Doro Wat

Feast World Kitchen in Spokane serves as a phenomenal example of how delicious an experience it can be to support immigrant and refugee neighbors. The nonprofit restaurant’s chef partners come from a rotation of dozens who represent the cuisine of their home country when they are in the kitchen. The menu on any given day might feature dishes from Syria, Sudan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Kenya or Senegal (among many other countries). As co-director Maisa Abudayha notes on Episode 7 of the current season, “It’s like traveling all over the world in this small kitchen.”

On the day that Washington Grown visited Feast World Kitchen, host Kristi Gorenson cooked alongside chef Beity, who shared one of the most beloved recipes from her native Ethiopia: doro wot. It may translate directly as “chicken stew,” but that hardly reflects the richly fragrant – and sometimes rather spicy – character of this iconic dish. This is quite a distinctive chicken stew.

A generous amount of chopped red onion serves as the foundation for a long-cooked mixture that simmers with chicken legs and, later, hard-cooked eggs. Chief among the seasonings added is the quintessential Ethiopian spice blend berbere, which can be made with many

The nonprofit impact of Feast World Kitchen in the past year

31,143 $343,755.07

How many meals were served in the past year via restaurant and catering program

How much Feast chef partners were paid in food sales revenue

30+

How many chefs from around the world have engaged in business training events different spices. Among those commonly included in berbere are chiles, ground ginger, black peppercorns, cardamom and cinnamon. It can be quite spicy, depending on the particular blend used, so the heat level of the resulting doro wot can vary too.

Once the foundation of onions cooked with spices is made, chicken drumsticks are added to the pot, along with some liquid, and the mixture cooks slowly for a couple of hours until the liquids are reduced and the flavors are well developed. Toward the end of cooking, hard-cooked eggs are added as well.

The distinctive bread of Ethiopia – injera – is, of course, served alongside. Guests tear pieces of the tender, spongy bread to use for picking up portions of the stew for eating. The bread's tangy flavor is an ideal complement to the robustly flavored stew. Lentils are among common accompaniments that might be served alongside doro wot and similar stews. Beity’s version cooks the lentils with onion, garlic, ginger, cardamom, and – little surprise – some of the berbere spice mix that is so prevalent among the vivid flavors of Ethiopian cooking.

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In southeast Washington, Clay Hutchens soaks in the vista from his green pea field. Here at Hutchens Family Farm in Columbia County, it feels like you’re floating in a sea of farmland.

The view captures many reasons why Clay and other farmers value sustainability. Yes, part of it is about preserving beautiful scenery. But, as a farmer, Clay sees other things worth conserving, too.

He sees a landscape rich with productive soils. He sees crops that feed a growing population. And he sees agricultural and natural resources that future generations will need.

“We want our soils to be productive for a long time because, ultimately, we produce a lot of food,” said Clay. “We've got a responsibility to take care of it for future generations.”

That responsibility is something that farmers take very seriously. Washington's farmers step up and face that challenge every day, in order to steward their resources well while providing a safe and abundant food supply. Clay partners with the Columbia Conservation District to build sustainability into his operation.

Aneesha Dieu, Columbia Conservation District manager, helps connect farmers with the Voluntary Stewardship Program (VSP), a program that empowers farmers to take actions that sustain agricultural and natural resources.

“The landowners get to really own the projects because they feel like they have the freedom of being able to do that project on their own,” said Aneesha.

One of many VSP-eligible projects is soil testing. It’s been a help for Clay, and other farmers benefit from data captured from his fields.

“We've got a field where we've taken many soil samples. The conservation district can take that compiled data and see what we learn,” said Clay. “Hopefully, we can find where the economic thresholds of applying some of these products are to help other farmers besides just us. That's the ultimate goal, to help not just this farm, but to learn so we can continue to try to find better ways to produce food.”

While valuable, the cost of these activities can be prohibitive. Through programs like VSP, the Columbia Conservation District offers cost-share, meaning they cover a portion of the cost of eligible activities.

“The amount of money it would take to do some of these trials on our own is — if not cost-prohibitive — it's at least daunting,” said Clay. “That's really the only way that I would be participating in something like this, is because of that cost-share.”

The farm-friendly nature of VSP helps preserve agricultural land that’s increasingly under threat. In fact, American Farmland Trust reports that Washington lost 98,000 acres of farmland to development between 20012016, and we’re projected to lose much more by 2040.