted to revise this post on behalf of what I have learned from the global Palestinian diaspora. Food is a bridge amongst cultures, yes, but food has also always been political. Food will always be political for as long as we do not see true justice for the very people whose existence, stories, culture, and cultural legacies are being demolished and erased, right before our eyes.
I have amended the post below to say mutabal, since my dip contains tahini. Now, the inspiration for this mutabal does come from the baba ganoush my husband and I had in Philadelphia’s Suraya; their baba ganoush contains tahini.
Free Falastin.
*
As with most spice blends that have now made a permanent home in my own pantry, I discovered the wonders of berbere through my friends at Monsoon Coast, though they were certainly not my first berbere experience. I first had Ethiopian food in my early 20’s, when a friend of mine suggested we go to an Ethiopian place for lunch one day. We both attended the University of Toronto, where we happened to have some time in between classes to hang out. He grew up in Botswana and was craving something from his home country, and I was a staunch vegetarian in those days, so he thought Ethiopian would be a good compromise between the both of us. The bonus? It was inexpensive! Lunch specials started at $5—perfect for us penny-wise university students. Back in those days, you got a fair amount of food for $5 at almost any Ethiopian eatery in downtown Toronto; this price was for the vegetarian lunch platter. I was sold! He told me he used to have Ethiopian food regularly back in Botswana, and I was intrigued by his descriptions of it. When my food finally arrived, I was struck by how simply and beautifully it was presented. The mains were laid out in small, manageable portions on Ethiopian flatbreads called injera, like globs of colourful paint splayed out on an artist’s wooden palette. You scooped up the mains with torn-up pieces of injera, similar to how you would do kamayan in the Philippines, where you scoop up your mains and rice using your hands! Injera is shaped like a large pancake, and is quite spongey, with a slightly sour taste similar to that of a good-quality sourdough. This Ethiopian flatbread is made with teff flour, an ancient cereal crop from the Ethiopian highlands. Its texture reminds me a bit of buckwheat flour.
In Yohanis Gebreyesus’ Ethiopia, Yohanis describes the making of powdered berbere as a multi-day affair, not including the time it takes to harvest the chilies and dry them under the Ethiopian sun. Berbere starts with the tapping or rubbing of the dried chilies through a wool sack called a doneya. The fine powder that results from the breakdown of the chilies gets sifted out of these wool sacks, so that what is left inside the doneya then gets pounded in a mortar called a muketcha.
Once the chilies have been sufficiently processed in the muketcha, they are then combined with ginger, garlic, rue seeds, besobela seeds (Ethiopian basil seeds), and a variety of herbs to form a paste. This paste get processed in a wooden container called a gebete, but is once more returned to the muketcha for this mixture to be turned into a superfine paste. This resulting chili paste is called delez berbere.
The delez berbere gets pressed and flattened into a single layer inside the gebete and is sprinkled with a fermented Ethiopian honey wine called tej. A layer of besobela leaves (Ethiopian basil) then covers the pressed mixture before the entire lot gets covered with a lémat—a curved plate that has been woven with straw. This is left to mature and to dry out for roughly two days in a dry place, before the lémat is removed and the matured and still-drying delez berbere gets transferred onto mats and is left to dry out completely under the sun.
This delez berbere then gets combined with more aromatics. Lightly-toasted whole spices such as korerima (Ethiopian cardamom), ajwain, nigella seeds, and long pepper are ground and combined into the now-crumbly, dried-out chili paste. This is your powdered berbere!
Spice companies that sell berbere in this part of the world eschew most of the steps I have outlined here; instead, most combine ground-up dried chilies with similar aromatics that traditionally go into turning delez berbere into powdered berbere. Monsoon Coast’s version, for instance, combines chilies with ajwain, fenugreek, and ginger, among many other whole spices.
The red chilies in a variety of berbere blends give dishes like doro wat—an Ethiopian chicken stew—its signature, rusty-red colour. Berbere is also used in simple sauces like awaze (an Ethiopian chili dipping sauce) and duba wat (an Ethiopian pumpkin stew).
Personally, I use berbere anywhere I would want aromatic heat and spice. I flavour my meatloaf with it. I have made homemade ketchup and barbecue sauce with it. I have made homemade sourdough discard crackers with berbere and caraway; it was DELICIOUS. I have flavoured the filling of my cabbage rolls with it. It makes a beautiful tomato sauce. My favourite use for berbere, however, is in my recipe for mutabal.
My mutabal is heavily inspired by the baba ganoush my husband and I had in Suraya—a Philadelphia-based restaurant that specializes in Levantine cuisine. Their baba ganoush made such a huge impression on me, I kept on raving about it for days and days on end after our quickie Philly trip. I was so taken by this baba ganoush, I kept obsessing over it to our host long after we have finished our mains. The star of that night’s incredible meal, for me, was that smoky eggplant dip. Our host then told us that they leave loads of eggplants over the slow-dying charcoal embers in their ovens overnight and then peel off their skins the next day. The deep, dark, earthen smoke that permeates these eggplants is out-of-this-world. Their earthy richness is made lighter with the addition of lemon and pomegranate seeds. Their baba ganoush is then finished with a light sprinkling of urfa biber—these are chili pepper flakes made from peppers that are grown in Urfa, a town south of Turkey near the Syrian border. Urfa biber is not characterized by heat, rather, by their notes of deep red cherries, red wine tannins, and dark chocolate. These chili pepper flakes also have the sensation of smoke, though the Urfa chilies themselves are not smoked, but are simply dried.
For levity, I rely on pomegranate molasses over the use of a lemon. It does the job of both a lemon and maple syrup. Previous iterations of my mutabal certainly relied on the zest and juice of one lemon and a small drizzle of maple syrup for sweetness, but I felt compelled to eschew those in favour of the more traditional use of pomegranate molasses after reading through the entirety of my Levant cookbook collection. If you do not have pomegranate molasses kicking around in your pantry, by all means, use a lemon and some maple syrup instead.
The addition of berbere is entirely my own doing. Berbere adds yet another layer of complexity—not to mention heat!—to the deep, dark smoke that, for me, makes a mutabal my own—Amalgam-style, if you will. This is my go-to mutabal recipe; I have made this so many times now that I simply just eyeball the ratios of the other ingredients based on the size of my eggplants! This is almost a non-recipe; the ingredients I list here rely heavily on personal tastes. Do use your senses when you make this; adjust your ingredients according to your palette. This is more of a guide than it is an outright recipe.
If you scoff at the idea of using an Ethiopian spice blend in a Levantine dish, then by all means, just omit the berbere, ok? But do try to use some urfa biber in your mutabal for some serious next-level business.
I have never had the room or a yard (small space in a big-ish city-living, amirite?) for a grill, so I rely on my oven’s broiler to make my mutabal. I have also been known to char and soften my eggplants over the fires on our gas stove, but the clean up from this method is a massive nightmare, so… do with that what you will, but I do not recommend that method at all, unless you do not mind the clean-up!
Berbere Mutabal
(makes a little over 2 cups)
Special Equipment
an oven with a powerful broiler, or better yet, a charcoal grill or an electric grill
Ingredients
3 large globe eggplants
3 to 5 tbsp light olive oil or grapeseed oil
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
3 tbsp pomegranate molasses
2 to 3 heaping tbsp tahini
1 to 2 tsp berbere
1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
2 tbsp mint, finely chopped
salt to taste
Garnish
2 to 3 tbsp pomegranate seeds
1 tsp urfa biber
2 tbsp good-quality extra virgin olive oil
torn mint and parsley leaves
Method
Broiler method: line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Make small piercings all over the eggplants’ surface using a fork. Coat the entirety of the eggplant with grapeseed oil or light olive oil. Lay the eggplants in the aluminum-covered baking sheet and place under the broiler for about half an hour or until the eggplants have fully softened, turning the eggplants once mid-way through the broiling process.
Grill method: make small piercings over the entirety of the eggplants’ surface using a fork. Coat the pierced eggplants in light olive oil or grapeseed oil. Place the grill cover on and grill the eggplants over high heat, until the eggplants have softened. Check periodically to turn over the eggplants to ensure each side gets in contact with the grill fires.
Place the still-hot eggplants inside a large bowl and cover this bowl with a tight-fitting lid or some plastic wrap for at least half an hour or until the eggplants are cool enough to handle. This will aid in condensation and the ease in peeling off the eggplant skins.
Peel off their charred skins and discard. Chop off the eggplants’ stems. You will see a bit of smoky eggplant water at the bottom of the bowl. Discard all but roughly a tablespoon or two of this water. Combine this small amount of smoky eggplant water with the peeled eggplant and mash these together with a fork.
Add in the finely minced cloves of garlic and the pomegranate molasses. Mix thoroughly to combine.
Add in the tahini, the berbere, and salt to taste. Mix thoroughly. The mutabal should now resemble a roughly-textured but creamy dip.
Fold in the chopped parsley and mint. Garnish the top with a generous drizzle of good-quality extra-virgin olive oil, urfa biber, pomegranate seeds, and some more mint and parsley. Serve with toasted pita, carrot sticks, radish slices, or any sliced vegetable you like.
Until next time in my kitchen!
xo, Issha