Kitfo

Ingredients

• Beef fillet — very fresh700 g
• Butter — for the niter kibbeh200 g
• Ginger30 g
• Garlic5 clove
• Cardamom pods5
• Cinnamon stick1
• Fenugreek seeds1 tsp
• Mitmita spice2 tbsp
• Ayib or fresh curd200 g
• Stewed collard greens300 g
• Injera — to serve4
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Melt the butter over a low heat with the ginger, garlic, cardamom, cinnamon and fenugreek.

   10 min

2. 2

   Hold it twenty minutes without boiling, until the foam settles and the butter turns clear.

   22 min

3. 3

   Strain the niter kibbeh through muslin and keep it warm.

   8 min

4. 4

   Trim every membrane and sinew from the beef and chop it very fine with a knife, almost to a paste.

   25 min

5. 5

   Work the warm niter kibbeh, mitmita and salt into the meat by hand for two minutes.

   5 min

6. 6

   Warm the mixture in a pan for thirty seconds to body temperature, without letting it whiten.

   3 min

7. 7

   Serve it on injera with the ayib cheese and stewed greens alongside.

   8 min

About the dish

The beef is chopped by hand immediately before serving and served warm rather than cold. It is briefly warmed in butter to body temperature, and that is what separates kitfo from tartare.

Niter kibbeh — clarified butter infused with ginger, garlic, cardamom and cinnamon — is not a seasoning here but half the dish. Plain butter gives an entirely different taste.

Mitmita, a fierce blend on bird's eye chilli with cardamom, is hotter than berbere and belongs specifically with raw meat. Substituting berbere is not done.

Worth knowing

• — The meat has to be impeccably fresh, from a butcher you trust. Raw beef does not forgive doubts about provenance.
• — A mincer will not do. It crushes the fibres and releases juice, where knife-chopped meat stays dry and springy.
• — The leb-leb version, lightly warmed through, is ordered by those who do not eat raw. In Ethiopia that is an accepted serving rather than a compromise.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

720 kcal

Protein

46 g

Fat

54 g

Carbs

12 g

More from Ethiopia

• Doro wat — Chicken in a thick berbere sauce, built on a kilo of onion cooked dry until it disintegrates.
• Misir wat — Red lentils in a berbere sauce. A fasting dish eaten in Ethiopia on fast days all year round.
• Injera — A sour, porous flatbread of teff on a three-day ferment, serving as both bread and plate.