Zigni

Eritrea's berbere beef stew, long-simmered until the sauce turns almost black and clings, eaten from a shared platter of injera

Origin: Asmara & the Eritrean Highlands

From the journey of Chilli Pepper.

Zigni is the Eritrean berbere stew and it is the dish around which a shared meal is built. Beef is cooked slowly with an onion base and a great quantity of berbere until the sauce reduces to something dark, thick, and clinging, and it is ladled straight onto injera in the centre of the table for everyone to eat from with the right hand. Eritrea and the Ethiopian highlands were a single culinary region for very much longer than they have been two countries. Eritrea was an Italian colony from 1890, federated with Ethiopia in 1952, and independent only in 1993, and the Tigrinya-speaking highlands run across the border. Zigni and the Ethiopian key wot are the same dish, and Eritreans and Ethiopians will each tell you their version is the better one whilst agreeing entirely on what it is. The Italian period left one genuine and unexpected legacy, and it is on the plate more often than anywhere else in Africa. Pasta is eaten widely in Asmara, and pasta al sugo made with zigni rather than a Bolognese sauce is a standard Eritrean dish. It is neither a novelty nor a tourist item. The chilli that berbere is built on arrived in the Horn in the sixteenth century and rewrote the cooking of the region within a few generations. Before it, the highland stews were spiced with long pepper, ginger, and korarima, and were milder and quite different things.

Ingredients

  • 1 kg stewing beef, in 3cm cubes
  • 1 kg red onions, very finely chopped
  • 80 g berbere, or to taste
  • 120 g niter kibbeh, or 100ml oil plus 30g butter
  • 6 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 thumb of ginger, grated
  • 3 tbsp tomato purée
  • 2 green chillies, slit
  • 1 tsp ground korarima or green cardamom
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 700 ml water

Method

  1. Cook the onions dry in a wide heavy pot over a low-to-medium heat, with no fat, for a full hour, stirring regularly. They must collapse to a dark thick paste with the water driven off. This is the foundation of every highland wot and cannot be replaced by frying.
  2. Add the niter kibbeh and let it melt in, then the garlic and ginger, and cook for five minutes.
  3. Add the berbere and the tomato purée and cook out, stirring constantly, for ten minutes, until the mixture darkens and the fat separates.
  4. Add the beef and turn it thoroughly in the paste until every cube is coated.
  5. Pour in the water, bring to a bare simmer, and cook uncovered for an hour and a quarter, stirring every fifteen minutes.
  6. The stew is ready when the beef is entirely tender, the sauce has reduced until it mounds on a spoon, and a layer of red-brown fat has separated on top.
  7. Add the green chillies and the korarima in the last five minutes. Taste for salt.
  8. Serve on a shared platter of injera, with more injera rolled alongside, and eat with the right hand.

Notes

The dry onion base is the technique that separates a highland stew from any other braise, and giving it less than an hour shows in the finished sauce. Berbere brands differ wildly in heat and salt, so add two thirds and adjust after it has cooked out. For the Eritrean pasta version, thin the finished zigni with a little of the pasta water and toss it through spaghetti with a spoonful of niter kibbeh.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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