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The Horn · Volume 10, The Highland Ferment · Cooked by cue

Dukuche

Geta, Gurage zone

Dukuche: chopped gomen stalks set in spiced butter beside pounded meat dressed with butter and mitmita, in a wooden bowl with a piece of kocho.

Illustration

Dukuche is two Gurage dishes with one name and one dressing. In the first, only the stalks of the gomen go in: the leaves stripped off, the stalks chopped and boiled, squeezed, worked with butter and mitmita and left to set. In the second, meat is pounded fine and chopped, dressed with mitmita and butter, and served on kocho or in a gebete.

The Geta woreda gives both methods. The regional culture and tourism bureau lists dukuche, spelt dikuche, among the foods eaten with the small horn spoon. No source gives either by weight, so it is given here as the tradition tells it. The woreda does not say whether the meat is raw.

As tradition built it

Two Gurage dishes, given as the Geta woreda tells them.

Ingredients

Made by cue: no Gurage source gives a time or a yield for either dukuche.

Gomen dukuche

  • gomen stalks
  • water, for boiling
  • butter
  • mitmita

Meat dukuche

  • meat
  • butter
  • mitmita
  • kocho, to serve

Method

Gomen dukuche

  1. Strip the leaves from the gomen and keep only the stalks.
  2. Chop the gomen stalks and boil them.
  3. Squeeze the cooked stalks.
  4. Work in the butter and the mitmita, and leave it to set.

Meat dukuche

  1. Pound the meat fine in a mortar, then chop it.
  2. Add the mitmita and the butter.
  3. Serve it on kocho, or in a gebete.

What a modern chef changes

The stalks pressed dry and set, and the meat held to the kitfo rules

Rungs 4 and 6

Method

  1. Cut the gomen stalks fine, cook them only until tender, and press them hard in a cloth. A dry stalk takes up the butter; a wet one splits it.
  2. Pack it into a small mould and chill it, so the butter firms round the stalks and it turns out and slices.
  3. Make the meat by this volume's kitfo rules: whole muscle trimmed clean, cut by knife, the butter at about 42°C. Rung 4. Offer it cooked to anyone pregnant or immunocompromised.
  4. Serve the two side by side, the cold set gomen and the warm meat, with a piece of qimus broken over for crunch. Rung 6.
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