Ethiopian Lamb and Collards

This weekend my friend taught me a new dish that was a common winter stew back home. My friend's mom is Gurage, the tribe or people whose specialty dishes include kitfo and kocho. Gurage folks eat kocho as their form of flat bread (versus injera), and my friend tells stories about her mom only eating kocho while the rest of the family ate the injera. This dish is also a Gurage one, and we ate it this weekend with kocho that I bought at Shabelle Grocery on Franklin Ave in Minneapolis. (For $10 for a package of what amounts to 8 kocho pieces. These come from Addis Ababa, coordinated by one of the folks at Dilla Restaurant on the west bank.) I really like kocho - it is a fermented flat bread that you can read more about here. It is also gluten free, which not all injera (at least in this country), is. 

Kocho - heated/fried in a bit of oil

This dish has pretty much everything I want in winter: lots of greens, chunks of meat, and a rich, buttery broth. The kocho is an added bonus that you also don't need.

4 large servings:

• 2+ pounds lamb stew meat or leg, cut in 1-2" pieces. (Have the butcher do this since there will be some bone there.)
  
• 1/4 c avocado oil
• 2-3 large red onions, diced
  
• 2-4 bunches collard greens, chopped - if you have small bunches, do 4! You want more greens than meat
  
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 5-6 jalapenos, sliced with seeds
• Salt and black pepper
  
• Ethiopian spiced butter to serve
• Mitmita to serve

1. Heat your oil in a large pot. Add onions and garlic and saute on medium until soft, taking care not to burn and to stir often.

2. After 5-10 minutes, add the lamb meat and about a cup of hot water. Add generous amounts of salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, and decrease the heat to low. Cover and simmer for about an hour or 90 minutes total, until the lamb is tender.

3. Add the greens about 30 minutes into the simmering. *You could also add them just after the meat, but I prefer a slightly less soft green.

 4. Just before serving, adjust the seasoning to taste, and add the jalapenos. Let that simmer another few minutes and prepare your butter/mitmita, if using. *Warm your spiced butter, and stir in mitmita spice, making the butter bright red and spicy. 

5. Serve in a large bowl or rimmed plate with some of the broth. Spoon mitmita butter on the side of your bowl to dip your lamb and kocho into as you eat (it will also melt into the bit of broth). Eat with kocho if you have some!