Afar

Injera

Fermented teff pancake, at once the plate, the utensil and the bread. Teff is native to the Ethiopian highlands and grows almost nowhere else.

Serves Makes 8 · 45 minutes, plus 3 days fermenting

Misir Wat

also Red lentil stew, Misir wot

Red lentils cooked down with onion and berbere into a deep red stew. The backbone of the Ethiopian fasting table, eaten on the roughly 180 days a year the Orthodox calendar sets aside.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Doro Wat

Chicken stewed for hours in berbere and an enormous quantity of onions cooked down without fat. Ethiopia's national dish, served at Christmas and Easter and to any guest worth the trouble.

Serves 8 · 3 hours

Tibs

also Zilzil tibs, Sautéed meat

Beef or lamb cut in strips and seared fast with onion, rosemary, chilli and spiced butter, often brought to the table still sizzling on a clay brazier.

Serves 4 · 40 minutes

Sambusa

Lentil or minced beef pastries fried crisp, sold on Addis street corners and eaten to break the fast in Ramadan and during Orthodox fasting periods in their vegan form.

Serves Makes 24 · 1 hour

Kitfo

Raw minced beef warmed in spiced butter with mitmita and served with ayib cheese and kocho. A Gurage dish that became a national delicacy, ordered leb leb or fully raw.

Serves 4 · 30 minutes

Shiro Wat

Ground chickpea flour cooked into a smooth spiced purée, the daily food of most Ethiopians and the mainstay of the 200-odd fasting days in the Orthodox year.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Gomen

also Collard greens, Ye'abesha gomen

Collard greens braised long and slow with onion, garlic and ginger until sweet and silky. The green on every Ethiopian platter and one of the fasting dishes.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Kocho

also Enset bread, False banana bread

Bread made from fermented enset — the false banana — scraped, buried in a lined pit for months and then baked flat. The staple of the Gurage, Sidama, Hadiya and Kambaata highlands, and Ethiopia's insurance against famine.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes, from prepared kocho dough

Tej

Honey wine fermented with gesho, a buckthorn twig used as a bittering agent, and drunk from a round-bottomed berele flask. Served in dedicated tej bets across the country.

Serves Makes 3 litres · 3 to 4 weeks

Tella

also Talla, Ethiopian home beer

Home-brewed beer of barley and gesho, the buckthorn leaf that stands in for hops. Cloudy, sour and low in alcohol, brewed for every wedding, funeral and saint's day.

Serves Makes about 5 litres · 1 hour active, plus 5 to 8 days fermenting

Taita

also Injera

Fermented teff flatbread, the plate and the cutlery of every Eritrean meal. Sour, spongy and torn to pick up whatever is spooned onto it.

Serves Makes 8 · 45 minutes, plus 3 days fermenting

Tsebhi Birsen

also Spiced lentils, Birsen

Brown or red lentils cooked with berbere and onion until thick, the everyday Eritrean stew and the fasting-day mainstay.

Serves 6 · 55 minutes

Zigni

Beef stewed slowly in berbere and onion until the sauce goes deep red and the meat surrenders. Served on taita with a hard-boiled egg, and Eritrea's central dish.

Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Himbasha

also Ambasha

A slightly sweet celebration bread scored into a wheel pattern before baking, studded with raisins and scented with cardamom. Broken at gatherings and with coffee.

Serves 8 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Dorho Tsebhi

Chicken in berbere sauce with whole eggs, the dish made when a guest arrives or a family celebrates. The chicken is jointed into twelve pieces by custom.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Shiro

Powdered chickpea or broad bean flour cooked into a smooth spiced purée, the fasting food of the Orthodox calendar and the everyday food of most households.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Alicha

also Mild vegetable stew, Alicha birsen

The mild counterpart to zigni: potatoes, carrots and cabbage stewed with turmeric and no chilli, for children, for fasting and for anyone who has had enough berbere.

Serves 6 · 50 minutes

Buna

The coffee ceremony: beans roasted, ground and brewed in a jebena in front of the guests, poured in three rounds over an hour or more. Refusing to stay for all three is a slight.

Serves 4, three rounds · 1 hour

Lahoh

also Canjeero

Spongy fermented pancakes cooked on one side only, pocked all over with holes. Eaten for breakfast with ghee and sugar, or under stew at any other hour.

Serves Makes 10 · 30 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Bariis iyo Muufo

also Rice with maize bread

Djiboutian spiced rice served alongside the thick maize flatbread of the Horn, the pairing that makes up most weekday lunches in the city.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Skoudehkaris

Rice cooked with lamb, tomato and a heavy hand of cardamom and cumin, Djibouti's national dish. Somali, Yemeni and Afar influences meet in one pot.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Sambusa

Triangular pastries of spiced mince or lentils, fried and eaten to break the fast and sold from every Ramadan stall in Djibouti City.

Serves Makes 24 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Fah-Fah

also Soupe djiboutienne

A fiery goat soup with chilli, coriander and lime, eaten at any hour and reputed to cure anything. Served with lahoh torn straight into the bowl.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Cambaabur

also Anbabur, Spiced festival bread

A soft turmeric-tinted pancake bread eaten at Eid with yoghurt and sugar, closely related to injera and lahoh but yellower, thicker and sweeter.

Serves Makes 8 · 40 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Poisson Yéménite

Whole fish rubbed with chilli and baked against the wall of a clay tandoor, a Yemeni method brought across the Gulf of Aden and now thoroughly Djiboutian.

Serves 4 · 45 minutes, plus 1 hour marinating

Shaah

also Somali spiced tea

Black tea boiled with cardamom, cinnamon and clove and drunk very sweet, offered constantly and refused rarely. The default hospitality of the whole Horn.

Serves 4 · 15 minutes