The Horn · Volume 10, The Highland Ferment · Cooked by cue
Tikure / tikul
Geta, Gurage zone
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 191 sources in the brief
Tikure is a Gurage pot of meat and gomen, the Ethiopian kale, boiled together and turned out onto a tabat, the clay dish, under a moderate dressing of mitmita. The meat is cut in strips and kept before it is boiled; the gomen leaves are plucked from the stalk and go in once the meat is cooked.
Only the Geta woreda records it, and it does not say how the strips were kept or for how long. No source calls it qwanta, the dried meat of the highlands, and it is not called that here.
As tradition built it
A Gurage pot, given as the Geta woreda tells it.
Ingredients
Made by cue: the strips of kept meat are boiled and the gomen added once the meat is cooked, and the Geta woreda page gives no time or yield.
- meat, cut in strips and kept
- water
- gomen, the leaves plucked
- mitmita, in moderation
Method
- Boil the strips of kept meat in water.
- While it cooks, pluck the gomen leaves from their stalks.
- When the meat is cooked, add the plucked gomen and cook them together.
- Turn the pot out onto a tabat and dress it with a moderate amount of mitmita.
What a modern chef changes
The meat dried on purpose, and the leaves kept green
Rungs 4 and 5
Method
- Make the kept meat yourself: lean beef cut in strips, salted, and dried in the dehydrator until leathery. The tradition does not say how its strips were kept; this gives a meat with a cured depth and a chew.
- Soak the dried strips before they go in the pot, so they simmer tender, and cook them in the soaking water.
- Add the gomen at the end and stop when it turns bright, so the leaf keeps its bite against the meat.
- Bloom the mitmita in a spoonful of niter kibbeh and pour it over at the table. Rung 4. Then taste before you salt, Rung 5: the dried meat brings its own.