Ethiopia

Ethiopia's highland kitchen is built on injera, the sour fermented flatbread that is plate, bread and utensil at once. A meal is a wide round of injera laid on a mesob basket table, with small mounds of wot (stew) arranged on top — shiro, misir, gomen, doro — and extra rolls of injera on the side for scooping. Everyone eats from the same tray with the right hand; the gursha, feeding a tasty morsel to someone you love, is part of the meal, not decoration.

The sourness comes from fermentation, not from tamarind or lime. Teff batter sits for two or three days until it bubbles and smells faintly sharp, then is poured in a spiral onto a hot clay mitad and covered to steam. Niter kibbeh (spiced clarified butter) and berbere (the red chilli blend) carry most dishes; fasting days, which come round twice a week for much of the year plus the long Lenten fast, turn the same kitchen fully plant based, and fasting food is some of the best eating in the country.

Coffee was first drunk here, and the coffee ceremony still closes a meal or welcomes a guest: green beans roasted in a pan until they smoke, ground by hand, brewed three rounds (abol, tona, baraka) in a black clay jebena, served with popcorn or roasted barley. To refuse the third round is to refuse the blessing.