November 2015 RawSpiceBar Spice Subscription Review & Coupon – Ethiopia

RawSpiceBar is a monthly spice blend subscription. Every month for $6 you’ll receive small batch, freshly ground spice blends by top chefs for home cooks, plus recipes to create authentic cuisine with the spices. They are launching the shop soon to buy more of your favorite spices!  I really look forward to seeing their inventory — the subscription picks have been great, and I want to see their whole catalogue of blends. Raw Spice Bar completely refreshed the look of the subscription a few months back.

The spices came tucked inside a full color recipe sheet, along with a welcome card. The pictures make me want to get cooking.  The main dish to be prepared for this installment was Key Wat, a spicy and flavorful beef stew.

The packaging describes the component spices, as well as giving some typical applications should you want to experiment with your own recipes.  The spices this month are Mitmita, Berbere, And Pumpkin Pie Spice.

The theme included recipes for: Key Wat, Berbere Roasted Carrots, and Pumpkin Spiced Dabo Kolo. RawSpiceBar also includes vegetarian recipes on their site, and this month was Misr Wot, a lentil stew.  You provide the fresh ingredients and staple items for the included recipes.

I love the vibrant colors of these spices!  Each spice pack is usually sized to make one batch of the suggested recipe, but each packet in this shipment included more than a singe recipe’s worth of spice.  The Mitmita, for example, was so spicy that you definitely want to heed the measuring suggestions when making a recipe!

We borrowed our paella pan to use as a serving dish.  Ethiopian cuisine is traditionally served on a large, communal platter.  Various prepared dishes are poured onto a base layer of injera, traditional Ethiopian flatbread, and served with additional injera on the side.  The recipes in the kit make quite a bit of food and can feed a several people, especially when eaten with injera.

Some extra injera.  I found a simple, traditional recipe online, consisting of teff flour, water, and salt.  You make a soupy batter and let it sit out for three days to ferment.  Then, you essentially make thick crepes out of it.  Teff has a strong, but pleasant barley malt taste.  I took a cue from most Ethiopian restaurants and used some wheat flour — it binds together better and has a lighter taste.

The Key Wat had great flavors and was very satisfying.  It was spicy, but at a comfortable level, though I like it hot – Raw Spice Bar probably should have put a warning about the heat level for the average subscriber..  The Mitmita is really spicy, but there is only a little in here.   It is really the coriander, cardamom, ginger, fenugreek, and other un-hot spices that give it its complex flavor.  Shredding the beef distributed it evenly and made it easier to eat with injera.

The Berbere spice also paired well with roasted veggies.  We made the recipe in the kit: carrots, fennel, and mint!

The injera is used as a plate, utensil, and food.  It is easy to use, but hard to master.

My attempt at making a true injera bite filled with Key Wat.  Those who eat in the traditional style can deftly twist a piece of injera around the Wat without getting any on their fingers.

Ethiopian food is extremely filling — the injera soaks up the sauces, so you can eat your plate afterward!  A bit of warning — it expands in your belly, so don’t overeat.  I always do.  My first experience with Ethiopian food left me stumbling around the sidewalk with a debilitatingly-stuffed belly — I was too full to sit down in the car!  Not embarrassing at all.

The Pumpkin Pie Spice was used in the Dabo Kolo recipe.

We fried tablespoons of the ricotta, egg, and flour batter in a Dutch oven.  I used coconut oil, as I had misplaced my vegetable oil.   I thought it worked great.

As suggested in the recipe, I drizzled the cooked donuts with honey.  I couldn’t bring myself to apply and entire half cup, though.

We also doused the donuts with powdered sugar.  It dissolved into the warm surface and combined with the honey.  Soon after this picture was taken, it became transparent and formed a delicious glaze.  I recommend this modification.

This edition of RawSpiceBar was really great.  The spices and inspiration are absolutely fabulous, and the shopping list was really short.  The most expensive item is probably the teff flour for making the injera, and this is something we did on our own (you have to eat injera with Ethiopian food).  We love Ethiopian food, and the version of Key Wat created by RawSpiceBar was better than a lot of versions I’ve had in restaurants.

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