Teff Love: Adventures in Vegan Ethiopian Cooking

This is an early review--early because I've just received the book and want to provide my first impressions, though I haven't tried most of the recipes yet. I will update the review after cooking! (EDITED TO ADD: Now I have. See below.) Kittee Berns has written an exhaustive and updated book about Ethiopian vegan cuisine, the "fasting food" that has long been a part of Ethiopian culture. This is a gorgeous book that is well-laid-out and exudes the author's signature sense of homey style. It has tons of information without being fluffy or overwritten, features colorful and inviting pictures, and has common-sense explanations of how to execute traditionally-tricky recipes like injera--the teff-based Ethiopian sourdough that is the basis for the title of this tome. Ms. Berns has organized the book well and has tagged the recipes according to her categorization system; the reader/cook can choose from traditional Ethiopian recipes that form the basis of popular combination plates, quick-fix versions of traditional recipes, and "fusion" recipes with a twist of Ethiopian flavors, among other treats. She provides helpful information, such as how to store ingredients and finished recipes, and how long they will last in the fridge or freezer. Nutritional information is additionally provided, and the book is friendly to those with celiac or otherwise following a gluten-free diet. Every time I was about to ask a question about a recipe, I found the information I wanted in the instructions or footnotes. She demonstrates respect for Ethiopian culture and tradition while bringing her own flair to this style of cooking. "Teff Love" is clearly a labor of love, and--oh, please forgive me--Ajwain to say that I'm berbere glad shirote it. Edits and Updates (for anyone still reading after the bad puns): I don't think I ever previously cooked 6 recipes from a single cookbook in one 24-hour period, but I did so with Teff Love. I think Ethiopian cooking lends itself to a slow prep process: The first week you make your injera starter and make some of the seasoned oil and spice blends, then you start your injera, then you have on hand what you need to whip up most recipes in a snap. (Except the injera. I recommend finding it locally if you can, already made, due to the amount of time required to make the real thing.) I was worried about the spiced oil/butter recipe because it had lots of cinnamon and cloves and I don't like sweet mixed in with my savory, but the flavor of the oil is AMAZING. (I used a container of Earth Balance as the base.) I made a shiro recipe, mild lentils, mild collard greens, toasted injera, and the black-pepper blend. Everything was a winner, with complex and nuanced flavors. I did bother to seek out the specialty ingredients and it made a big difference in the authenticity of the flavors; the author helpfully provides ingredient names in Amharic and Hindi where necessary to help you locate the correct item in a specialty market. This book is a triumphant marriage of clear explanations and explosive flavor combinations. I can't wait to try more dishes!

First of all, I have never written an Amazon review before but felt compelled to share how excellent Teff Love is. This cookbook is visually very pleasing with multiple photo inserts of many of the dishes. The set up is functional with foundation recipes at the beginning. The chapters are then divided into different types of Ethiopian cuisine (Kay Wot, Alicha Wot, Shiro, Dumplings, etc) which makes it easy to plan a menu. Kittee has also included sample menus and advice / tips for parties and gatherings. I have absolutely loved everything that I have made so far. I debated about whether it would be worth it to make the foundation recipe ye'qimem zeyet (seasoned oil), but it adds amazing flavor to the dishes. The other recipes I've tried include: Dat'a (spicy green-pepper relish): Delicious. I'm going to make this all the time. I imagine it will be amazing on all sorts of grains and veggies or even as a dip. Ye'misser wot be 'timatim (red lentils in a spicy tomato sauce): Another great dish. It was spicy, savory and had a very authentic flavor. Ye'nech bakela alicha (creamy, garlicky white beans in an onion-tumeric sauce): This recipe was easy to throw together but tasted wonderful. I loved the rich garlic flavor combined with the seasoned oil. Tempeh salad: I know I will make this at least once a week. It reminds me of a combination of a savory waldorf salad and chicken salad. The apples, celery, and tempeh with a spicy sauce are genius. This is going to be a sack lunch staple for me. There are dozens more recipes that I cannot wait to try. You can tell that the author is very passionate and spent a great deal of time to make this cookbook perfect. I really appreciated her writing in depth about the different spices and which ones are optional versus essential for the flavor profile of the dish. I made one trip to a local Ethiopian market and now have all the basics to cook my way through this book. One final note - I have never met or had contact with this author prior to the cookbook release. I emailed her when I received my copy and asked her about the best place to find the specialized ingredients (we both live in Portland). She immediately contacted me with very thoughtful recommendations and even offered to meet me at the market to show me around. How awesome is Kittee?! I have several hundred vegan and non-vegan cookbooks, and Teff Love is in my top few. Highly recommended.

I have cooked many recipes from this book and loved how each is easy, straightforward, and tasty/spicy. The two basic spice blends take time and a lot of ingredients to make, but in the end, they keep for much longer than the book states. I've had mine over a year and just used it yesterday to great results. Once you have your stash made, the recipes themselves are all quick and easy to make. I find her vegan entrees are less fussy than most vegan cookbooks. Very few involve nut substitutes or textured vegetable protein, for example. My only wish- is that the flavor/spice combinations were more varied. I feel like the two main spice blends, while complex in flavor and very tasty, are the only options used for the majority of recipes. I like how her vegetable, legume and vegan protein options have a wide selection to choose from. I have so many of these already on hand, so it makes her recipes very budget friendly: lentils, grits, chickpea flour, chick peas, a majority of the flours. I had to buy/search a bit for 5 new ingredients: two core Ethiopian spices of Koseret (lemon bush) and Miten Shiro and which I ordered online, and then Berbere, nigella and teff flour which I found at my local grocery store. She has some interesting non-Ethiopian recipes to use up leftover Ethiopian ingredients. For example, Mocha Teff brownies using teff flour and coffee.

This book is amazing!! Great photography of Ethiopian feasts you want to make at home. Simple and clear directions, this is becoming my most used cookbook hands down! The reason why is, I can make inexpensive, healthy and delicious meals. If you like lentil inspired dishes and a lot of new ways to make veggies stand out this is for you. My favorite chapter is on alicha wots, mild golden sauces and stews!!!! So far I've made: Ye' qimen zeyet (seasoned oil) adds amazing flavors when used to cook veggies and lentils!! Ye'difin misser sambusas with lentil sambusa filling - little chickpea pastry pockets! Out of this world reheated the next day with spicy salsa and simply coleslaw. Ye'dubba wot (spicy roasted butternut squash in sauce) - very good but I made it way to hot! I made the mistake of using a commercial berbere blend that only uses cayenne chiles! Ye'difin misser alicha (hearty lentils in a basil, garlic, ginger sauce) - I could eat this almost every night of the week! Ye'atakilt alicha (stewed cabbage, potatoes, carrots in a mild sauce) great weeknight meal, comfort food I've made it twice! Ye'tikil gomen selata (simple cabbage salad with tomato and jalapeño) Italian style vinegtette to top my cabbage and lettuce based salads Azifa - tangy lentil salad bright and zingy There is so much more I want to make including chickpea tofu and homemade injera! The breakfast section also, looks killer. This is a great cookbook for anyone gluten free, plant based, looking to amp up their intake of veggies, Ethiopian food lovers, or for those wanting to brighten up their kitchen with fresh and spicy recipes!

Really good instructions and practical tips in this cookbook, especially for making injera. It takes a solid week from start to finish to make the injera, but it came out great. Not exactly like you would find in a restaurant, but like Kittee (the author) explains, restaurants usually use a combination of wheat and teff flours so if you only use teff, it's going to be a little different. Mine was thicker than restaurant injera, but it tasted perfect, and had a nice soft spongy texture. And since we are gluten free in this household, I wanted to learn how to make 100% teff injera. Lots of great suggestions on how to source ingredients and what to look for. I had to order a few things from Amazon. Don't expect to be able to get the book and make Ethiopian food that very day. I mean, sure, you can, but you might not have all the herbs and stuff you need to make it really authentic tasting. So plan on giving yourself a week to get everything together, make the spiced cooking oil, ferment the teff, etc. Cooking the actual dishes is quite simple, and the vast majority of the ingredients are easy to find at any grocery store (potatoes, lentils, carrots, cabbage, onions, etc.). We do a lot of Indian cooking as well so we already had most of the spices for the dishes. As a matter of personal taste, I didn't love the collard greens recipe. I made it as instructed, and it was quite bitter. I have a lot of experience cooking collards so next time I will probably alter that recipe a bit to my own personal taste - perhaps boil the greens first to wash out some of the bitter flavor, add some agave and lemon juice maybe; I'm not sure exactly. But the other dishes I made were excellent. All in all I'm very, very happy with this book. And I'm grateful to Kittee for putting it all together in one big VEGAN reference (all the vegans out there know what I'm talking about ... sure, we can adapt any recipe and make it vegan but it's so nice when we don't have to!). I told our next door neighbors I was going to invite them over for an Ethiopian feast once I have a couple of attempts under my belt, and they are really looking forward to it!

Kittee, thank you so much for sharing your amazing recipes. I received this cookbook last week and so far have made four recipes out of it....all have been terrific. I don't think I've ever written a product review on Amazon before (and very rarely anywhere) so for me to go to the trouble means I think it's exceptional. I live in an area of the country where Ethiopian restaurants are plentiful so, until now, I never went to the trouble of trying to cook Ethiopian cuisine at home. That certainly has changed now with your book! Kittee's recipes are easy to follow and the results taste amazing. I really like that when she provides measurements for ingredients she tends to provide them both in terms of quantity (e.g., 4 cloves of garlic) as well as in measured amounts (e.g., 2 teaspoons), which really helps when confronted with ingredients that can vary greatly in size such as tomatoes, onions, and cabbage. She also provides cooking times both in terms of the texture of the item being cooked but also time (e.g, "until the onion has softened, about 5 minutes"). By providing the additional detail on measurements and cooking times, I feel it has really improved my understanding of the art of cooking as opposed to simply blindly following a recipe word-for-word. I haven't tackled the injera yet, so I've been pairing the dishes with store-bought naan, which has been good enough for my purposes so far, but I'm looking forward to tackling making the injera as well. Overall a terrific cookbook for the reasons I've stated as well as others.

With a name like Teff Love I thought there would be a few recipes using teff. There are 6. Not really a lot in a book 180+ pages. The recipes sound good and I like any African food I’ve tried, not specifically Ethiopian. But, I bought it wanting more ideas to use teff and it doesn’t have much of that. Also, the spices are hard to find So recreating these recipes could be expensive and time consuming just to get the ingredients. I love the idea and I’m not sorry I bought the book, it’s just going to take me some time before I try anything.

For health reasons, I have had to adopt a vegan, gluten-free diet. It's a big lifestyle change to make. If I could eat Ethiopian food all the time, though, not a problem! Nearest restaurant: 250 miles. I waited for Teff Love to come out and then invested in some supplies and spent some time reading and then gave it a whirl. I am 8 recipes in and am making my first ersho...and for dinner, on this busy no-time annoying day, I decided to have actual cooked food. Sorghum porridge. Does this sound like something you will need to have at least three times a week? It is better than the best mashed potatoes ever. I have stewed vegetable leftovers in the fridge for tomorrow, too. Maybe with some porridge... Teff Love is a pretty and well-organized book, and it's uncrowded. Recipes are easy to follow both in how they are written and visually presented. Most recipes have at least one variation appended. I have had insane success with everything this far. This is not usual. I have also tested a number of wots and cooked vegetables on my fiancée, who said, "I would eat that!" This also is not usual. My copy of Teff Love already looks well-loved, and I have carried it around with me for a day or two somewhat talismanically. Do be aware: you will require a bunch of specialized ingredients. If you are health-stuck and/or determined, as I am, this is not insurmountable, and Berns includes a list of suppliers. If you have any interest whatsoever in cooking Ethiopian food at home, this is the book for you. There is really nothing in here I don't want to try. I have never had this reaction to a cookbook before. Given that the recipes make lots of food, if some time can be invested on the weekend, you can have lunch feasts all week. I (cheated and used rice as a base but) had portions of five different dishes every day last week. It felt decadent. I can see where this book is going to be a major life strategy in the Great Migraine Battle. Amen.