Globecooking recipe : Doro Wat (Ethiopia)

As one of the recent Kitchen Trotter boxes was Ethiopian-themed, I've been looking around online for some recipes to use up my remaining ingredients, in particular my berberé spices. I discovered a traditional Ethiopian dish called Doro Wat that sounded ideal. There are many ways of making the dish - some use pureed onions and no tomatoes, some use chunky onions and tomatoes/tomato concentrate, some use chicken on the bone while others use fillets - so I used a mixture of all of them that suited my needs.

I had a bit of a clearout and used a trio of products from past Kitchen Trotter boxes - berberé from the Ethiopian box, smen butter from the Moroccan box and crystallised ginger from the Colombian box. You could use regular butter and fresh or powdered ginger though.

 Doro Wat 

ingredients :

4 onions

50g butter

drizzle of olive oil

1 clove of garlic

1 small piece of ginger (or powdered ginger - I used 2 pieces of crystallised ginger)

2 tomatoes

2tbsp tomato concentrate

2tbsp berberé spices

4 chicken breasts

1 boiled egg per person

Start by peeling and chopping quite a few onions as this will be the base of the sauce. Put them in a large pan along with a couple of knobs of butter and a little oil. (Some recipes suggest blitzing the onions in a blender to create a smooth paste before cooking it on a low heat for 20 minutes or so.) 

Once the onions have gone soft (but not browned), add the chopped garlic and ginger. Add extra butter as needed.

If you've pureed the onions, you probably won't need to add tomatoes but if not, chop and toss in two tomatoes.

Add a squeeze of tomato concentrate and mix in the berberé spices and a pinch of salt. Add a little water to create a thick sauce.

As the Optigrill was out on the worktop, I decided to save time by grilling the chicken while I was preparing the sauce but you would usually put it in the pan raw and let it cook in the hot sauce.

Give it all a stir and leave to simmer for 15 minutes or so. During this time, boil a couple of eggs - some recipes say hard boiled, some say soft boiled so the choice is yours. The white needs to be firm but the yolk can be slightly soft. You can prick the eggs all over with a fork to help the sauce to soak into them.

Put the eggs into the dish and spoon over some sauce. Allow the flavours to mingle for at least ten minutes and serve with rice.

I was unsure about the addition of the eggs but it actually works really well (even if the white stuck to the shell when I peeled one of them !). Berberé is a flavoursome but relatively mild spice so this isn't overly hot. I'd be tempted to add cooked potatoes along with the chicken for a tasty and relatively simple one pot supper next time.

*** Don't miss my country-by-country globecooking recipe index ! ***

Fancy trying out some more Ethiopian cuisine? How about Lega Tibs, Injeras or Ye Masir Azifa?

This was a great dish for using up some of my exotic ingredients so I'm adding it to this month's #KitchenClearout linky.

Linking up with the Simply Eggcellent linky.