I once dated a girl who had celiac-sprue disease, a horrible gluten-intolerance that cripples not only your diet, but your fun quotient–so little is known about the disorder, one could get differing opinions of a product’s safety from equally qualified sources. Wine, liquors, exotic grains and food additives are all hotly debated amongst gluten peoples. When gambling with your small intestine, that’s not a comfortable position to be in.
In the course of exploring this fine woman’s proclivities (dietary and otherwise), tastes, and witnessing her amazing ability to hustle Chemistry, watch cartoons, bake gluten-free treats and smoke gratuitous amounts of reefer, I discovered Teff. Okay, so ‘discovery’ isn’t the best term. I ‘discovered’ that Ethiopian restaurants had this wonderful bread product called injera that, if made without shortcuts, was gluten-free. The grain in injera is Teff.
Fast forward a few years and somehow, a few days ago, I came home from the co-op with some teff. I’d never screwed with teff as an ingredient, previously content with teff as a convenient excuse for a night of delicious Ethiopian food, this was officially an experiment.
There are two types of teff, white and brown, and I came home with a small package of white teff. Raw, teff looks suspiciously like active dry yeast granules. Teff cooks up much like quinoa, in process and in product, only the grains are a few powers of ten smaller. The package recommended a 3:1 ratio, and I wasn’t going to argue.
The instructions said bring to boil, cover and simmer for 20. It took closer to 25 before I felt like it was an appropriate consistency, since, as you all know, I know more about teff than the people who grow, package and subsist on it. After it was done, it went off burner and got a handful of minced chives, some halved cherry toms and a healthy 1/2 cup of tomato paste. Healthy doses of salt and black pepper rounded it out. The flavor is nutty, the texture really quite unique–while quinoa grains don’t stick together much, the teff stuck to the spatula like heavy mashed potatoes–it may have been the added stuff, but I don’t think so.
Halfway through I realized that a big steaming bowl of teff didn’t sound too good. I was nursing a hangover and I wanted some sustenance, but not this boring, or brown. I started making a simple curry: spices, onions, tomato paste, chana dal. Nothing special, but it took a long time to cook, so the fiddler in me couldn’t stop fucking with the teff.
I spread the teff out on a silpat and made a rectangle about 1 inch thick. I let it be while it cooled and dusted the top with cumin, cayenne, minced onion more chives and some Hawaiian pink salt.
like so.
I let it sit for a long while, until totally cool, while the oven preheated to 400. I then baked it for a while.
the mixture was too thick so when I deemed the edges just past crispy, the center was still soft. Thinner next time, I think. The edges, when cut into fun little triangles, made a flavorful, crispy foil to a simple chana dal. I found it really quite amazing how well teff stuck together with its own starches alone, both when cooked and after baking.
There was little if any forming or pressing or peer pressure on the teff to stick together or conform. This stuff will be the star of a few more experiments to come…kohlrabi, on the other hand…
finished product
