How My Weekend Eating Led from Turkey (the Bird) to Ethiopian (the Cuisine)

I expected my Turkey Day binge with assorted orphans at New York's Back Forty on Thursday afternoon to provoke a prolonged period of eating abstinence. Strangely, it had the reverse effect: I woke with a raging hunger on Black Friday.

I had an all American cupcake and coffee breakfast (a friend came to stay last weekend and filled my fridge with cakes from Chikalicious, which, by the way, have the perfect 2-1 sponge-to-icing ratio and stay edible for a week) but decided to venture further afield for lunch. People often ask me where the most amazing place I've been is, and my answer is either Mozambique (as I told Kathy Lee and Hoda on the Today Show yesterday), or Ethiopia. I spent a month in Ethiopia about seven years ago, after leaving an unfulfilling job to take a chance on a career in journalism, and it seemed appropriate to remember that time, a period I'm still enormously thankful for, with a meal of injera and tibs.

New York's ethnic eats, partly because they tend to be inexpensive, are getting a lot of column inches at the moment, but Ethiopian rarely gets a look in. For obvious reasons, not just the fact that the staple sour pancake, injera, is often likened to wet flannel, the country's cuisine doesn't have the best reputation.

But it's one of my favorites: I love the spicy stews and pulses; parcelling up the gooey mess in its blanket and eating with my hands. On Friday, the meal brought back the 12th-century rose stone churches of Lalibela, reputed to have been carved by angels, and the weird obelisks of Axum.

So next time you feel like a virtual vacation, try Awash on East 6th Street.

Related Listening:
Pico Iyer, the travel writer, novelist, and Condé Nast Traveler contributing editor found his 1994 visit to Ethiopia spiritually awakening. Listen to a podcast interview: [iTunes]