Berbere/በርበሬ/በርበረ/ברבריי

Now that we’ve gotten kibbeh, kubbeh, and kasha out of the way, it’s time to visit a little-known corner of the Jewish culinary world: Ethiopia. For all intents and purposes, Ethiopian Jewish cooking is indistinguishable from Ethiopian Christian or Muslim cooking – none of the staple grains, plants or meats of Ethiopia are unkosher by nature, so Ethiopian cuisine never had to be ramrodded through the strictures of Jewish dietary laws like the cuisines of other regions in which Jews found themselves. In fact, the Ethiopian Jewish community, which was largely unaware of the developments of Rabbinic Judaism, continues to this day to allow the eating of chicken with dairy, prohibited for the rest of world Jewry long ago as one of Judaism’s charming moats around the wall around the fence around the Torah. But that’s neither here nor there. I learned to love Ethiopian food while living in Israel, so I’m calling it Jewish food.

I’m starting this series within a series with a primer on the basic building blocks of many (if not most) Ethiopian dishes – all of which you’ll need before you can think about making a full Ethiopian meal. First off is berbere, the piquant orange blend of chili peppers and fragrant spices used by the fistful in all those atomic bowls of wat. There is nothing subtle about berbere. It is a sucker punch straight to the sinuses. Naturally, you can’t do without it.

A note of warning before we begin: African birdseye peppers are hot. I don’t mean hot like your homemade pico de gallo when you’re feeling frisky and chop up a third jalapeño. I mean that the process of pulverizing dozens of them will produce invisible yet highly potent clouds of fine pepper particles which will spread quickly and thoroughly throughout the house, and you will essentially be mainlining 170,000 Scoville units with every breath you take. I have a high spice tolerance, so an afternoon of standing in the eye of a capsaicin hurricane only caused my eyes to water and nose to run, and also gave me a weird adrenaline rush, but when one of my roommates and her friends came in – up a flight of stairs from the kitchen – they immediately began gasping and coughing. I am not bragging; I am cautioning. If you can’t handle spice – and I mean spice, not Tabasco – don’t make berbere. You won’t survive the grinding, much less the eating.

On we go:
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