Fasolia

A Lenten staple in Ethiopian Orthodox kitchens, where roughly 180 fasting days a year forbid meat and dairy — fasolia belongs to the y'tsom (vegan) repertoire developed over centuries. Vegetables like green beans worked their way into everyday Ethiopian cooking around the era of the Italian colonial presence (the 1936–41 occupation, and Italian Eritrea before it). The name is harder to pin down: "fasolia" descends ultimately from the Greek word for beans (the root of Latin phaseolus) and is shared across Greek, Turkish (fasulye), Arabic (fasoulia) and Italian (fagioli), so it may have reached Amharic via Italian during the occupation or, earlier, through Arab and Greek trade around the Red Sea.

The name borrows from Italian fagioli — green beans entered everyday Ethiopian cooking during the 1936-1941 occupation. Niter kibbeh does the work: butter simmered with garlic, ginger, cardamom, fenugreek, koseret, and bishop's weed, milk solids strained off, fat itself becomes the seasoning.

Green beans and carrot batons stewed soft in a slick of niter kibbeh, the spiced clarified butter that defines Ethiopian cooking. Onion melts into the base; turmeric tints it gold; cardamom and fenugreek come up on the steam. Eaten with injera — torn, pinched, scooped. The vegetables should be yielding, not crunchy; al dente means undercooked here.

Niter kibbeh does the work. Butter is simmered with garlic, ginger, cardamom, fenugreek, koseret, and bishop's weed until the milk solids brown and are strained off — the result is shelf-stable, deeply aromatic, and infuses everything it touches. Substitute plain butter or oil and the dish reads thin; the fat itself is the seasoning.