adding insult to injera...and my lame attempt of becoming a bread baking buddy

as i am blogging on through life, i have encountered many different groups that cook/bake and blog about a specific recipe or theme.  as a graduate of the culinary institute of america and a professional pastry chef, i want to join them all!  i am enjoying the challenges because quite often they are not something that i would normally do at home.  but just because i went to cooking school, and a good one at that, don't think i can't screw up a recipe, repeatedly!  this weekend i went above and beyond the call of duty-as far as screwing up a recipe is concerned.  honestly, i have been a little stressed-it is so busy at the cafe right now between sheer volume and catering that i have not been excited about making anything at home.  then there is the rain, it just seems to be stalled here with no end in sight.  and lastly, what working soccermom do you know has nothing but time on her hands?  not this one.  so here goes my sad tale of injera...

first of all, my thanks to breadchick mary of the sour dough for choosing the bread baking babe's theme of injera this month and to sara of i like to cook for inviting me to join in on the fun as a bread baking buddy when i enquired about participating.

last week for derby day, the husband and i decided we would do the ethiopian theme and maybe invite a few friends over.  well, we didn't have the time to plan for friends and decided to do it just for the two of us after we watched the race.  we went out and picked up the necessary spices and ingredients.  did you know that not all african grocery stores are equal?  i didn't, and the first shop we went to only specialized in products and foods mainly from ghana with a bunch of mexican stuff for good measure-the store is located in an area that has many latino residents and businesses.  so off to the indian marked we went and we found every spice we needed and did not already have including the fenugreek.  we chose to make the wot with chicken and the lentils with sweet potato.  the injera was living on the counter for a few days and it was ready to go, or so i thought.  you see, i didn't start it soon enough and decided to use a different recipe from a book called flatbreads and flavors, a bakers atlas because it seemed so much simpler and quicker.  what a disaster, sometimes recipes work and sometimes they don't and you can generally tell if it was because you made a mistake or the author made a mistake.  i am going to claim the latter and never use that method again.  the husband whipped up a quick batch of basmati rice and we ate the wot over rice-and we enjoyed it!

onto the next attempt.  i got the recipe on breadchick mary's blog and started the injera again.  it seemed to be going well, imagine the scary music here, until we were ready to serve the meal again.  i didn't read the recipe and i mean really read the recipe and i did not realize that you have to make the batter 4-6 hours before you will cook the bread-dinner was in an hour!!!  so there i was, hurrying to get it together so i could salvage my mother's day meal since my husband had already made the wot and the lentils again.  in my haste, i misread the recipe and added too much flour to the starter and then had to add a lot of water to thin it out.  then i had issues with the pan and the first two rounds did not work out well.  but between my husband-another cia grad and a chef and myself, we were able to get some decent rounds of injera to serve with the wot.  despite the snafu, we enjoyed the meal and will probably do it again sometime or we may even venture into one of several ethiopian restaurants in nashville.  yes we actually have a couple here as hard as it is to believe.

alix was skeptical but she was brave enough to try it out.  eating with her hands was not something she enjoyed and she had her wot with rice instead.

the chicken wot on the injera, my husband and i actually cleaned this plate and we made a second because it was pretty tasty even if i screwed up the batter.

devon enjoying a pizza, she was not willing to try it out but she did have fun watching us and laughing at us as we ate it with our hands.

thanks again and see you next month where i promise i will follow the recipe right down to the last dot of an i and cross of the t...