Ethiopian feast

When I cook Ethiopian, I ussualy cook several dishes that include:

• Messer wot (M): A very traditional spiced lentil stew traditionally served only slightly hot. Since I don't usually make shiro wot (usually spicier vegetarian dish), I often cook messer wot so that it is very spicy.
• Potato, cabbage, tomato alicha (A): a non-spicy dish flavored primary with tumeric.
• Gomen wot (G): collard greens sauteed in a spicy sauce.
• Mushroom "tibs" (T): A vegetarian take on a sauteed meat dish.

Ingredients

• Garlic (lots!) (MG)
• Onions (quite a few!) (MG)
• Red and green lentils (I use roughly a 1/3 ratio) (M)
• Potatoes (A)
• Cabbage (A)
• Tomato (A)
• Collard greens (G)
• Green chili peppers (T)
• Mushrooms (e.g., portabella) (T)
• White wine sauce (T)

Making Wot

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

1. Dice garlic and onions. Smaller is better, if possible, but onions under 1cm squared should be fine, if not ideal.
2. Pour a very liberal amount of oil into a pan and sautee the onions and garlic. These should be cooked for a long time on medium heat until they are nearly beyond recognition but not burned.
3. Mix berberre into the oil/onion mix.

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 put sprinkle it in; it can clump!