On this episode of Foodnotes Learn how to be a good neighbor at Zagol Ethiopian Restaurant Then sit down and enjoy a flight with us at Black Rabbit Mead Co. ♪ jazzy theme music ♪ Funding for FoodNotes* is provid Nevada Humanities Meg and Dillard Myers Respiralogics Gregory Nelson and by PBS's Reno members.

Hello.

Welcome to FoodNotes*.

I'm Enrique Sandoval.

And I'm Christina Le.

What does it mean to be a good neighbor?

For Shita, it means eating together and making sure everyones looked after.

She told us why she loves Zagol over a plate of her Ethiopian di Come along with us!

I do everything.

I clean, I cook, I cashier I do everything for the last 17 years.

This is Shita, the woman single handedly running Zagol, an Ethiopian Restaurant in Reno, Nevada.

And she's prepared a whole platter of traditional Ethiopian food for us!

*paper sound* ♪ jazzy theme music ♪ ♪ African hip hop music ♪ We have traditional Ethiopian food, four different things from the menu, main important thing it's called injera.

You use this to scoop the food to eat you tear this bread a little bit.

So I touch it.

It will be mine.

and then you just pinch the food with it.

And then you can eat it.

But for the first time, people I want you to taste it individually Christina: oooo!

I love how spongy it is.

It has a very sour taste to it.

It's kind of crepe like.

It's malleable.

It feels very natural when you start eating the injera bread.

That's the plate that's soaked up all of the flavors from all the dishes.

Because it has all the holes in, it picks up the sauces and the flavor into it.

And grabs the food better.

It's kind of fun and tactile I don't know, I just always like eating with my hands.

The food just taste better if you eat with your fingers.

A traditional Ethiopian meal is often served on a big platter, covered with injera, a spongy flatbread made from fermented teff flour.

Injera acts as both the plate and the utensil, and it's essential for Ethiopian family gatherings and celebrations.

In fact, the fermentation kickstarter ersho is often passed down through generations, similar to a sour dough starter.

Since injera is so ingrained in many Ethiopian traditions and celebrations, sharing, injera is often associated with respect, love, affection and connection.

Kitfo, which is very spicy.

It can serve a two way.

It can serve cooked or raw.

I use a little bit clarified butter a little salt a lot of cardamom and cayenne pepper.

I cook a little bit for us right now here.

But normally you warm the butter, you just put the meat, then you tossed it and you serve it to just kind of raw like tartar.

And that's pretty traditional?

Yes.

Very traditional.

Zilzil, which is lean beef.

It cuts into strips.

That one is like the same spices has, but it goes on the grill, it goes over the onion.

It came out sizzling.

when I serve to the people, come with the sizzling they say “oh my god!” This is cayenne pepper but it has a lot of different spice in there.

And this is fresh garlic.

And then this is black cardamom this one, you said it had cardamom in it.

Yeah.

I do taste it.

I like the spiciness of that one.

it's a little bit Tangier to me.

And I do enjoy this texture of this beef and the onions, because the onions are also not too cooked.

They have a crunch bite to them.

It's very hearty sourness, the tanginess of the bread combines really well with the savory ness of the meat, the sweetness of the onions.

I could smell it, come through the kitchen Ethiopian food has very strong smell.

when I make the big pot.

with the onion.

and the whole people passing here and they say my God what's that smell on my clothes.

Yeah.

My things maybe sometimes smell for a day or two.

Is there an alcohol in this?

Yes.

Okay.

it, like, melds together with the onions.

Really well.

Because, this one is flaming.

in Chinese culture, that flavor, you kind of get from a wok.

and in Cantonese its called “wok hei”, the heat from the wok And that's kind of the flavor.

Whatever spice in that.

It holds it, and then it flames it.

♪ jazzy music ends ♪ ♪ gentle music ♪ What was it like growing up in Ethiopia?

Growing up is like, people have to help each other, you know, if you have kids.

if have a good, income you'll have to step in and help your family.

And if it's not somebody, you don't have kids, they don't have anything.

There there is no Social Security money.

There is no, retirement home.

There is no nursing home.

There's nothing.

So your neighbor step in.

They take turns to feed those person.

They wash their clothes, they just take care of them.

having to depend on your neighbors to take care of you That really influences the food and how you eat it.

No matter what you do, you eat together.

Thats why these things come, you know, because we don't have individual plates for the people to give.

They serve you this big platter.

They fill it up with a lot of different things.

for four, or five or six of them.

Everybody share.

Ethiopia is the largest and most populated country in the Horn of Africa, with its capital, Addis Ababa, located near the center.

It's one of the oldest countries in the world, and its borders have shifted over the millennia.

Ethiopia was one of the first nations to sign the U.N. charter and played a key role in African decolonization, which led to the formation of the Organization of African Unity.

shaped by a rich history from the spice trade.

Ethiopian food features bold, unique flavors that blend earthy, spicy and sour notes ♪ gentle music ends ♪ That one is Number Two.

Gored Gored.

That has chili.

you can get a lot of the spice, it's like big on flavor and the meat feels more tender you know, when you have something like really fatty but then something tart comes in, it kind of helps balance that out.

So it's not...

It's not too greasy.

Yeah, it's not too heavy for you.

Yeah.

And then the vegetable.

Well, you know, there's six different vegetables I have, and it's all, vegan.

with the stems and the leaves.

It's just a nice texture to have because there's a bit of a bite to it.

Yeah, Yeah.

Like a crunchy the collard greens.

Theyre leafy.

The hardyness of the meat, the savory tenderness also combining with the leafy ness of the collard greens.

They're balancing each other out.

You can feel it.

normally when we make the Kitfo we always has Gomen to go with it.

And then in the side of it, we have homemade cottage cheese, So those three always go together.

That's how it's normally served.

You also do a coffee ritual.

Can you kind of talk a bit about that?

how a coffee ceremony started is, the man, go to work to make money, the woman to stay behind, to take care of the family So the woman need to get together and chat or gossip.

So they make the coffee because it takes long hours they drink that coffee and they talk and they gossip and they still do their stuff, And then before lunch time, they all go home because their husband come home for lunch.

So that's how coffee ceremony started.

Did you know Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee?

It's true.

Coffee has a rich history in Ethiopia, not just as a beloved drink, but as a key part of social life.

During traditional coffee ceremonies, people gather to chat, share news and pass down wisdom through generations.

The process takes several hours and starts with roasting green coffee beans until they turn a rich brown, then grinding them with a mortar and pestle and brewing them in a clay pot called the Jebena.

The coffee is served in three cups.

The first Abol is when the coffee is the strongest and most flavorful.

The second tona is more mild in taste since the same grounds are used and the last, Bereka is the lightest, signifying the end of the ceremony.

Snacks like roasted barley or popcorn are usually served alongside the coffee, but milk is never added.

even though the ceremony has evolved over time.

it remains a common and cherished way to connect with others.

♪ jazzy music ends ♪ ♪ gentle guitar music ♪ I've eaten all the bread.

So now I can actually just start- You go around here.

I can just start taking it from the plate.

I want to eat the bowl or the plate and then you go like this and eat.

Yes, it's good.

Are these dishes important to you?

Yes.

To me especially.

I make it with all my soul because I love to cook, I love to eat food.

and another thing, where can you go get Ethiopian food?

This you don't get anywhere.

Its very different.

Its very tasty ♪ gentle music ♪ What is zagol?

This shell right here in my language its called zagol.

Zagol translates the seashell in Amharic and usually references Cowrie shells.

Cowrie shells have played a significant role in Ethiopian and African culture for centuries.

These small, durable white shells are used to create jewelry, hair accessories and even instruments like the Shekere which can create calming sounds for infants.

Cowrie Shells were once used as currency because they were portable and hard to counterfeit, which means that they slowly made their way around the world.

So now we know what Zagol is.

But why name the restaurant Zagol?

When the woman has a baby.

They make a baby carrier the bottom of that, they put these all down on the bottom.

So they carry the baby, every time she move, just make Sound of Music.

it just make the baby calm and go to sleep.

I opened this a restaurant in 2007 I was nervous when I first opened the restaurant.

So what's going to make me calm?

This is Zagol, and make the baby calm.

Maybe make me calm.

Don't get nervous.

It's okay.

Everything's going to be okay.

♪ music transition ♪ As a little girl I wanted to do my own business.

I came from really poor family back home.

So I just wanted to have something on my own, and I also taught myself how to cook.

maybe it was good things that my parent didn't have anything because, maybe they have money.

Maybe I didn't learn anything.

where I come from, if you have money people have servants.

They have somebody to cook for them.

But I didn't have that chance.

So I have to better myself.

Even now, if I go anywhere else at the restaurant and I could eat that food I might not exactly have what they do, but I can cook it similar.

I have that kind of gift.

So you can figure out what kind of spices are in it?

Right.

Eating a dish and then trying to recreate it.

I couldn't do that.

I go up to the pantry and I'll pull out some paprika and I'll smell it probably, and go put it in, and then it'll taste nothing like what I wanted it to.

you had to practice again and again and again.

And that makes it even better.

You can feel the love I feel that way all the time.

Yeah.

I wish I don't get old, I can cook forever.

I know I really work hard.

And I puts my kids through college and I pay off my house because of the restaurant.

That's awesome.

I reach my goal for myself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is it meaningful to be able to share these recipes with everyone in Reno?

Yes, very, I didn't plan to open a restaurant when I first came here.

I've been here over 40 years.

It mean a lot to me now.

Bringing my culture here, it's important to me, I'm really happy I opened this restaurant to share my recipes, my food, my culture.

I just dont want this restaurant to disappear If someone wanted to come and take it over.

Not for any other food, but just for Ethiopian food.

That's all I want to do.

I just don't want it to go away Shita says she's always looking for someone to take it over after her and even says she'll happily teach them everything she knows.

Because I'm getting old, I'm getting tired, I want to pass it down to someone, can pick it up after me.

Thats all.

Thats all.

You put your heart into making this.

And we do appreciate and can feel that through the food.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing this with me.

You know, the great thing about having the food served on the in Means that theres new flavor combinations along the whole pla It was fun catching the similari between the flavors of Wok Hei and the Zilzil To learn more about Zagol, visit zagolofreno.com.

I know we eat a lot, but how abo some drinks?

Maybe a meadery?

We know one, Black Rabbit Mead Company.

Hobbies turned into careers for and Will, two former schoolteach Watch honey turn to wine, well...mead, actually.

Mead that caught us off guard again and again and again.

Heres a bee farm!

Its run by Al.

Hes got lots of bees.

Heres Will!

Co-founder of Black Rabbit Mead Company.

And this is the honey that the bees made.

The honey heads here to be turned into mead.

Guided by the other co-founder of Black Rabbit Mead Company, Jake.

Woah!

They used the mead to make these drinks.

Its the Bees Meads!

♪ jazzy theme music ♪ ♪ upbeat music ♪ The history of Black Rabbit rooted in the fact that its owners, its founders were two high school teachers we met his teachers down at the charter school in Carson City.

I taught social studies and Will taught science.

I actually had shared an office with the math teacher who happened to be one of the largest honey producers in the area, Al with Al bees.

I just one day said, Hey, I got some, some honey, it's part of my honey business.

he had a bunch of honey that it crystallized and we had a bunch of time on our hands, I guess you could say.

But my background is in microbial ecology study how microorganisms interact with their environment.

But I had never done any sort of homebrewing.

I got them some honey and I bought them a kit and, you know, that's all I did for me.

All I wanted was, to make some mead.

Al said, Hey, I got this, honey.

I'd be curious what it tastes like as a mead.

You seem to like microbes.

Yes, like, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure!

Whats mead?

* laughter * Yeah, but yeah, let's.

Let's try it.

mead is any alcohol fermented from honey.

So if you ferment grapes, you get wine, apples, you get cider.

If you ferment honey, you get mead.

most mead is made like a sweet wine.

It's like that higher abv a lot of residual sugar, The way we do it, it's a little different.

It's more like a ciders.

So they're all just under 7% alcohol carbonated.

And then we specialize in just a ton of different infusions.

Mead, also known as Honey wine, is one of the world's oldest alcoholic drinks and is traditionally made with just honey water and yeast.

Mead's history is hard to pin down, since it likely developed in many cultures independently, It has been found in multiple regions from Neolithic China to medieval Europe and ancient Ethiopia.

In fact, chemical analysis of pottery jars from the Jiahu Village in China shows that people were making a fermented rice wine with honey and fruit as far back as the seventh millennium B.C.

Mead has been referenced in many ancient stories.

It's called The Drink of the Gods in Greek Mythology and has been mentioned in Beowulf and the works of Aristotle.

Today, it's making a comeback as a sustainable, paleo friendly, gluten free alcoholic drink.

So with all this talk about Mead, let's go ahead and dive into some of the deliciousness that we have here in front of us.

We always like to start off with the Church of Roger.

So the Church of Roger is mead in its simplest and most humble form.

It's just honey water and yeast It's a very light.

It's a very delicate mead.

Wow, I was surprised how light it was and not very sweet.

Yeah.

No, that is very light, with this I understand you lower the ABV, make it a lot easier to drink a lot smoother it has a very clean taste and a little bit of a tartness to it, which is very nice and unexpected.

This Mead took us years to figure out We call it the Church of Roger because this is kind of our church all the other meads come out of it.

It's named after my dad who helped build out the Meadery.

Black Rabbit Mead Company is the first meadery in Nevada and we got to go inside to see how the process works.

honey water, and yeast that's the base for any type of mead that you want to make.

we add about two barrels, 55 gallon barrels of honey into one of our tanks.

Here we ferment with a wine yeast to help eat through all of the honey that's in there.

We don't do any type of filtration.

What we do is rack it, interesting term for taking it off, all the dead yeast and lees, all the nutrients at the bottom.

So you have a layer of like thick stuff at the bottom.

You just take it off of that, put it in a new tank to take it off of that put it in a new tank Fermentation is a process where the sugars are used to create energy for microorganisms which produce byproducts that transform into new products for humans.

for example.

The microorganisms in yeast convert sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, which is key for making drinks like mead.

It's been used for many millennia as one of the simplest ways to preserve food, boost nutrition and improve taste.

There are several types of fermentation that creates a variety of products from alcohol and bread to vinegar and kimchi to fuel and penicillin.

But today we're focusing on how fermentation is used to make mead.

we grind up or food process, a bunch of freeze dried fruits or herbs and spices, and then they'll sit in the mead for anywhere from 8 hours to two weeks, From there, we pull everything out.

We let it age for another week or two, and then it will get pumped into this tank behind me.

it'll stay in here after it's carbonated overnight, and then we will pump it either through kegs into the bottling line like we got a Jon doing here or into our canning line.

♪ music fades into rock music ♪ a black rabbit mead company we strictly use for mead production.

A very unique type of honey.

It's called rabbit brush and alfalfa honey.

particularly the pollen source for the bees is going to be rabbit brush, one of the most abundant native plants that we have here in Nevada along with alfalfa, because Nevada has a big alfalfa growing sector.

So this rabbit brush and alfalfa honey is a really rich, very flavorful honey, our style of mead is a lot lighter And so having a really rich, flavorful honey is important for those honey qualities to be able to still shine through honey is that sweet liquid gold made by our buzzing friends, the bees!!

Honey varies in color and flavor, depending on which plants.

The bees collect nectar from.

Meaning each hive has its own unique honey.

But how do they do it?

Once the bees collect nectar, they regurgitate it into each other's stomachs, where enzymes break it down and remove some water, That process turns it into simple sugars that are then deposited into honeycomb.

Inside the hive, the bees constant fanning of their wings evaporates water in the nectar and helps it thicken into honey.

A hive produces about 55 pounds of surplus honey each year.

which beekeepers like Al harvest and bottle.

Some people even use it to make mead.

we were like mad scientists for many years Jake and I just started making the mead together, and Al kept just giving us honey.

We would all just share the bottles And we never really used any honey other than what Al has provided for us.

it's a fun partnership that we've had over the years.

how do you decide on the flavor combinations you kind of have a sense of what you want to do beforehand or do you experiment how does that work?

we have an idea of kind of where we want to end up come up with a bunch of different recipe ideas and then we'll start playing with gallon batches of them we always want to take it like to the extreme of like, what's way too sour.

Okay, now how do we dial it back from that?

what's way too sweet?

How do we dial back from that?

So this is our Hawaiian ember.

It's a pineapple and jalapeno Mead I love pineapple and jalepeno pizza in particular.

And for some reason I had the idea of like, what would a mead taste like And it ended up tasting really nice.

It's actually not spicy at all.

The jalepeno is just there for flavor.

and then the pineapple gives it a nice light, sweet creaminess.

Wow.

the robustness of taste of the jalepeno , very present.

It's not overwhelming.

very earthy and kind of a shock, I was expecting more of like a kick of a jalepeno.

Its essentially like what you would have if you took a bite of a jalepeno, but minus the seeds and the caps.

And that would provide the burn you taste the undertone of the pineapple Let's dive in to the B.L.

bliss that our blueberry lemon Mead is named after D.L.

Bliss State Park and just southwestern Tahoe.

you can tell with just the color that, you know, there's something different than the meads that we've tried.

the entirety of that color comes from the blueberries that we use in there along with fresh lemon juice, When I go for a drink, the first thing I actually notice is the smell.

I get hit with the smell of the blueberries right away it's balance between the, blueberry flavor and the tartness of the lemon.

also again, surprising because I feel like the commonality of something that is a lemon drink would be just that.

It's very tart.

Yeah, very sour.

Maybe in that lemon is the stronger flavor of the two, but I'm actually finding the blueberry present itself first gentle, but not subtle.

Next up, a different style of mead cocktail style, which takes a cider style mead and uses spirits, liquors, Sirups and more to create stronger flavor profiles designed to be poured over ice like a cocktail.

is called Summer of 1864.

It takes the very first mead that we tried today.

The church of Rodger, we put some rye whiskey into it.

We put a couple of different types of bitters into it, a little bit of brown sugar and some water issues So kind of drinks like a whiskey punch, enjoy this.

the first sip, I get a hit of lychee flavor.

Yes.

Yeah.

Is that in here or.

And I only get excited because I love lychee so much.

the ingredients of things don't necessarily create the flavors that you would expect.

And you find that with a variety of our meads it's not just about the ingredients, but it's about the way that they work together and potentially new things that they can create as a result of it.

it kind of tastes like a very refreshing summer drink, catch a little bit of those bitters.

with that additional sweetness from like the orange juice, the Citrusy kind nuttiness of the mead every drink is a little mini exploration of what flavors do I taste and when do I taste them, where do I find them?

It's fun.

there's a tremendous amount of love that goes into each and every thing that we do here.

we're passionate at what we do, and we want to be able to share that passion with our community in a really enjoyable way.

Jake and I got into this not because we loved mead or want to present the worlds best mead by any means, we got into it because we were intrigued.

and we wanted to share that with a lot of our family and friends.

And it took us years to figure out how to do well.

Teas themselves have a lot of diversity Thank you so much for coming in and checking us out and enjoying what we're doing here.

♪♪ By the way, those drinks did, in fact, taste as good as they l Yeah, for some reason jalapeño d just keep proving me wrong on th If you want to learn more about Black Rabbit Mead Company, visit their website, blackrabbitmeads.com That's all the time we have today on FoodNotes*.

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Check us out on the PBS app.

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While you're there, click the subscribe button so you don't miss any of our new videos.

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Thanks for joining us today!

Im thirsty.

Coffee or mead?

So, wired or sleepy?

Why not both?

Thank you for watching!

♪ Upbeat music ♪ Christina: Cute!

♪♪ Al: See they kind of probe.... ♪♪ Christina: (giggles) ♪♪ Christina: Friendly!

Al: Hey look at the llama!

Christina: Yeah, theyre so cute Al: They like cruisin around.

Christina: They came to visit.

Al: They have the funniest necks when their hairs all shaved off ♪ Jazzy music ♪ Funding for FoodNotes* is provid Nevada Humanities Meg and Dillard Myers Respiralogics Gregory Nelson and by PBS's Reno members.