Awrtable

Canjeero

also Lahoh

Fermented sorghum pancakes cooked on one side, eaten at breakfast with sesame oil and sugar or torn into stew. Smaller and thinner than Ethiopian injera.

Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Bariis Iskukaris

Spiced rice with goat or camel, coloured with xawaash and often served with a banana on the side, which visitors query and Somalis do not.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Sambuus

Spiced meat pastries fried and eaten to break the fast, sold from Bosaso and Garowe stalls through Ramadan and at any celebration.

Serves Makes 24 · 1 hour

Hilib Geel

Camel meat stewed or grilled, served at weddings and for guests. Camel is the wealth of the pastoral north-east and killing one marks a serious occasion.

Serves 8 · 3 hours

Malawax

Thin sweet pancakes cooked on both sides, softer than canjeero and eaten with tea, honey or stew. The everyday breakfast of Somali households.

Serves Makes 10 · 25 minutes

Shaah Cadays

Milky spiced tea boiled with cardamom, cinnamon and clove, drunk several times a day and offered to any visitor within a minute of arrival.

Serves 4 · 15 minutes

Canjeero

Thin fermented pancakes cooked on one side, eaten at breakfast with sesame oil and sugar, or torn into suqaar at any other time.

Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Bariis Iskukaris

Spiced rice with goat, coloured with xawaash and studded with raisins, served with a banana. Somalia's national plate and the centre of every gathering.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Digaag Qumbe

also Chicken in coconut, Somali coconut chicken

Chicken stewed in yoghurt and coconut with xawaash spice, a southern Somali dish that shows the coast's Indian Ocean connections in every spoonful.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Bur and Sambusa

Fried dough sticks and meat pastries sold together at tea shops and Ramadan stalls, eaten with shaah and dates.

Serves Makes 20 each · 2 hours

Hilib Ari

Goat roasted or fried in its own fat and served over rice or canjeero, the meat put out when a family celebrates. Cooked simply because good goat needs nothing else.

Serves 8 · 2 hours

Xalwo

also Halwa, Somali halwa

A dense translucent sweet of cornflour, sugar and ghee scented with cardamom and often studded with peanuts, made for every Somali wedding and Eid.

Serves 12 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Suqaar

Meat and vegetables cut into small cubes and fried fast with xawaash, eaten with canjeero or chapati. The Somali answer to a quick meal.

Serves 4 · 30 minutes

Basbaas

also Somali green chilli sauce, Basbaas cagaar

The green chilli, coriander and lime relish that arrives with every Somali meal and without which nothing is considered properly served.

Serves Makes about 300ml · 15 minutes

Shaah Adays

Spiced milk tea boiled with cardamom, cinnamon and clove, offered within minutes of any arrival. Turning down the first glass is not really available to a guest.

Serves 4 · 15 minutes

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