Author: Mary Anne

Just in case you want to obsessively follow along numbers with me, Feast is currently up to #13 in the category of Indian Cooking, Food, and Wine. (#1 in New Releases in that category, woot!) I’m not sure how likely it is to climb higher ( I think Jed said that it was briefly at #10, but maybe has dipped down again?), but it is fun and exciting nonetheless. 🙂

Reading / buying books question for y’all. Harriet Culver, one of my Kickstarter backers, noted that she was feeling bad that she couldn’t buy the book on launch day because she already had a copy (which is goofy to feel guilty about but I love her for it), and then she realized she could buy the ebook on launch day, boosting it in the rankings, so she did that, and she says that she’ll even use it more, since her household is more likely to use a digital device in the kitchen. (I don’t even know Harriet, but clearly all writers should have friends and readers like her!)

But all that made me realize that I feel a little bad making people buy two editions. Hm. Will have to think this through a little. Stephanie is out of town this weekend, but when she gets back, I think she and I will talk about this with Heather. I sort of think if you buy the hardcover, I’d like you to also be able to get a copy of the ebook for personal use for a nominal extra fee — maybe $5 more or some such.

What do writer / publisher / reader people think?

I wish publishers did that kind of thing generally — if I buy a print edition of a book, have the option of also getting the Kindle edition for $5 more? I think I’d choose that a lot, esp. since I prefer print for having in my office to loan out to students, and for reading relaxedly in the house, or for taking to the beach, and I prefer Kindle for travel (and having a copy always on hand for teaching), but I can rarely convince myself to pay full price for two separate formats.

Thoughts?

(Art print design by porcodiseno.)

https://www.teepublic.com/poster-and-art/2776866-buy-books-reading-book-shelf-space-library-bookwor

I was asked to make a public post with all the cookbook ordering details (instead of just putting them in a comment), so here it is. 🙂

COOKBOOK DETAILS:

1) ORDERING: You can order copies of A Feast of Serendib (signed / personalized, if you like) directly from me right now, at www.serendibkitchen.com, or from my publisher, Mascot Books: https://mascotbooks.com/…/coo…/regional/a-feast-of-serendib/. The limited release paperback can only be ordered directly from my website. If you’re in the U.S., you can also add on my hand-roasted Sri Lankan curry powder.

A Feast of Serendib launched officially March 6, 2020, and we hope it’ll be widely available in bookstores and libraries. You can request it now from your local bookstore or library! Please do! It’s also available on Amazon US, UK, and Canada; you can order it now online.

ORDERING INFO:
978-1-64543-275-3 Hardcover (distributed by Ingram)
978-1-64543-377-4 ebook (on Amazon, etc.)
2370000696366 (trade paperback; only available directly from me, at Serendib Kitchen site; you can also buy the hardcover or ebook there)

2) REVIEW OR BUY IT HERE (reviews are hugely helpful in boosting visibility!):
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/…/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_QmauEbJTRFD…

Books-a-Million
https://www.booksamillion.com/…/Mary-Anne-Mo…/9781645432753…

Barnes & Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-feast-of-ser…/1135510523…

Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/…/sh…/51332647-a-feast-of-serendib

3) JOIN THE COOKBOOK CLUB: If you’d like to support the development of more mostly Sri Lankan recipes, I’d love to have you join the cookbook club — for $2 / month, you’ll get recipes delivered to your inbox (fairly) regularly: https://www.patreon.com/mohanraj. For $10 / month, you can subscribe for fabulous treats mailed to you! (US-only).

4) FOODIE SOCIAL MEDIA:
My personal FB page: https://www.facebook.com/mary.a.mohanraj
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/mamohanraj
Serendib Kitchen blog: http://serendibkitchen.com
Serendib Kitchen Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serendib_kitchen/
Serendib FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/132029834135500/
Serendib FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/mohanrajserendib/

5) PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY starred review: “Mohanraj (Bodies in Motion), a literature professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, introduces readers to the comforting cuisine of Sri Lanka in this illuminating collection of more than 100 recipes. Waves of immigration from China, England, the Netherlands, and Portugal influenced the unique cuisine of Sri Lanka, Mohanraj writes, as evidenced by such dishes as Chinese rolls (a take on classic egg rolls in the form of stuffed crepes that are breaded and fried); fish cutlets (a culinary cousin of Dutch bitterballen fried croquettes); and E
nglish tea sandwiches (filled here with beets, spinach, and carrots). With Sri Lanka’s proximity to India, curry figures heavily, with options for chicken, lamb, cuttlefish, or mackerel. A number of poriyal dishes, consisting of sautéed vegetables with a featured ingredient, such as asparagus or brussels sprouts, showcase a Tamil influence. Throughout, Mohanraj does a superb job of combining easily sourced ingredients with clear, instructive guidance and menu recommendations for all manner of events, including a Royal Feast for over 200 people. This is a terrific survey of an overlooked cuisine.”

*****

Thanks so much for your support! Indie publishing is absolutely reliant on word of mouth and the support of friends, family, and friendly internet acquaintances. 🙂

— Mary Anne

I was so happy eating Roshani‘s salmon curry last night — I was exhausted and just couldn’t cope with cooking anything. I had rice in the fridge, and that was all I needed. And then I finished it off for breakfast today (I almost ate it all last night, because it was so good, even though I was full), and that was also very happy.

It’s reminding me that if I’m going to be really busy with book tour, I should take a day, plan ahead, and make up some healthy easy food for days like that. Otherwise I end up eating random crap, mostly boring starches because they’re easy to grab.

I’m thinking a big batch of fish curry, divided into freezer storage containers, plus bags of rice, also frozen. Maybe a big batch of frozen mixed vegetable poriyal too. That’ll sustain me, and sustain me well.

Spent a few minutes this morning on the subscription boxes for Patreon. I’m pretty sure I can fit two chocolate bars, one set of sweets in a box, one chapstick, one little bag of bath salts, one little bag of curry powder, and a few postcards in there. Maybe a poem too, and/or a little floral bookmark?  Not a bad deal for $30, right, shipped right to your door?

This batch will go out in March — probably pretty early March; I just have to make the second batch of chocolate bars, and I think I know what they’re going to be. Then there’ll be another batch in June. I’m at 11 subscribers right now, and I’m capping it at 25 for now, to make sure I don’t exceed my capacity for actually making them.

You probably want to wait until April to sign up, because otherwise it’ll end up costing you $40 instead of $30. But we might hit cap before that, so it’s a bit of a gamble, sorry! We’re going to try to figure out a better way to do this, maybe through Shopify, but for right now, Patreon is what we can manage, so it’s signing up monthly for a quarterly thing. Not ideal! Apologies!

(But it does mean that the people who signed up in February got a great deal, getting the March box for $20. Early adoption has its benefits…)

(US-only for now, sorry.)

The new GoodReads giveaway (for 5 gorgeous print hardcovers of A Feast of Serendib) is live!

US & Canada folks are encouraged to enter! (We’d do it worldwide, but that doesn’t seem to be an option for GoodReads right now…)

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/304570-a-feast-of-serendib

So, I think I’m ready to talk a little about this new project that crystallized last week. (Photo of dragonfruit chocolate bars ‘crystallized’ for inspiration.)

 

There are multiple elements coming together in this, things I’ve been working on and thinking about for a long time. I’m still not positive of what the final shape will be.

• the memoir: I’ve been working for a while on a project titled _Domestic Resistance_, a meditation on how we stay sane while under siege in the Trump presidency, how handwork and reclamation of heritage skills, appreciation of culture and diversity, celebration of community and the joys of making all came together to sustain me (as I worked on my Sri Lankan cookbook in the last few years) through intense work, deep political frustration, and occasional flailings of despair. Asking how we can work for change without exhausting ourselves.

• the makerspace: we may have found a place in Forest Park for the first stage of the writing / textile arts / tech makerspace that we started planning two years ago. Our hope is that it allows the community to share their knowledge, help each other over the initial humps of uncertainty and anxiety, finding our way to new skills and approaches that make our lives better in a host of ways. I have some legal and financial details to work out still, and then there’ll be a Kickstarter to help get us off the ground (looking for around $25K in initial funding, I think), but I hope we’ll be up and running soon, possibly by May.

(NOTE: the space won’t be wheelchair accessible, unfortunately; you’ll need to be able to navigate a flight of stairs to access it. My plan is that if people who can’t access it want to sign up for a class, we’ll find an alternate accessible location for that class. And then long-term, we’ll continue looking for accessible spaces in the area. Ideally, I’d eventually like to grow into a constellation of spaces in Forest Park, Oak Park, Austin, etc.)

• the magazine: this is the newest bit, and still a bit inchoate. For my memoir, I was already thinking that I wasn’t sure I wanted to write a traditional book — I was wondering what it might look like as a quarterly magazine, sort of a cross between Martha Stewart Living and Granta. Glossy, beautiful photos, a year in the life, combining running for office, the tail end of cancer treatment, the house and garden and parenting and engaging in local politics, and of course, cooking.

Last week, I realized that it would be SO GREAT to extend that into a broader publication. I’ve been increasingly frustrated by how balkanized communications media are becoming, and at least locally, we’re really splitting demographically, with some people reading the print Wednesday Journal, some people mostly on FB groups (often very private ones), some people mostly auditory listeners, and the kids are on TikTok and SnapChat doing god knows what…

If we had a publication that showcased progressive voices and conversations, in a variety of areas (garden, food, schools, etc.) and if we could push it out in multiple media (a print version, an online version, a podcast, TikToks, etc.), maybe we’d have a chance at actually talking to each other, actually listening.

So often when I was running for office, I found that with something as simple as getting rid of fines at the library, people I talked to were initially resistant, but all they needed was for someone to actually present the argument to them, and then they realized that yes, doing this would actually align with their values. And we could afford it too.

*****

That’s where my head is right now. I have a lot more specifics, but I think the next stage is a whole host of conversations. I’m going to want to shape this very carefully, if it’s to do what I hope it’ll do, and I’m going to need a lot of community input.

But I think my own memoir would be interesting in conversation with a broader community magazine, and the magazine would be in conversation with what we do at the makerspace, and as Serendib Press develops, Stephanie and Heather and Darius and Emmanuel and Julia are learning more and more about the publication process, so we’re getting into a better position to do this well.

So that’s where I am right now. I’m about to go out of town, and much of March is super-absorbed with travel and Feast launch events. But I’m going to be talking to people, local and otherwise, about all of this. We’ll see where it takes us.

(We’re going to need a name.)

Last curry bun experiment from Bite Nite. I ended up serving the regular curry buns (previous three posts) on a bed of kale sambol, which was beautiful and delicious and good. I’d do that again.

But as I was making them, I found myself wondering whether I could just add some kale sambol inside the bun, and make a more nutritious and even tastier curry buns. I’m honestly not sure whether to call this a success or not, because the kale definitely cooked while the bun was baking, so you lost all the green sharp freshness of it, and even the raw onions and tomato and coconut mellowed out. That was kind of sad, seeing what happened to the kale. The end flavor was much milder than I was expecting.

But that said — I might do it again, esp. if I was making curry buns to take to a picnic or some such. Get a little vegetable in there with your curry — can’t hurt, might help. And I do think it added a bit of interesting flavor contrast as well.

Kale sambol recipe from cookbook below. I recommend making some every time you make a curry — so good! 

*****

Kale Sambol

I had never been a big kale fan, but my friend, Roshani, completely converted me with her Aunty Indranee’s use of kale in this traditional sambol. In Sri Lanka, this would have been made with a native green, gotu kola, but kale is an excellent substitute (you can also try any other leafy greens, like beet greens, mustard greens, or rainbow chard).

For this preparation, kale is chopped small and tenderized with lime juice. When mixed with the coconut, tomatoes, sugar, and salt, the result is a tasty and addictive sambol that has become an essential component to many of our meals — if I make a meat curry now, I almost always make kale sambol to accompany it, and will often eat more sambol than curry. I’d have it with a little rice, but Kevin likes to just have beef curry and kale sambol together in a bowl, or with steak on a plate, which is also delicious.

1 bunch kale, leaves stripped off (stems discarded)
1 medium onion, minced
1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
1-2 cups cherry tomatoes, chopped
Juice of 2 small limes (about 2-3 TBL)
1-2 TBL sugar
1 tsp fine salt

1. Pulse kale in food processor until completely shredded into small bits.
2. Add onion, coconut, tomato, lime juice, sugar, salt. Mix thoroughly.

Can be served immediately, but best if allowed to sit and blend for an hour or so. Will keep in fridge for a good week—refresh with a little extra lime juice as needed.

For the jackfruit curry buns, I sprinkled them with hemp seed. I’ve never used hemp seed before, but I hear it’s good for you? The exciting part of this, though, were the chickpeas. When I asked around, it seemed like jackfruit buns are a thing in Sri Lanka, and also jackfruit and potato buns.

But I really wanted to amp up the protein in these for my vegetarian friends, so I thought, why not chickpeas? And my peoples, it was good. Make a jackfruit curry, cook it down, add a can of drained chickpeas, simmer away the sauce to a nice, fairly dry curry with concentrated flavor.

You know what made it even better? I wanted just a little more flavor oomph, but without adding a meat product. How to get that umami? I researched what vegetarians use, and it seemed like mushroom powder was a popular option, coming out of Japanese cuisine. Didn’t have that on hand, though. (Recommendations for brands welcome, as I’d like to get some and try playing with it.) Another option, though, was liquid smoke….and I had a vague memory that Kevin had used that at some point.

So I asked him, and yes, we actually had some. I added a bit to the curry, somewhat hesitantly and dubiously, I admit, a little worried that I was going to ruin a big batch of jackfruit and chickpea curry, and I’d have to start all over. I put in maybe 2 tablespoons? But people, it really was good. It felt very weird, deliberately adding smoke to a dish, but on the other hand, traditionally, this kind of curry would be made in a chatti clay pot over a wood fire, so probably you’d get some smoke infused into the dish that way, so one could argue that the liquid smoke is actually *more* traditional than not including it…well, I don’t know if I’m confident making that argument. But I will note that it was good.

I don’t have a fully written out recipe for this yet — I’ll want to make it again with measurements. But this is the jackfruit curry recipe, so you could start with that, double it, add a can of drained chickpeas, add a few T of liquid smoke, and put it all in the buns from the mas paan recipe in my cookbook, and you’d be good to go. 

*****

Jackfruit Curry / Palakai Kari
(30 minutes, serves 6)

Young jackfruit has a texture similar to meat, though softer; it’s more delicate, as is the flavor. It’s easy to find online in cans, packed in brine; it’s also often available at grocery stores, especially ones that cater to vegetarians. This savory curry sauce is identical to what I’d use for beef, but gives a notably different (and delicious) result when cooked with jackfruit instead. I’d serve this with rice, a green vegetable, and chutneys, pickles, and/or sambols.

2 medium onions, chopped fine
1 TBL ginger, chopped fine
3 garlic cloves, chopped fine
3 TBL vegetable oil
1/4 tsp black mustard seed
1/4 tsp cumin seed
1 TBL red chili powder
1 tsp Sri Lankan curry powder
1 lb young jackfruit, cut into bite-size pieces
1/3 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce (optional)
1 tsp salt
2 TBL lime juice
1 cup coconut milk + 1 cup water

1. In a large pot, sauté onions, ginger, and garlic in oil on medium-high with mustard seed and cumin seeds until onions are golden/translucent (not brown), stirring as needed. Add chili powder and cook 1 minute, stirring. Immediately stir in curry powder, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and lime juice.

2. Add jackfruit and stir on high for a few minutes. Add coconut milk and water, stirring gently to combine. Turn down to medium, and let cook 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally; add water if needed. Serve hot with rice or bread.