Editing Ethiopian feast (section)

== Making Wot (e.g., Shiro, Messer, or Gomen) ==

Wot is the national dish of Ethiopia and it is very easy to make. It's similar to a curry in basic preparation. To start, you need to make a ''wot base'' which will be used in any wot based dish. This is pretty simple:

# Dice garlic and onions. Smaller is better, if possible, but onions under 1cm squared should be fine, if not ideal.
# Pour a very liberal amount of oil into a pan and sauté the onions and garlic. These should be cooked for a long time on medium heat until they are nearly beyond recognition but not burned.  (That's a hacker exaggeration; stir and cook enough that all onions are transparent, then beyond that, without burning.  You can still recognize them.)
# Mix berberre into the oil/onion mix (add more than you think you need until is a a deep, dark red).  (Now it becomes unrecognizable.)

Now either put the wot base aside, or (if you were clever) take the other ingredients for wot you've been cooking in parallel, and mix it together with the wot base to taste. If you've done it right, you will have the right amount of spiciness in your dish. Since this rarely happens (at least at first), you'll need to put more berberre in at this point. Be careful to stir well and to sprinkle it in slowly; it can clump!

For '''messer wot''', I boil the lentils for 40 minutes or so (until soft) before adding the base.  Use maybe 2 to 3 cups of water per cup of lentils; you're not looking for lentil soup, but solid lentils in paste.

For '''gomen wot''', I add the chopped collards right into a well oiled pan and cook with the top on.

For '''shiro wot''', I boil water, add shiro power, and add wot base, oil, and salt when it becomes very viscous.  How much water, how much shiro, you ask?  The total volume when it's done is about twice the volume of the powder.  You'll want about as much boiling water as you have powder -- maybe a little more.  Our shiro powder was pre-spiced; it didn't need much wot base.

Finally, add oil and salt to taste!

All this food tastes very hot when you sample it out of the pan.  Don't worry -- that powerful spicy flavor will be moderated by the injera when it's actually served.