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

Fintafinto

Geta, Gurage zone

Fintafinto: chopped boiled meat and white ayib side by side on a clay dish, glossy with butter and dusted with mitmita, a horn spoon on the rim.

Illustration

Fintafinto is chopped meat served with ayib, the fresh curd cheese, and gomen, the Ethiopian kale. The Geta woreda administration gives it two ways. In the first, the three are made and served together. In the second, the meat is boiled, then chopped, and set side by side with the ayib on one tabat, the clay dish, with butter and mitmita added.

It comes from the same Gurage table as kitfo. The regional culture and tourism bureau lists fintafinto, spelt fintanfinto, among the foods eaten with the anqafo, the small horn spoon, alongside kitfo, ayib and the gomen dishes. No source gives it by weight, so it is given here as the tradition tells it, in the second way, the one the woreda describes step by step.

As tradition built it

A Gurage table dish, given as the Geta woreda tells it.

Ingredients

Made by cue: the meat is boiled until cooked through, and the Geta woreda page gives no time or yield.

  • meat
  • water, for boiling
  • ayib
  • butter
  • mitmita

Method

  1. Boil the meat in water until it is cooked through.
  2. Lift it out and chop it.
  3. Set the chopped meat on one side of a tabat, the clay serving dish, and the ayib beside it: side by side, not mixed.
  4. Add the butter and the mitmita, and eat it with the horn spoon.

Notes

In the woreda's first way, the chopped meat, ayib and gomen are made and served together; the page does not say whether that meat is raw or cooked. The same page lists sost azis, ayib, gomen and chopped meat mixed, as a dish of its own, and does not say how the two differ.

What a modern chef changes

The boil turned into a poach, and the mitmita carried in the butter

Rungs 4 and 5

Method

  1. Poach the meat below a simmer and let it cool in its liquid before you chop it. A hard boil tightens the fibres, and the chopped meat goes dry against the ayib.
  2. Chop by knife, to the size of the ayib's curd, so the two sit together on the spoon.
  3. Warm the niter kibbeh to about 42°C, the kitfo temperature, and stir the mitmita into it before it goes over the dish. Rung 4: the chilli's colour and heat go into the fat, and dusted on dry it sits on the surface.
  4. Salt the ayib lightly and leave the meat to the dressing. Rung 5: mitmita carries its own salt.
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