Ethiopian homestyle

<p>Just because food prices are skyrocketing doesn't mean you can't get really great restaurant food at budget prices anymore. Abyssinia on Fourth Street in Santa Rosa proves that.</p><p>Abyssinia serves Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine. This is not exactly a new style of cooking in Santa Rosa. Santa Trata in the Stony Point Shopping Center served Eritrean food before it closed about six months ago. But the food at Abyssinia is exceptional. In fact, it's the definition of the style because it's home cooking by Wodeyelesh Merso (call her Wodi), the mother of the genial host, server and co-owner with his mom, Dawit Asfaha. He says that his mother's first name means "without limits." Her food tastes that way.</p><p>The menu is written in English and in Amharic, the language of Ethiopia and to some extent Eritrea to its north, using the Ge'ez alphabet. It's hard to go wrong at Abyssinia, even if the dishes are unfamiliar to you. Everything tastes so fresh and perfectly made, and while most dishes aren't particularly spicy, they are served with powdered spice mixes that will kick up the heat as many notches as you wish.</p><p>One of the spice mixes is mitmita, used on the Special Kitfo ($13.95 ). To explain: Mitmita is made up of ground African bird peppers, cardamom seeds, cloves, cinnamon, cumin, ginger and salt. Kitfo is a popular Ethiopian dish of ground raw beef marinated in spiced butter called niter kibe, or kibbeh in Arabic where it's popular in the Middle East. What makes this kitfo special is the accompanying dish of home-made cottage cheese.</p><p>Merso must have some tricks up her sleeve. How else could ordinary collard greens be so amazingly lovely and delicious, not at all bitter like most collards, in the dish called Yabesha Gomen ($10.50 ). The cabbage-family greens are cooked with green pepper and garlic, but they alone can't account for the delicacy of the collards. But that's what home cooking is all about, isn't it? Your mom had her tricks, too, if she was a good cook, like using bacon grease instead of butter or cooking oil to make hash browns.</p><p>Another spice mixture available at Abyssinia is berbere, which can be sprinkled dry on food or mixed with liquid to make a thick sauce. It's hot, made from bird peppers, ginger, cloves, coriander, allspice, rue berries and an Ethiopian plant called ajwain (known in English as bishop's weed). This is as ubiquitous in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine as ketchup is in America.</p><p>Among the items on the menu just begging for a dash of berbere is Tibs ($13.95 ), a generic term meaning sauteed meat or vegetables. Here tangy and tender beef strips are marinated in Ethiopian spices before being sauteed with onions, green pepper, tomato and jalapeños. Sprinkle some dry berbere powder on top, the way chili powder is used in Southwestern cooking. Or ask the server to make berbere into a wet sauce and smear it on your injera. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, no utensils are used at the table. Rather the dishes are placed on a bed of injera, a 20-inch round, sour bread made of fermented teff. Teff is a grass native to Ethiopia and has excellent nutritional value, with good stores of protein, iron and fiber. You will be served injera along with the dishes you order. Tear off pieces and use them to pick up morsels of food, with your right hand if you want to do it the authentic Ethiopian way. Think of using naan to pick up food in an Indian restaurant. Same idea.</p><p>Your Tibs will come with some nice side dishes, including miser alecha, a thick lentil stew flavored with garlic, ginger, turmeric and jalapeños. Also included on the plate are tikel gomen, made of cabbage, carrots and potatoes cooked with ginger, and a fresh lettuce, tomato and onion salad lightly sprinkled with vinaigrette. These sides also accompany the kitfo.</p><p>For beverages, I passed up the Ethiopian honey wine in favor of a bottle of Asmara -- an Eritrean lager, quite refreshing. Asmara is the capital of Eritrea, a city of about half a million people perched on the rim of the Great Rift Valley at over 7,000 feet elevation. Mussolini had grandiose plans for the city, and renamed it "Little Rome" during fascist colonial times. Asmara is fascinating because so much of it displays Art Deco and Art Moderne architecture. Think Miami Beach hotels, Radio City Music Hall and the Waldorf Astoria.</p><p>So much is intriguing at Abyssinia that it's hard to pick favorite dishes. But do not miss the But'echa ($5 ), a superb appetizer that's a lovely soft, moist, light yellow dish of chickpeas so tender you can't imagine what trick Merso used to make them that way. They are touched with a spritz of lemon juice, ginger, onion and olive oil. If you've ever wanted to pack up and go explore Ethiopia, this dish may push you to do it.</p><p>While the atmosphere at Abyssinia is basically clean lunchroom, there are goatskin paintings on the walls, including one of Haile Selassie (if you don't know who Haile Selassie was, Google him immediately) and one of a woman pouring the Ethiopian coffee ceremony. If you don't know the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, stop by the restaurant at 5 p.m. any Saturday and you'll find it being performed.</p><p>The plangent music of Ethiopia plays on the sound system, with ululating female voices and skirling reels of ocarina accompanying them.</p><p>A good way to go if you're not intimately familiar with these East African cuisines is to order either the vegetarian or Abyssinia combo. The Vegetarian Combo ($18.95 ½) consists of shiro, a delicious sort of Ethiopian hummus of roasted garbanzo beans simmered with a red pepper sauce and spices; miser alecha; miser we't, which is like shiro only with lentils instead of garbanzos; and yabesha gomen (those incredible collards), plus injera.</p><p>The Abyssinia Combo ($19.95 ) includes gored gored, raw beef cubes blended with spiced butter; yebeg key we't, lamb cubes seasoned with garlic, onion, turmeric and ginger; yebeg alecha, the same as yebeg key we't except the lamb is in strips; doro we't, a spicy, sweet and sour chicken stew simmered in berbere, onion, garlic and niter kibe and served with a hard-boiled egg; miser we't; and tikel gomen. The whole plate and its accompanying injera and powdery spices are just a dream of excellent flavors presented in exotic ways.</p><p>To sum up: Here's the Ethiopian and Eritrean restaurant we've all been waiting for, even if we didn't know we were waiting for it.</p><p>Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for A&amp;E. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.</p>