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By Laura Drinan
Hometown Weekly Reporter
While there is much to do at Powisset Farm, visitors from all over Massachusetts head to the farm to participate in “Powisset Cooks!” – one of the farm’s many cooking programs. On April 28, a group of home cooks joined Meqdes Mesfin in the Powisset test kitchen, ready to learn about Ethiopian cuisine.
A native of Ethiopia, Meqdes spent several years in the healthcare industry before turning her attention to cooking and specializing in Ethiopian food, which she packages into ready-to-go meals.
For the special cooking class and communal meal at Powisset Farm, though, she led the home cooks in preparing a fresh plate of siga wot, a spicy beef stew; kik alicha, a split pea stew; timatim, a fresh tomato, onion, and jalapeño salad; and tikil gomen, sautéed cabbage with carrots, onion, and potato.
An Ethiopian dish, of course, must include injera, too. The participants spread the spongy sourdough flatbread, made from teff, flour, wheat, and barley, on their plates and scooped the foods onto the injera.
As they cooked and while they ate, the participants also enjoyed a hot spice tea, made with a blend of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and cardamom.
While the cooks enjoyed learning about popular ingredients in Ethiopian dishes, they were particularly eager to discover how Meqdes used the wide variety of spices she brought with her. The bright yellow and orange colors of turmeric and berbere, an Ethiopian spice blend, gave the dishes amazing color. Combined with Meqdes’s use of garlic, ginger, cardamom, and coriander, the stews and stir-fry had amazing flavors, too.
Many of the participants travelled from Boston for the class, eager to expand their knowledge of food and cooking. One cook, who incorporates many of the spices into her own dishes, decided to join the class because she admires Ethiopian food, but never attempted to cook it herself.
As the participants chopped up various ingredients, Meqdes gave the cooks step-by-step instructions on how to create the dishes. As they finished cutting up the produce, some joined Meqdes at the stove to get a closer look and help add and stir the ingredients.
After each pot and pan on the stove passed the participants’ (and Meqdes’) taste test, they passed around a stack of plates and served themselves, enjoying the communal meal outside in the beautiful weather.
For many of the participants, it was their first time experiencing Ethiopian cuisine, but it would certainly not be their last.
