On Monday night, Jan. 12, at the Charles & Linda Idelson Kitchen at Canterbury School in Fort Myers, Ethiopian-Israeli chef Beejhy Barhany wanted people to taste something other than tired narratives.
"I want to make sure people appreciate and understand, you know, Ethiopia is not just a land of famine, it's the cradle of mankind," she shares. Dozens of locals gathered for her book tour stop, hosted by the Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte County.
Thick slices of dabo bread, lentil sambusa and an Ethiopian lentil stew are passed around by employees from El Roi, a local Ethiopian food truck in Cape Coral -- likely the only one in all of Southwest Florida.
The dabo, a round, lightly sweet loaf distinct to Ethiopia and Eritrea, is versatile enough to serve at breakfast with coffee or at religious ceremonies.
Folks at the tables reached for seconds, then thirds. Some wrap pieces in napkins to take home. For many, it was their first taste of Ethiopian food.
Besides the family that owns Elroi, there's no real Ethiopian community in Fort Myers or even Southwest Florida. But there is a Jewish one, and Barhany's story connects directly to them. She's part of the Beta Israel — Ethiopian Jews and was seven years old when her family finally reached Israel after fleeing Ethiopia during the mass exodus.
During the Q&A about her book "Gursha" -- Amharic for "mouthful," referring to the act of feeding someone a bite of food by hand as a gesture of kindness -- she shares pieces of her childhood. She tells the biblical story of Jacob and Esau, where Jacob made red lentil stew so robust that his famished brother begged for a taste.
"For me, red lentil is comfort food, ancient, nutritious," Barhany says. "That's what takes me back to nostaliga, tizita, back to those days."
But "back" for Barhany isn't one place. It's Ethiopia, then Sudan, Kenya, Uganda -- a childhood spent moving. When her family arrived in Israel, the food they knew felt nearly impossible to recreate.
"When Ethiopian Jews first immigrated to Israel, they had no access to teff," she explains, referring to the grain native to East Africa. "So, what do we do? We improvise. We make injera from wheat and corn."
Years later, as an adult in New York, she opened Tsion Cafe in Harlem -- finally able to serve the food of her childhood, layered with everything she'd learned along the way.
"I'm not only Ethiopian, I am Israeli as well, and I'm American as well," she says. "I travel throughout the world, and my palate of flavors is very diverse. So at Tsion Cafe, we have the base of Ethiopian food — foul (fava beans), malawach from Yemen, flavors from Hara and Sudan. We celebrate all the types of diversity of cuisines and the different flavors that impacted me throughout my journey."
The evening ended where Ethiopia's culinary gifts began: with homemade Ethiopian coffee passed around.
"It's very important to let people know about the rich contribution of Ethiopia to the world in terms of the culinary world," Barhany says. "We give the gift of coffee beans to the world." She pauses. "There is a lot of ancient history that people need to open their mind and appreciate. Africa is rising."
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