I do not know what “spiced butter” might be, so I Google tesmi, and I find only recipes/web pages in Dutch, including this one, which will be fine if I can only figure out a couple of the words.
I am very comfortable with many European languages, so I can understand most of the Dutch recipe myself, with the exception of the two words uitje and gemberwortel. I found only one online translator that will even attempt Dutch to English translation (Systran.com), but it translates uitje as “trip”, and doesn’t seem to know gemberwortel at all.
Googling for kbe was even less fruitful…
Could someone either please tell me what tesmi is, or how to translate uitje and gemberwortel into terms that resemble edible ingredients.
The problem is that there’s no good transliteration from Ethiopian languages to English. I’ve seen the above spelled “niter kibbeh” (as the above page does), “nitir kebe”, and apparently as you have seen, “kbe”. If you wanted to save some time, you could purchase some ghee and skip the part about clarifying the butter.
Also, if you’re going to make that recipe, make sure you’re using Ethiopian chili paste (berbere, called “d’lk” in that recipe in who-knows-what-language).
Our area has lots of stores for East Asian foods and Mexican/Central American foods, but there are very few convenient places to get ghee. Clarifying butter isn’t really that hard, especially considering how much it will cost in gas for me to go to the only Indian store I am familiar with, even if they have ghee on hand.
I’d recommend following the recipe as written. In addition to clarifying the butter, the long cooking time also infuses the butter with the aromatics from the spices (note that everything “solid” is discarded in the final step.)
Also, eight parts paprika to one part cayenne (like the linked recipe calls for) will give you a pretty mild berbere, and certainly nothing an Ethiopian would recognize as such.[sup]1[/sup] I usually use something closer to six-to-one or four-to-one. But then, I’m generally pro-capsicin.
[sup]1[/sup]In college, I once shared a house with a native Ethiopian. We rotated on the cooking responsibilities. He knew enough to tone down his recipes for the rest of us, but one time a friend of his — a fellow Ethiopian — came by to help him cook and spiced the dish in a more “traditional” manner. It was the spiciest thing I’ve ever eaten, bar none.
