The Horn · Volume 10, The Highland Ferment · Cooked by cue
Dapuye / dapa
Geta, Gurage zone
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 191 sources in the brief
Dapuye is kocho cooked by steam. The dough is wetter than the flatbreads', softened with water in the gebete until it pours. It goes onto a bed of sliced enset leaf on the mitad, is covered with more of the same, and is shut under a second mitad turned upside down, with the fire kept going beneath. Steam alone cooks it.
The Geta woreda gives the method. Dejene Dendena, in The Reporter, describes the same bread, baked with moist leaf strewn under it and covered on top like difo dabo, the great covered bread of the highlands. It is eaten cool with three of the Gurage gomen dishes: zimamojat, cooked gomen chopped and served with ayib; qoqosye, gomen steamed on the mitad under a sprinkle of water, chopped and mixed with ayib; and kashye, gomen leaves dried on the mitad, pounded, and the powder scattered over ayib.
As tradition built it
A steamed kocho bread, eaten cool with gomen and ayib.
Ingredients
Dapuye is steamed by cue: the woreda says only that it comes off the fire when its time has come, and no source we read gives the time.
- white kocho
- water, to soften
- enset leaves and midribs, sliced thin, for above and below
- zimamojat, qoqosye or kashye, to serve
Method
- Soften the white kocho with water in the gebete, working it hard, until it will pour.
- Strew the thinly sliced enset leaves and midribs over the mitad.
- Pour on the kocho and level it.
- Cover it with more sliced enset leaf and midrib, the same as below, and turn a second mitad over it as a lid.
- Keep the fire going beneath and let it cook in its own steam.
- When it is done, take it off the hearth, lift the lid and leave it to cool. Eat it with zimamojat, qoqosye or kashye.
Notes
A 1995 paper by Pijls and colleagues on enset in Ethiopia is quoted elsewhere with a steaming time for a bread it calls dapuha. The paper was not read for this volume, and the figure is not used.
What a modern chef changes
A lidded casserole for the two mitads, and the plate built on temperature
Rungs 2 and 6
Method
- A heavy cast iron casserole with its lid, on a low hob, is the two mitads: heat below, and the lid holding the steam in.
- Keep the sliced leaf above and below, enset or banana. It holds the steam against the bread and keeps the dough off the metal.
- Lift the lid once and press the centre. When it springs back and the edge has turned from chalky to translucent, the starch has set and it is done.
- Serve the three gomen dishes at three temperatures: kashye's powder over cold ayib, qoqosye warm, zimamojat at room temperature, round the cool bread. Rung 6: temperature is the contrast this plate lacks. Rung 2 applies to the bread as to injera: taste the kocho, and know which sourness you are steaming.