Vegan Beyaynetu

A longer and more detailed description

So I know this looks like a lot - and trust me, it was a crazy 45 minutes in the kitchen - but it’s fun and worth it. You’ve just got to stick with it and believe in yourself. Besides, I believe in you, so you know you believe in you.

If you are making all these bits of the dish (which you should), there’s a specific order that I found helpful. Let’s start with the two legume dishes. Bring your first pot of water to a boil and add your split peas. You can now ignore that for a good long while unless it starts bubbling over in which case don’t blame me for telling you you could ignore it it’s not my fault. While that’s merrily bubbling away, saute your onions and garlic in the other pot, add all your spices and lentils, and the water. Bring this to a boil, then happily ignore it as well.

In a third pan - oh, we’re using all the pans today - saute your onions and garlic for your kik alicha. This doesn’t technically need to be done at this point, but it’s simpler to go ahead and get all the steps for a given process out of the way. Add the turmeric, and let that sit off to the side.

Next is the gomen! Once again saute your onions and garlic. Chuck in your spinach and spices, give it a good mixy mix, and let that sit and wilt.

Finally, we can start on the most labour intensive part of the whole affair, the key sire alicha. You ready? Start by sauteeing your onions and garlic. Add your vegetables, spices, and lemon juice, and cook it until it’s soft. Hopefully at that point, everything else has come together. If not, go relax and wait for food to be done. It will get there. It just takes time. Serve it with lovely fresh injera. መልካም ምግብ!

Substitutions and Suggestions

For the mound of spices in the miser wat - All these spices are subbing in for berbere spice, which I could not find. I tried. I honestly tried. You’ll likely have a better result with actual berbere spice, but if you can’t find it, here is my homemade alternative.
For the spinach - This is supposed to be collard greens, but I, once again, live in the Netherlands, and spinach was the best I could do. You should be able to use most leafy greens, but I like spinach.
For the injera - I’m prepared for the hate I’m about to get, but if you are, like me, unable to find injera anywhere, you can substitute in a pita. It’s nowhere near as good, and I cannot understate the importance of injera and the heavy lifting it does in Ethiopian cuisine, but you can substitute it out. You just won’t really be making Ethiopian food.

What I changed to make it vegan

Many Ethiopian alichas have meat options. I just didn’t add the meat. I’m dreadfully clever.

What to listen to while you make this

I really enjoyed listening to Kutu’s album Marda. Highly recommend.

A brief context for this dish

We have, at this point in the series, gotten to know the cuisine of eighteen African nations. I am going to guess, though, that Ethiopian cuisine is the cuisine you’re most likely to have tried in the past, or at least been aware of what to expect. Of the cuisines of Africa, it’s arguably been the most successful at penetrating the Amer-European palate, with Ethiopian restaurants, while not being common, more common than any other African restaurant.

Part of this is likely due to the cuisine itself. Ethiopian cuisine is, for diners who are not used to it, an adventure. The first time my father went to an Ethiopian restaurant and his plate arrived, he sat looking at it for a long while before reaching out to a waiter and asking what to do. The concept of using the plate on which a dish is served as the utensils, and the versatility of what can actually be served on that plate is a novelty in certain parts of the world create a memorable experience for diners who aren’t used to it. That, coupled with the fact that many Ethiopian dishes are naturally vegan due to the country’s Orthodox traditions, make it a cuisine that’s fantastic for sharing with friends with a variety of palates.

Except much of that is also true of other African cuisines, not to mention world cuisines as a whole. So why is it Ethiopian restaurants that have thrived, while Congolese or Burundian restaurants are few and far between?

Answering this question requires, as usual, a way too in depth exploration of history.

Fairfax Ave in Los Angeles is known as Little Ethiopia!

There are several theories worth exploring for why Ethiopian cuisine has been so successful. The first is a geopolitical one. Ethiopia and the United States have a long relationship, with the US providing support to Ethiopian students and the Selassies’ rule throughout the 20th century. Ethiopians were specifically included in numerous pieces of American legislation, fuelling a growing Ethiopian diaspora in the US. This diaspora became even larger as more Ethiopians fled to the United States during the Ethiopian Civil War and Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars. While the majority of these immigrants settled in Washington DC, Ethiopian enclaves sprang up throughout major American cities, and with them, pieces of the country these immigrants had left behind.

As with most refugee groups, work options for these new arrivals were limited. This idea of opening restaurants as a way to maintain a connection to one’s homeland while also earning money isn’t new - Vietnamese immigrants did something similar when they arrived in the US following the Vietnam War. For Ethiopians building a new life in the US, opening a restaurant provided an opportunity to earn money while also remembering their homelands. Indeed, so many of these restaurants were opened in Washington DC that they’ve become an institution, with the Ethiopian diaspora having a not insignificant influence on US policy towards Ethiopia. Food is a diplomatic tool in and of itself, and the ubiquity of Ethiopian restaurants is a perfect case study.

Little Ethiopia in Washington DC

Examining the geopolitics of the Ethiopian diaspora, though, provides only part of the picture for why Ethiopian restaurants are the most common African restaurants. What we now conceive of as a restaurant is a fairly modern invention, with the modern restaurant coming into being as a consequence of the French Revolution and spreading throughout Europe with the ideas of the revolution. While roadside inns and street vendors were absolutely present throughout the world prior to the invention of the restaurant, the idea of sitting down to a culinary experience is a modern invention.

This is especially the case in sub-Saharan Africa. Meal culture in sub-Saharan Africa is a communal one, with families and groups sharing a meal with one another in their homes. While meals can be eaten outside the home, this hasn’t historically been the norm, with meals instead being shared with family. For those who do eat a meal outside the home, it’s largely lunch bought from a street vendor, rather than a sit-down affair. While this is rapidly changing, much of the drive fuelling the change in dining culture is not a desire for native cuisines, but the increasing presence of fast food and its status as a symbol of prosperity. While there absolutely are restaurants within sub-Saharan Africa serving indigenous food, these are a largely new phenomenon, with the overall culture supporting meals at home.

When there’s a general lack of restaurant culture, it stands to reason that there would be a lack of incentive to open restaurants for non-existent patrons. The necessity of Ethiopian immigrants fuelled restaurants, rather than a specific desire to have an Ethiopian restaurant.

An Ethiopian Orthodox church in Minneapolis

Another piece of this puzzle is the nature of immigration and who is actually emigrating to the US. While African immigration has never been the highest source of immigration to the US (outside the very glaring and obvious example of the mass displacement of enslaved Africans during the first centuries of European colonisation), those Africans that do emigrate to the US are, by and large, highly educated professionals. 31% of African immigrants hold at least a bachelor’s degree, and have a higher overall household income than Black Americans. African immigration to the US is also a fairly recent phenomenon, with over half of African immigrants arriving after 2000.

While restaurants can be opened by anyone, highly educated professionals are more likely to end up in white collar professional settings, rather than opening a restaurant. This is especially true in cases where an ethnic enclave may not be large enough to support a restaurant, as may be the case with the African diaspora. It’s not that the food isn’t delicious. Rather, the economics don’t support opening a restaurant when one could work at the business factory instead.

There is, however, one more factor to consider. For that, I’d like to introduce you to Prester John.

Prester John depicted as the "Emperor of the Indies" on a 16th century Spanish Portolan chart

In the 12th century CE, as Europeans became embroiled in the Crusades, the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos began to receive letters from someone styling themselves as “John, Christian Sovereign and Lord of Lords.” John’s letters described a vast and powerful kingdom, filled with palaces and wealth, but importantly, ruled by a Christian king. For Christians facing Islamic armies, the idea of a powerful Christian king who might help them succeed in their holy quest was intoxicating. They sought to make contact with this king - now known as Prester John - sending emissaries out across Asia, searching for this long-lost ally.

The original letters were not written by a king. Based on their descriptions of the kingdom, they were most likely written by someone who had travelled on a merchant caravan, or traded within Central Asia. However, this reality did not stop the myth of Prester John from becoming a beacon of hope every time European Christians faced a crisis. Every potential nemesis of the Islamic armies became labelled as Prester John, including, at one point, Genghis Khan. However, with Marco Polo’s reports of the wealth of Ethiopia and increased contact with Ethiopian pilgrims in Jerusalem, European perceptions of Prester John and where his kingdom was located shifted. Rather than being in Asia, the myth of Prester John shifted, with the kingdom instead being in Ethiopia. By 1400, European monarchs such as Henry IV wrote letters to the Ethiopian monarchs, addressing them as “Prester John.” When Ethiopians established diplomatic contact with various European kingdoms, they were consistently seen as coming from the land of Prester John, with all the respect that entailed. That they were Christians from the wealthy and powerful Christian kingdom meant these Ethiopian delegates were treated as equals, worthy of every respect. The Ethiopians, for their part, found the labels funny, with Emperor Iyasu II commenting in 1751 that the emperors of Ethiopia had never used this title, but were familiar with it.

In addition to informing medieval and renaissance diplomacy, the myth of Prester John had a powerful influence on the perception of Ethiopia more generally. It continued to be used to describe Ethiopia well into the 20th century, and became part of a canon of Christian mythos applied - accurately or not - to Ethiopia and its history. Unlike the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia was not perceived as a place that needed to be incorporated into Christendom. It was Christendom, and had been from the very beginning of the faith. This, paired with Ethiopia’s resistance to Italian invasion, created a perception of Ethiopians as a modern, “civilised” state. When Haile Selassie became emperor in 1930, he made a conscious effort to present Ethiopia as a modern, developed nation, and to incorporate it into the League of Nations. Selassie continued to advocate for Ethiopia throughout its occupation by Italy, building alliances, and inculcating Ethiopia into the global consciousness as a modern, developed state. While the actual myth of Prester John had long since died, the legacy of that myth had not. Ethiopia was not seen as an African state. Ethiopia was Ethiopia, its own unique entity that happened to be in Africa.

One exception, however, is the perception of Ethiopia by Black Americans, though here, too, there is still an analogy to be made to the myth of Prester John. Writing in 1935 about the Italian war to subjugate Ethiopia, W.E.B. DuBois wrote:

The black world knows this is the last great effort of white Europe to secure the subjection of black men. In the long run the effort is vain and black men know it.

…suppose we contemplate the possibility that Ethiopia succeeds in repulsing Italy or even in holding her for months in check. This does not now seem probable, but it is possible. What would be the result? A grim chorus from the dark worlds: “The spell of Europe is broken. It is the beginning of the end. White can no longer depend on brute force to make serfs of yellow, black and brown.” Such reasoning may be fallacious and fail to accord Europe and the white race due credit for bringing the mass of men into the circle of human culture. But it is inevitable.

Black men and brown men have indeed been aroused as seldom before. Mass meetings and attempts to recruit volunteers have taken place in Harlem. In the West Indies and West Africa, despite the efforts of both France and England, there is widespread and increasing interest. If there were any chance effectively to recruit men, money and machines of war among the one hundred millions of Africans outside of Ethiopia, the result would be enormous…Should the conflict be prolonged, the natives of Kenya, Uganda and the Sudan, standing next to the theater of war, will have to be kept by force from joining in. The black world knows this is the last great effort of white Europe to secure the subjection of black men. In the long run the effort is vain and black men know it.

For DuBois and other Black activists at the time, Ethiopia was a symbol of resistance against European oppression. It was the great kingdom, the distant ally, that would help liberate oppressed peoples from white colonialism. The kingdom of Prester John evolved as it always had, shifting from a powerful kingdom somewhere in Asia that could be an ally against Islam, to instead becoming a powerful kingdom in Africa that could be an ally against imperialism and degradation. It remained unique.

Emperor Haile Selassie in Dessie, Ethiopia, 1936

This idea of the uniqueness of Ethiopia and Ethiopian identity is not solely something imposed upon Ethiopians by outside observers. Ethiopians themselves have played a crucial role in shaping their own identities and their own perceptions of their place within American racial categorisations.

Much like we discussed with Dominican identity, the complexities of ethnic and racial identity are rarely straightforward. While Haile Selassie’s depiction of Ethiopia highlighted its status as a developed and modern nation, equivalent in every way to European states, this idea had a basic underlying belief. For these to be true things of Ethiopia during a time of European white supremacy, Ethiopia had to be granted a status of at least honorary “whiteness.” Ethiopia defeating Italian forces, or being part of the Christian mythos, or being a developed nation could not be true simultaneously with the white supremacist narrative. Instead, Ethiopians became something other than black. It’s because of this honorary status that the United States developed such close ties with Ethiopia, and why Ethiopians were welcomed while other Africans were not. Ethiopians, by virtue of Selassie’s diplomacy and the legacy of the myth of Prester John were not considered Black, but instead, Ethiopian.

This idea of existing outside American categories is also highly prevalent within the Ethiopian diaspora, with Ethiopians considering themselves not Black, but Ethiopian. While there is significantly more nuance within that identity of “Ethiopian” than will be explored here, the reality is that, within the United States, Ethiopians are more generally assimilated with white Americans than Black Americans. Ethiopian communities experience less racial prejudice and have greater socio-economic success than their Black counterparts. Racial categories are fluid, and Ethiopian immigrants to the United States are a prime example of how those variations can manifest.

Why, then, this tangent about Prester John and Ethiopian racial identity, when this post is ostensibly about Ethiopian restaurants? The answer is, of course, the same answer it always is. One of the factors in why Ethiopian restaurants are prevalent when other restaurants are not is the white supremacy that has historically undergirded American culture. Ethiopian cuisine isn’t seen as African cuisine. It’s Ethiopian cuisine, making it more accessible and acceptable to middle class, restaurant-going white Americans.

Image of a correctly cooked beyaynetu from a restaurant in Chicago (Source: Urbanmatter.com)

There are, of course, many reasons why Ethiopian food is likely the African food you’d tried before starting in on this series with me. Why cuisines and dishes become popular is deeply complex, and as much a product of circumstance as the dish itself. However, the final factor that is always worth bearing in mind is that Ethiopian food is just tasty. It’s good, varied, and delicious, and ultimately, that matters too.