Teff

Fermented sour under sixteen-spice heat. Neither survives the other alone.

Spiced pulse stew scooped in torn pancake. Sour against sweet earth.

Spiced clarified butter is the fat teff has none of. It carries the berbere.

Long-cooked bird, boiled egg, and the sour bread taking all the chilli heat.

Bitter greens on sour bread: two vegetal registers, no sugar between them.

Raw or barely cooked, the acid of the injera does what a marinade would.

Boiled whole into the stew, then eaten in a torn scrap of sour pancake.

Ethiopian korarima is a cousin. Warm resin over fermented grain.

Maple-bitter seed doubles the molasses note already in the grain.

Fermented honey wine beside fermented grain. Both are sour before sweet.

Same country, same roast register. The bitterness in each finds a floor.

Sour ferment plus cocoa tannin: the pancake reads as a bitter biscuit.

Roast malt and lactic sour, already a Belgian trick, transplanted whole.