A Recipe Inspired by East African Cuisine

Have you ever eaten authentic East African food? East African cuisine can be very delicious. In some recipes that are traditional to East Africa, eggs are often used. In East Africa, in addition to breakfast, eggs can be incorporated with the ingredients for delicious hot lunch and dinner recipes. Ethiopia is an example of one of the countries in East Africa where eggs might be used in the lunch and dinner recipes.

Here is a meat, eggs and rice recipe that comes from inspiration through trying cuisine from many different countries. While I place East African in the title, there are also influences from North Africa and the Middle East in this recipe. Namely, it involves the use of whole hard boiled eggs in meat dishes.

One restaurant where I have eaten and enjoyed food prepared in this way is Mehran Restaurant in Washington, DC.

• The restaurant specialties are Indian and Pakistani food.
• The lunch buffet often includes a dish with ground meat and whole eggs with pita bread or another type of flat bread on the side.

More recently, even after I had begun occasionally preparing the dish I describe below, I watched an episode of the early show with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. It was a bit comical and entertaining as the Ethiopian chef that was featured in a segment ended up feeding Kathie and Hoda with his hands and they were not used to that.

• In Ethiopian culture, it is common to eat together often from the same plate and perhaps even feed each other.
• One of the dishes prepared by this Ethiopian chef on the Early Show included whole hard boiled eggs on a platter next to the meat.

Sure, Americans are used to eating scrambled eggs and sausage or bacon for breakfast perhaps, but whole eggs used with our dinner time meat entrée should be introduced to us more readily. It really is a delicious combination for the palate.

Incorporating whole eggs in our dinner time meat recipes is also undeniably easy to do. The term "3 minute egg" is not an exaggeration. When you add whole eggs to boiling water, it can take just 1-3 minutes to be cooked depending on whether you want hard boiled eggs or soft boiled eggs.

For this recipe, I use hard boiled eggs.

1. You can begin by taking either minced meat such as beef or lamb or lean italian sausages, sliced.

2. Cook the meat well, sufficiently browned.

3. After the meat has been sufficiently browned (in a frying pan with a few drops of cooking oil), the next step is to add the desired spices and sauce. Here is the suggested list:

• 1 cup of all natural tomato sauce (to each lb of meat you choose to cook.) If cooking 2lbs of meat, use 2 cups of tomato sauce
• 2 tablespoons of hot pepper sauce
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 teaspoon each of garlic powder, black pepper, parsley, and paprika. Salt optional

Allow the meat to continue cooking, immersed in the spices and sauce and simmering on low heat for an additional 15 minutes. Stir occasionally.

4. While the meat continues simmering on the stove, use two additional burners- to cook rice on one and then boil the eggs on the second.

• Boil 2-4 eggs for each pound of meat cooked.
• Each individual can have at least 1, maybe 2 eggs on his or her plate.

5. Submerge the raw eggs in a deep pot of water and boil on high for 3 minutes.

• After the eggs are fully hard boiled, drain the hot water and let the eggs sit in colder water until they become easier to handle and peel
• After rinsing and peeling the shell off of the eggs, set them aside for a couple of minutes

6. Meanwhile, drain the rice after it is fully cooked, and spoon a generous serving of rice on to each plate.

7. Follow with placing some of the prepared meat and sauce on top of each bed of rice.

8. The final step in dressing the plates is to place 1-2 hard boiled eggs on top of each serving of food.

9. Now the dish is complete. Serve and enjoy!