Samuelsson gets his first tour of Addis Ababa in a Lada taxi, the primary mode of transportation in the city. The blue-bodied, white-topped Russian-made car looks like a Fiat and is held together by spit and glue, wire and prayers. Hit a bump, and the door may fly open. Hit two bumps, and the car may stop entirely. “How old is this car?” he asks. “Older than you,” comes the reply.
Through the window Samuelsson glimpses the city’s many churches and the white-cotton–clad worshipers who flock to them during the days before Orthodox Christmas, January 7. We pass the palace of the late emperor, Haile Selassie, and the many alfresco coffee shops (the popular beverage is native to the highlands of this country). And we pass the Black Lion Hospital. “I should go there,” he says. “It served as the adoption agency that connected me with my Swedish parents.”
The national dish of Ethiopia is doro wat, chicken stew. It will be the centerpiece of the curriculum when Samuelsson takes his master class from Workye Ephrem’s mother. The chef knows, without asking, that she will be insulted if he arrives with bags of groceries. On the counsel of Mesfin Asefa’s uncle, though, he decides to go to the market and buy a sheep, a gift that is both time-honored and practical.
The huge open-air market called Merkato is the soul of the city. Its geography is mapped out in minute detail in the minds of the market mavens. Ask them where to find buckets or onions, cotton dresses or cinnamon sticks, and they can tell you exactly. Like the city in which it’s located, Merkato is a study in contrasts. Samuelsson is immediately drawn to neatly constructed cones of spices and dry ingredients—red lentils, yellow split peas, ground ginger, crystallized ginger—that gracefully ascend a foot or more above the sacks that contain them. The geometry and colors, he explains, parallel much of what he tries to create on his plates at Aquavit.
It is not long after daybreak, and Merkato is moving. Young men rush along dirt paths and around muddy puddles, huge baskets of beets or peppers on their heads. They don’t slow down for feranj, or foreigners.
“This is just the wildest food market. It’s mind-blowing,” says Samuelsson. “I can’t say it’s the best produce I’ve ever seen, because it’s not, but the market itself makes what we have in New York look like a little suburb.”
Sitting on the ground are scores of women, each with a selection of red onions, cardamom pods, or heads of garlic. Their faces are wizened with age, their feet bare, and their manner unhurried. “Look at that face,” Samuelsson says. In this country famed for its beautiful women, these market vendors exude an unpretentious grace and untutored beauty that is striking. They don’t squander smiles. But for them, something about the behavior of this Ethiopian man—who doesn’t speak Amharic and who seems so fascinated by even the most ordinary of their wares—elicits smiles, maybe even a rolling laugh or two, especially when he loses his normal poise during attempts to subdue his prize purchase, a woolly brown ram. Eventually, the animal is lashed to the luggage rack and we drive off in triumph.
In the old days, no Ethiopian girl could hope to find a husband if she didn’t know how to cut up a chicken into the 12 pieces appropriate for doro wat. Legs, thighs, and neck are separated in typical fashion. But the back is cut into two pieces, and the breast is cut into three pieces, two of which are attached to the first joint of the wing. The remaining wing pieces round off the dozen.
You can tell from the sharpness of her eyes and the authority of her gray hair that no daughter could ever emerge from Muluwork Asfaw’s house without knowing the proper way to cut up a chicken. But Asfaw also beams warm approval when something is done right. She sits at the kitchen table, an apron over her black dress, supervising her daughter’s cooking. Ephrem may be an accomplished chef, but this day, at every stage of the cooking process, she brings the food to her mother for advice and approval. Samuelsson is impressed with Asfaw’s presence in the kitchen. “She is like an executive chef,” he says, “who must dictate how food is to be cooked.” Asfaw “cooks with all her senses,” he says. “She tastes, looks, and smells.” And as she inspects and samples each pot, Samuelsson follows suit.
Samuelsson has seen Ethiopian food prepared before. He is not surprised by the massive amount of chopped onion added to the stew, or the huge dollop of spiced butter added to a pot of lamb and kale. “Most Ethiopian dishes are cooked long and slow to maximize the blending of flavors,” he points out, “like poor people’s food all over the world.”
As the cooking progresses, various bottles appear on the table. Like many Ethiopians, Asfaw makes her own spirits. In a recycled Scotch bottle there is the gold liquid called tej, or honey wine. In another bottle there is talla, the traditional home-brewed beer, which looks and tastes much like Guinness stout. And there are bottles of arake and liqueurs made from oranges, coffee, milk, and honey. After a few sips, Samuelsson’s mind is working. The menu for the upcoming dinner at the Sheraton is coming into focus.
“I look at cooking as a reflection of who I am, an Ethiopian guy with a love for the spices and the country, but not much knowledge of the cuisine. I can take the spices and essences and work with them in a Western way.”
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