This past week I had the chance to meet up with my friend Jordan Gray, also known as Starpause, over dinner. I’ve been wanting to shift formats for a while on this blog and coincidentally, he was leaving on tour over the weekend so we thought it was a perfect time to finally get this ball rolling. We’d had many unsuccessful attempts to do a dinner meet-up, and despite possibly having swine flu and the bad turn in weather we still made it work.

Starpause is a one-man chiptune act who just embarked on a micro tour of the western U.S. and I wanted to know what such a musician likes to eat. He told me Ethiopian food, specifically a the goods from a restaurant called Assab- a family run establishment bringing goodness from the country of Eritrea.

Location of Eritrea

It’s an unassuming neighborhood joint tucked away on Geary in the Western Addition. The spicy food is served family style, and you scoop it up with a spongey crepe-like bread called injera. No silverware needed. The food also comes served on a large platter lined with injera, soaking up all the juices from your food so you can eat it at the meal’s end. Delicious.

We sat down and I asked Jordan how often he comes to Assab to eat.
JG: About as often as I can convince people to meet me here
FF: (laughing) So that would be…?
JG: Maybe every two weeks

The owner of the restaurant stop by, and not being well versed in Eritrean food, I let Jordan order. He chose alicha and kantisha for us. One being his favorite: a spicy mushroom dish, and the other being a vegetarian sampler platter, so I could get the full range of flavors. I skipped the honey wine, even though I’ve heard raves about it. My cold was telling me to steer clear of alcohol and go straight for the tea and water. To stay authentic I ordered Ethiopian sparkling water and tea.

FF: So how long have you been making music for?
JG: Since high school…. so… around 1997.
FF: How did you get started?
JG: I was really into lo-fidelity punk and was working at a toy store…

Don’t all good stories start that way? Jordan detailed how he originally got into chip tune by deconstructing toys and creating music with them. As I’m frantically scribbling details about his antics of repurposing toys for musical use he interjected.

JG: You know one thing I like best about this restaurant over other Ethiopian restaurants?
FF: What?
JG: They have soap that doesn’t smell bad in the bathrooms. Most Ethiopian restaurants have this bad industrial soap in the bathrooms. When you’re eating with your hands it’s just the little things…
FF: (Laughing) I never would have thought of that. So what else do you like about this place?
JG: The food is spicy, and the injera is done right.
FF: My coworker warned me that the injera expands in your stomach after you eat it. Is that true?
JG: Hm, I’m not sure. I’ve never thought of that, but I guess it could. It’s easy to eat so much of this food that afterwards you feel too full.

As we’re talking the owner brings over a HUGE platter of our order, along with two sides of injera. With my notepad and our drinks there is barely room on the table for our meal. I forget about my expanded-stomach fears for a minute and dig in. Trying to take notes while eating with my hands is near impossible, but I manage.

MEGA MEAL!

FF: I’ll get professional about this at some point (gesturing to the large pile of lentils I’ve just deposited on my notebook)
JG: I prefer not to be professional about as much as I can
FF: That’s a good plan. So do you always work alone on music?
JG: I do work alone but I love collaborating and working with vocalists. I just worked with this opera singer, and I’m touring with about six other people. Crash faster (Morgan), Trash 80 from LA, and MINUSBABY.
FF: When do you guys leave?
JG: This Friday. It’s a five day tour over a month or so, with the shows taking place on the weekends.
FF: And what are the cities?
JG: LA, SF, Seattle, and Austin
FF: So you’re doing a hometown show. When is that?
JG: November 12th, at the DNA lounge. It’s a Thursday night.
FF: And what kind of food do you put on your rider for shows?
JG: Rider? I don’t get a rider
FF: Chiptune doesn’t earn a rider? OK, OK, so if you have a fantasy imaginary rider, what kind of food would you get?
JG: This. (laughing) Always Ethiopian food
FF: You really like it. So has Ethiopian food ever inspired a song?
JG: I wish my music could be that messy
FF: Have you ever written a song about food?
JG: Yes, I used to have a group in college called the Colon Pipe Crew and we were doing a lot of Gameboy stuff. We were getting noise from car alarms in garbage cans and playing a lot of art openings. We had a song where the chorus was “I wanna feed and fuck you”
FF: That somehow seems appropriate. So what exactly is Chiptune, for people like myself who aren’t familiar with it.
JG: Well, it’s a name like all genres that people despise a bunch but still use anyway. It’s all about appropriating devices to be used for something other than what they were intended to be used for originally.

(Wikipedia describes chiptune as: A chiptune, or chip music, is music written in sound formats where all the sounds are synthesized in real time by a computer or video game console sound chip, instead of using sample-based synthesis. The “golden age” of chiptunes was the mid-1980s to early 1990s, when such sound chips were the most common method for creating music on computers. Chiptunes are closely related to video game music, which often featured chiptunes out of necessity. The term has also been recently applied to more recent compositions that attempt to recreate the chiptune sound for purely aesthetic reasons, albeit with more complex technology.)

JG: People in the [chiptune] scene are generally into other things visually.
FF: Right, because you work in programming by day, and do a lot of other arts based things
JG: There is a lot of crossover. It’s just about appropriating old hardware. For instance you have four sound channels in a gameboy and monophonic synthesizers. You can run a guitar, the drum sound, etc. through each channel. It’s all about making the most with those four sounds.
FF: So it’s almost more about the process than the outcome.
JG: It does have a lot to do with process. I can compose faster on a gameboy than I can on a computer.

We continue eating and I’ve given up trying to keep my writing hand clean from the spicy vegetarian stews (like spiced potatoes and zucchini) I’m scooping up. There is a casual atmosphere that comes from scooping food with your hands.

FF: So how did you first find this place?
JG: I moved here 3-4 years ago and I ate here two years ago. I lived near here and I wanted to find an Ethiopian restaurant so I just always came to eat here. I’m totally blissed out right now. Whenever I eat this it’s just like ‘Ahhhhhh….’
FF: So you were eating Ethiopian food before you moved here. When did you first have it?
JG: In Minneapolis where I grew up, but I didn’t have it until college. There is a decent sized population of Ethiopian people there so the food was all around. This stuff is like my soul food. I was sneezing and feeling pretty awful today, but after this I’m feeling much better.

I have to admit, I’m feeling a lot better, too. Whether from the spicy tea, or the spicy food, somehow part of my illness seems to have faded away. I take out my iphone since in my stupor I forgot to bring my camera and try to snap some shots of the injera up close.

FF: I hope I can get a good snap of this injera with my iphone
JG: I wish I could hold my iphone against the texture of this food and experience it whenever I want.
FF: (laughing) So you’re kind of addicted. Do you ever come here alone?
JG: I never come here by myself, it’s the weirdest thing, I can’t do it.
FF: Well you know doing it by yourself is one of the first signs of real addiction. Is it because of the family style servings?
JG: I don’t know, it just seems like a social meal for me. That’s why I’m always trying to get someone to meet me here.

We’re mopping up the last of our food with the injera on the big platter at this point. Jordan has already ordered an extra injera to tackle this huge plate of food.

FF: So do you have any other projects going right now?
JG: I volunteer at the Kipp school where they have a linux lab. It’s for college-bound inner city kids and we help remake machines so the kids can use them. Basically, we get all kinds of old parts and we’ll take a piece from this machine and a part from that machine and put them together into a working machine.
FF: That’s cool, so all your reconstructing skills from chiptune have come in handy. Have you ever had the chance to do a music program with the kids?
JG: No, I’d love to, but it’s hard to get time in with the actual kids. The work I do there is usually on the weekends and it’s hard to get time in front of them. But yeah, I like to do that if I got the chance.
FF: Sweet. So are you ready for tour?
JG: Yeah! It should be fun. I’m looking forward to it.
FF: Well I’ll see you at your show Thursday.

We wrapped up our meal and I headed home full of spicy magical African goodness. If you want to make Eritrean or Ethiopean food at home, start with the injera and then pick one to two dishes to serve on top of it. This would be perfect for a dinner party with lots of people. You can buy the injera pre-made or do it yourself. Jordan tipped me off to a spot where you can buy injera in San Francisco, but it’s probably hard to find in most places.
To make it you’ll need:
• 1/4 cup teff flour
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup water
• a pinch of salt
• peanut or vegetable oil

• a mixing bowl
• a nonstick pan or cast-iron skillet

Injera is started in a similiar way to sourdough bread, and had a slightly sour taste. There is a long process to make it, but this way is shortened for ease…
1. Put the teff flour in the bottom of a mixing bowl, and sift in the all-purpose flour
2. Slowly add the water, stirring to avoid lumps.
3. Stir in the salt.
4. Heat a nonstick pan or lightly oiled cast-iron skillet until a water
drop dances on the surface. Make sure the surface of the pan is smooth: Otherwise, your injera might fall apart when you try to remove it.
5. Coat the pan with a thin layer of batter. Injera should be thicker than a crêpe, but not as thick as a traditional pancake. It will rise slightly when it heats.
6. Cook until holes appear on the surface of the bread. Once the surface is dry, remove the bread from the pan and let it cool.

Once you have your injeera there are plenty of things you can top it with. Just about any meat or veggies would go great as long as you use Eritrean spices. To make basic Eritrean Berbere (a common spice paste that gives Eritrean food its distinct flavor) just combine the following spices:
2 cups ground red chili pepper
5 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons ground cloves
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground fenugreek
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
You can cook up any stew or veggies with this.

To make the Vegetable Alicha we had, you’ll need:
1 purple onion, sliced
½ cup canola oil or olive oil
2 large carrots, peeled, sliced at angles
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
¼ cup chopped parsley
4 ounces tomato sauce
2 russet potatoes, peeled and cut like large fries
2 zucchini
4 cloves garlic — minced or pushed through garlic press
1 red bell pepper, cored and sliced
1 green bell pepper, cored and sliced
1 yellow bell pepper, cored and sliced
½ head cabbage, sliced and chopped
1 teaspoon mild Madras curry powder
1 teaspoon dried rosemary powder
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt (to taste)
½ cup to 1½ cups water

In a deep, wide frying pan, sauté onions in oil until lightly browned, about 8 minutes. Add celery, tomato, carrots and tomato sauce, and continue to cook on low heat, covered. Cook until carrots soften. Add rosemary powder, pepper and salt. Stir in cabbage. Add curry powder, parsley and garlic. Continue to simmer 5 minutes. Add water if sauce is low. Add potatoes and cook until they soften. Add zucchini, stir. Add peppers and more water, if needed for sauce. Cook until just softened. Serve on injera.

For more of Starpause’s music go here.
To check him out live go to DNA lounge thursday night to check out their San Francisco stop on the tour.
The show starts at 7pm and tickets are $7 in advance, $12 at the door.
You can also RSVP on Facebook.

We’ll be trying to bring you more interviews here spliced in with our regular meal reports so that you can find out what all the movers and shakers in San Francisco are eating.

Filed under: Uncategorized

2 Responses to “Getting my Eritrean on…”

1. L-DUB Says:
   November 9th, 2009 at 3:34 pm

   it’s so random that I met jordan on the flight to NY last time. and I remember minusbaby from the LJ days. he is also a graphic designer.

   mmmmm now I am craving ethiopian!

2. Stephanie - Wasabimon Says:
   December 3rd, 2009 at 2:22 pm

   Dude. I love Eritrean. It’s usually so freaking spicy, though!

Leave a Reply