The Horn · Volume 10, The Highland Ferment · Cooked by cue
Qimus
Geta, Gurage zone
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 191 sources in the brief
Qimus is the kocho that is eaten to get well. White kocho is dusted with a little wheat or maize flour, rubbed dry, and baked thick on the mitad, turned until it is dry and firm. It is broken in pieces and eaten warm.
The Geta woreda says it is made mostly in the fasting season, or when someone in the family has a stomach upset, and eaten with a fasting dish. Dejene Dendena, in The Reporter, says the kocho never touches water, and that it is eaten as a cure: by the sick, for a broken bone, by a woman who has just given birth, and by the old.
As tradition built it
A fasting and sickroom bread, eaten warm.
Ingredients
Qimus is baked by cue: the woreda gives only a little flour, and the cue is the bread itself, turned until it is dry and firm.
- white kocho
- wheat or maize flour, a little
- a fasting dish, to serve
Method
- Dust the white kocho with a little wheat or maize flour and rub it in dry, with no water.
- Press it thick on the mitad and bake it, turning it, until it is dry and firm.
- Take it off the mitad, break it in pieces, and eat it before it cools much, with a fasting dish.
What a modern chef changes
The crust made on purpose, and the fasting dish from this volume
Rungs 3 and 6
Method
- Rub the flour in thoroughly and bake it slowly. Gentle dry heat for a long time gives a crust that breaks clean over a set crumb; a hot pan gives a scorched face and a raw middle.
- Use a dry cast iron pan at medium heat, and weight the round with a flat lid for the first side so it colours evenly.
- Break it, never cut it. The torn faces hold the stew.
- Serve it with misir wot or shiro from this volume, made in oil as the fast asks, with the onion cooked dry first. Rung 3. Rung 6: a dry, crusted bread against a wet stew is the contrast an injera plate does not have.