The Horn · Volume 10, The Highland Ferment · Cooked by cue
Albabochat
Geta and East Gurage
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 191 sources in the brief
Albabochat is the kocho bread for feast days, and the one kitfo is served on. The dough is made very thin and covered face and back with enset leaf, so it bakes on the mitad without ever touching the clay.
Three Ethiopian sources agree on what it is for. The Geta woreda calls it the preferred kocho, served at festivals with meat kitfo or gomen kitfo. Dejene Dendena, in The Reporter, calls it a thin kocho bread for festivals. The regional culture and tourism bureau's East Gurage page puts it on the main day of Meskel: first chefuye, raw meat dipped in butter, and then, towards evening, the kitfo, served on albabochat.
As tradition built it
The feast day kocho, for kitfo.
Ingredients
Albabochat is baked by cue: no source gives a weight or a time, and the leaf is the method, holding the bread off the mitad while it cooks.
- white kocho
- enset leaves, for above and below
- meat kitfo or gomen kitfo, to serve
Method
- Work the white kocho in the gebete, as for ashashat, until it is smooth.
- Lay an enset leaf on the mitad and press the kocho over it very thin.
- Cover the face with a second enset leaf, so the bread is wrapped above and below and never touches the mitad.
- Bake it in its leaves until it is cooked through.
- Peel off the leaves and serve it with meat kitfo or gomen kitfo.
What a modern chef changes
Banana leaf for enset, and the bread timed to the kitfo
Rungs 4 and 6
Method
- Use banana leaf where you have no enset. The two plants are cousins in the banana family, and the leaf does the same job: it holds the bread off the heat and steams it in its own water. Pass it over a flame first so it folds without splitting.
- Press it thinner than feels safe. The leaf carries it, and a bread thin enough to tear round a mouthful of kitfo is the point of it.
- Bake it as the kitfo is finished, so the bread arrives hot under butter held at about 42°C. Rung 4: a cold bread sets the butter on contact.
- Serve the bread beside the kitfo if it will wait. Rung 6: under the butter, a thin bread softens in a couple of minutes.