Tekebash and Saba: Recipes and Stories from an East African Kitchen

This book offers food from Tigray, a region in northern Ethiopia which has recently been the site of ethnically-driven civil war, and which has a long and distinctive cultural and culinary tradition.

Author Saba Alemayoh runs a restaurant in Melbourne, Australia where she serves Tigray food. Her mother, Tekebash, has been the chef there and in this book the pair of them set out to record traditional Tigray cooking which has otherwise been little documented.

People familiar with Ethiopian food will recognize a number of dishes that are common throughout the regions, such as the flatbread injera, and an abundance of stews, about which Alemayoh notes, "We use the word 'stew' very liberally to describe any cooked-down saucy concoction. Sometimes our stews are similar to dips, or even soups, but they are consumed as a stew on a bed of injera nonetheless."

That said there are other types of dishes here as well. Kulwa be merek is a beef stir-fry seasoned with chiles; ga'at is a Tigray-style gnocchi made from wheat flour and fermented butter; salata dakwan is salad of tomatoes, cucumber, shredded greens and peanut butter. 

We're delighted to see this kind of regional focus within a single African country.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.