Recipes: Atar Alecha

Here’s a nice vegetarian dish that is affordable and easy to make. You can make it with either yellow or green split peas. I ate something like this at the Queen of Sheba restaurant in Portland, and made my own variation of it at home. Then when our girls came home from Ethiopia, they made yet another variation.

Atar Alecha: Spicy split peas

Ingredients

1 onion, pureed in food processor
2 garlic cloves, finely minced or mashed through a garlic press (And just in case you are in the market for a garlic press, I love my Zyliss!)
2 tablespoon niter kibbeh (or plain butter if you do not have niter kibbeh on hand)

1 cup dry split green peas, rinsed and drained
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons green chili, seeded and finely chopped
1 cup water

Directions

Soak the split peas for an hour in three cups of water. (For what it’s worth, I skipped the soaking step and had no trouble.)

Bring the peas to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 30-45 minutes, adding more water if necessary. When the peas are cooked, drain any excess water and mash well. Set aside.

In a dry pan over medium heat, stir-fry the onion and garlic for 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Turn heat down a little. Add the niter kibbeh or butter and sauté until the onion becomes transparent.

Add the mashed peas, turmeric, salt and green chili to the onion mixture.
Add the water and cook to reduce the mixture to a thick, well-spiced pureé.

Serve warm or room temperature with injera.

Note: In the variation that my daughter showed me, she cooked the split peas for closer to an hour, and then instead of mashing them, she just left them whole. She added about 1/4 cup of oil to this recipe. Also, she did not finely chop the green chili pepper. She just cut it into long threads and mixed it in with the split peas. This gave the recipe only a very mild heat.

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