Chechebsa, or kita firfir, (in Amharic, ቂጣ ፍርፍር ጨጨብሳ) is a breakfast food hailing from Ethiopia.
Chechebsa’s primary ingredient is teff, a grain nearly the size of a poppy seed, which comes from present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. Teff is used to make injera, the sour spongy bread ubiquitous in Ethiopian restaurants throughout the world.
In this dish, teff is used to prepare kita, a bread similar to chapati, which also happens to contain the Ethiopian spice blend berbere, as well as niter kibbe, or clarified butter (ghee); ghee just refers to butter in which all of the water has been strained. Then, it’s all fried, chopped up, and placed in bowl, ready to fill up any unsuspecting ferenji (foreigner).
Although some versions can be made with vegetables, the chechebsa I ordered was served with honey. Without a sweetener, it was very dry, and somehow even heavier.
I was inadvertently introduced to lablabi (لبلابي) while walking around Monastir, Tunisia. Some local market workers were taking their lunch break to crowd a small kiosk in the middle of a pedestrian block. Nearly twenty more people got in their orders before I was noticed, even though I was perched in front of the chefs all along. Now that I know the name of the snack, I greatly look forward to wildly mispronouncing lablabi.
Finding Food Fluency 