Ethiopian

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Kitfo (Raw Minced Beef in Warm Spiced Butter)

Ethiopian raw beef, chopped fine and turned through warm spiced clarified butter (niter kibbeh) with mitmita. Yukhoe and steak tartare pick a lean cut and serve it cold, because cold fat reads as wax. Kitfo picks the same lean cut and then puts the fat back as butter, which sets on a cold plate — so this raw beef is served warm, mixed in a pan off the heat and eaten at once.

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Doro Wat (Chicken Stew with Berbere and Whole Eggs)

One of Ethiopia's national dishes: chicken and whole eggs stewed with berbere and eaten with injera. Stews usually start by heating fat; doro wat skips it. A kilo of finely chopped red onion cooks in a dry pot for close to an hour until it collapses, and only then do butter and berbere go in.

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Injera (Fermented Teff Flatbread with Open Eyes)

An Ethiopian flatbread: teff flour and water left to ferment on its own for three or four days, poured onto a hot plate in a spiral, covered, and cooked on one side only. Not turning it is the whole bread. The top never touches the plate, so the bubbles rising through the batter break at the surface and set open, leaving the honeycomb of holes called the eyes. Injera is also the plate and the spoon at an Ethiopian table, and those holes are where the stew goes.

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Siga Tibs (Sautéed Beef)

Ethiopia's go-to restaurant order: beef seared hard in spiced clarified butter, then tossed with berbere and fresh rosemary. It arrives in a clay pot over live coals with injera to scoop it up. One pan, 20 minutes — get the spices right and it tastes like the real thing.