Daily News-Record
Better Butter - Not Just For Sandwiches, Peanut Butter Also Flavors Soups And Pies
By Martin Cizmar
''... Peanut Butter Soup
At Blue Nile Ethiopian restaurant on Virginia Avenue, peanut butter soup is popular.
Very popular.
"Really, really, really, really popular" actually, according to Mickey Arefaine, daughter of the owners, Endgawork Arefaine and Hamelmal Shiferaw.
The dish isn't actually Ethiopian - it came to the restaurant by way of a sous chef from Togo, where the soup is very popular.
"We'd heard it was really popular in West Africa so we asked her if she could make it. We tried it and we really like it," Arefaine said.
Blue Nile tinkered with the recipe and introduced the soup about a month-and-a-half after the restaurant opened last December. The version served at Blue Nile uses Ethiopian spices and lots of garlic and tomatoes. It's also vegan, which Arefaine's mother wanted because the Ethiopian Orthodox Church observes about 100 fasting days each year when they eat only vegan food.
The soup tastes peanuty but not sweet, Arefaine said.
"You can tell it's based on peanut butter but it doesn't taste like peanut butter," she said. ..." more >>
Daily News-Record
Trip Down The Nile - By
Jessica Clarke
''The feast at Blue Nile Ethiopian Cuisine is not just on the table. It's in the brightly colored baskets on the walls and the framed alphabet that resembles hieroglyphics, in the small pots and cups for coffee ceremonies and the wicker hourglass-shape tables woven by women in the East African nation.
The atmosphere of food and culture suggests abundance, like Ethiopia's Blue Nile River waterfalls depicted on the restaurant's menu.
"In this country, when you talk about Ethiopia, they have that negative image of famine," says Engdawork Arefaine, who owns the business in Harrisonburg with his wife, Hamelmal Shiferaw.
"The only way we can tell people that Ethiopia is a whole lot more than that is to create a cultural center" in their restaurant, Arefaine says.
'They don't even think we grow food in Ethiopia," he says of the couple's native country, an agricultural nation and major coffee producer.
The Blue Nile, which opened in December, is the only Ethiopian restaurant in the Shenandoah Valley, the owners say...
Chris Mars of McGaheysville has eaten at Blue Nile and at Ethiopian restaurants in Washington and Atlanta. He enjoys the communal aspect of meals. "Once you get used to eating injera, you like it," says Mars, a lab technician at Merck & Co. Inc. "It's like using chopsticks when you go to a Japanese or Chinese restaurant. Even though it takes longer, it's fun to do. ..." more >>
Daily News-Record
Something New For Harrisonburg Tastebuds - By Brad Jenkins
Those who taste Hamelmal Shiferaw's Ethiopian cuisine usually ask the same question: "When are you going to open a restaurant?"
After catering church events for the past 11 years and setting up booths at the Harrisonburg International Festival during the past four, Shiferaw, 43, and her husband, Engdawork Arefaine, now have an answer.
In mid-November, the couple, who came to Harrisonburg as refugees in 1982, will open Blue Nile Ethiopian Cuisine ... more >> |
Owners
Engdawork Arefaine
and
Hamelmal Shiferaw