Ethiopian · Dessert
Dabo Kolo
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 400 g plain wheat flour
- 60 g honey
- 40 g niter kibbeh, melted
- 20 g sesame seed
- 5 g berbere, for the savoury version
- 4 g salt
- 150 ml warm water
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Kneading doughDry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsShaping by handResting dough: the pause that does the workRubbing fat into flour
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · sesame
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the melted niter kibbeh into the flour, salt, sesame and berbere until the mixture looks like damp sand and holds a shape when squeezed.
- Stir the honey into the warm water, pour it in, and knead to a dough far stiffer than bread; it should feel like modelling clay and barely tack to the hand.
- Rest it covered for 20 minutes, then roll walnut sized lumps into ropes the thickness of a pencil and cut across into pieces the size of a lentil. 20 min
- Toast in a dry heavy pan over medium low heat, shaking every minute, until they rattle like gravel, are freckled dark brown, and no soft give remains when you crush one, 20 to 25 minutes. 25 min
- Tip onto a cold tray in a single layer and leave them alone; they finish hardening as they cool, not in the pan.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
Kneading dough 57 recipes
- The work changed it: what began shaggy and rough is one smooth, cohesive mass, with nothing raggy hanging off it.
- The surface has gone satin and barely tacky, releasing cleanly from hands and board instead of leaving a trail.
- Worked to the point this dough asks for and no further: springy and elastic where structure is wanted, just brought together where tenderness is.
- Torn or cut open, the inside is uniform: no dry streaks, no unmixed pockets, no core of flour that never met the water.
- After its rest it rolls and shapes without snapping back. A dough that fights the pin needed more rest, not more force.
Where it goes wrong Sticking was fought with flour instead of technique or patience, stroke after stroke, until the dough had taken in far more than the formula asked; it turns tight and dry under the hands, and bakes dense however well everything else goes.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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