Rahel Ethiopian Veggie Cusisine
1047 South Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles

We visited Rahel Tuesday @ 8:30 pm
Dish we will try to cook – Yeduba Wot $10.95

Restaurant Visit
One of us really likes Ethiopian cuisine. The other has only eaten it once, and ordered the fried chicken. We’ll let you guys guess at who was happiest about eating at Rahel. But in the end, we both walked away satisfied and with full bellies. On one block of Fairfax, between Olympic Blvd. and Whitworth Blvd., lies a strip of restaurants known as Little Ethiopia. Well, that and an oddly placed amazing bakery to celebrities. You probably can’t go wrong eating at any of the restaurants, but per your votes, our destination was Rahel Ethiopian Veggie Cuisine, Los Angeles’s only vegan Ethiopian restaurant. Walking in on a Tuesday evening around 8:30pm, there were customers at only two tables. We also noticed the lack of air conditioning, in which leaving the front doors open would have helped the warm, slightly stale air. For a starter, we ordered two sambussa ($2.50 each) and ordered the yeduba wot (pumpkin stew seasoned with assorted spices) $10.95 and zucchinni wot (zucchini stew seasoned with assorted spices) $9.95, for our main course. All dishes are prepared daily using only olive oil and grape seed oil. Similar to the Moroccan restaurant we visited, a waitress brought water to the table so we could wash hands before eating. Soon, we learned why this was important.

After a short wait, the sambussa arrived but they didn’t last long. A sambussa is basically a triangle shaped pastry, filled with lentils and fried until golden brown. Yet surprisingly, they weren’t oily. The shell was crispy with a light, grape seed oil flavor. The spices were very minimal, if any. We weren’t able to place a finger on a single individual spice. Served with the sambussa are a red chili sauce and a jalapeno sauce. The waitress warned us that both were very spicy. Romeo agreed, and enjoyed both sauces.

Soon after we enjoyed the sambussa, we were brought the two wot (traditional Ethiopian stew) with accompanying injera – a form of bread, tortilla, sponge that is used to eat the stew. This is when you become thankful they had you wash your hands because what they didn’t bring was silverware. Instead, a large, round plate holds one round piece of injera. The waitress scooped a bit of the zucchini stew and some of the yeduba stew onto the injera. We were then left to dig in. To eat the stew, you tear off pieces of the injera and use it to scoop up the rather large chucks of zucchini and pumpkin and place them in your mouth. If you haven’t enjoyed injera before, you’re in for a treat. As our friend Gina describes injera, it’s kind of the texture of a wet chami used to dry a car with. Let’s just say you either love Ethiopian food, or you have a strong dislike for it. Besides the distinct texture, injera is also uniquely sour. The bitterness leaves a marked flavor in your mouth, which defines Ethiopian cuisine. We believe both stews incorporated the same red chili sauce as the base, used to simmer the different vegetables respectively. One thing we didn’t expect was the spiciness of the red sauce. If you are sensitive to hot spices, we’d recommend discussing that with the waitress before hand and seeing if any stew comes in a more mild sauce or staying away from the stews all together. Not sure why, since the flavors were very similar, but we preferred the pumpkin over the zucchini. In both, we weren’t able to discern any ingredients beyond the vegetable, chili and oil. The flavors were earthy and complex, but so well blended that you couldn’t taste any individual ingredient. Researching Ethiopian cuisine on the internet was definitely going to be needed.

By the time we left Rahel, a few more tables of patrons had been sat from a range of young to old. Since no other cuisine is around, one only travels to this block of Fairfax when craving Ethiopian food. And there isn’t a better place to satisfy this craving than Rahel. Fresh food, bold flavors and a comfortable atmosphere are guaranteed. If you prefer to sample a broad range of the cuisine, Rahel offers a lunch buffet daily from 11am-3pm.

Shopping
(prices reflect the cost of the package, not the portion we used.) The rest of the ingredients we already had in the kitchen.

Whole Foods
Red Onion $.60
Jalapeno $1.10
Kabocha Squash, 3.59lb $5.35
Garlic $1.12
Ginger $.98
Yellow Onions, 2 $2.77

Merkato Market
Teff Flour $12
Awaze $2.99

Recipe
Below is our take on the traditional Ethiopian Yeduba Wot. While we have no idea exactly how they prepare theirs, we looked around online for recipes then combined that knowledge with the flavors we tasted in the original dish and went from there.

Makes 2 servings.

Yeduba Wot

1 2lb pumpkin (or kabocha squash)
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 TBSP fresh ginger, minced
1/4 cup awaze or berbere
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 cups water
Salt and black pepper to taste

Cut pumpkin in two and remove the seeds with spoon. With vegetable peeler, remove skin from outside of each half. Slice into 1” thick slices then cut into 1” cubes. In a large heavy bottom pot, add oil, onion, garlic, ginger. Cook over medium heat until translucent and oil has incorporated the flavors into the onion, about 7 minutes. Add awaze or berbere, salt and black pepper and mix. Lower heat to medium-low and cook until oil becomes thick, about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn heat off and allow to cool slightly. Add mixture to a blender and blend into paste. Return paste to pot and reheat over medium-low heat until paste begins to bubble. Turn heat back down to medium-low and cook for an additional 10 minutes to allow paste to thicken even further. Add water, turn heat to high and bring to a boil. Add the pumpkin, bring back to boil, then turn heat down to a simmer and cook for another 10-15 minutes, or until pumpkin becomes firm yet tender. Stir occasionally to prevent from burning.

Injera

1/2 cup teff flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup water
1 TBSP vegetable oil
Salt to taste

Sift teff, all-purpose flour and salt in a mixing bowl and mix together. Add water. Use an egg beater to mix together until forming a smooth batter. Store in refrigerator for two days, allowing batter to ferment. Oil a large nonstick pan and heat over medium-high. Add a layer of batter to pan. Cook until injera looks dry and sponge-like. Remove bread and allow to cool.

Plating
Place one injera in the middle of a large, round serving platter. Scoop a small portion of wot in a few different places on the injera. You can also serve the dish with a garnish of diced tomatoes, jalopeno and red onion. Extra stew can be served on the side in a bowl, along with a basket of additional injera.

Rating- We give our dish 3 out of 5 stars.
While the wot recipe doesn’t look too complicated, it was fairly hard to figure out exactly which spices they incorporated and how much water they used to create the consistency of their stew. Rahel used pumpkin in their dish, but being out of season, we had to settle for kabocha squach. So before we even started cooking, our flavors were going to be a little off. Luckily of us, and those of you who live in the LA area, there is a wonderful Ethiopian market directly across the street from Rahel. This allowed us to find a few of the distinct ingredients needed – teff flour and awaze. It also gave us an idea of what spices are common to the cuisine. And if you really want to go the easy way, you can also buy your injera at the market.

The cooking process was pretty straightforward and simple. We judged ourselves lower for a few reasons. One: we were missing the key pumpkin ingredient. Two: our stew sauce was too thick. And three: our stew was darker in color than Rahel’s. Other than that, we felt we were fairly close to their recipe. (insert smirk)

How would you rate our recipe? We look forward to hearing feedback from you guys. Do any of you have a favorite Ethiopian restaurant in Little Ethopia? If you often cook Ethiopian food at home, what spices and ingredients do you commonly use? Feel free to email us if you have any questions on the recipe and don’t forget to vote for next week’s restaurant!