Author: Mary Anne

Shifting into high gear for the party cooking. To try to keep myself sane, I made the meat curries in advance and froze them, so these are done:

– beef curry
– black pork curry
– tamarind shrimp
– lamb curry (mild)

I also made a big batch of coconut sambol. Next step, the veggie dishes (which are all incidentally vegan, which is easy to do with Sri Lankan cooking — just be sure to use oil instead of ghee, and don’t add in the tiny dried shrimp or Maldive fish that are sometimes added to veg dishes).

Yesterday I started off with eight bags of frozen chopped onions and sauteed then in my biggest sauté pan (which is very big) with oil, black mustard seed, cumin seed, cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon stick. That makes a great base for many of our dishes, and will make cooking for a party much faster.

So far, I’ve taken portions of those seasoned onions, and made the two curries that I can do in my sleep, devilled potatoes and sweet carrot curry (with a bit of heat from green chilies). The list of dishes I’m hoping to do is probably longer than I actually have time for, given I have to, you know, teach today, for example. But if I end up with extra seasoned onions, they freeze well, so can be stowed away for a hectic future day.

 

With the school year starting up again and our schedules getting busier, I thought we’d take another stab at trying to do a semi-regular Sunday dinner, where the kids help cook a nice meal, we set the table with cloth napkins and candles, and we eat together and chat…

…rather than what we do most of the time, which is scrambling and eating what’s easy and definitely not all together — we’ve never been an every-night-family-dinner kind of family. (Kevin and I both work at home most of the time, so we get a lot of time with the kids regardless, so it’s never felt like a priority for us to sit down together every night. If we both worked 9-5 jobs outside the home, I suspect we’d do things differently.)

It was lovely, though I admit, all the cooking did make me a bit tired, with everything else that I have in prep for today’s semester start. The cooked fillings can be prepped a day ahead, if needed, so maybe that would’ve been smart, if I’d thought of it. Oh well!

We did a crepe bar, which was one of my standard party tricks for brunches before we had kids, usually with exactly these fillings on offer:

– creamy chicken (sauteéd in onions)
– creamy mushrooms (goes wonderfully with the chicken, for thems that like mushrooms, which is currently me)
– Swiss cheese (goes with both of the above, and we discovered yesterday that both the kids really like Swiss cheese, yay, so we’ll be adding it to the regular fridge options — nice to see them expanding beyond cheddar, as lovely as cheddar is)
– spinach (sauteéd in onions) with feta (this was just me and Kev, so there’s a fair bit left over, but that’s great, it’ll make excellent omelettes for us for the next few days
– bananas & strawberries & Nutella
– lemon & sugar

So delicious — I think we each had at least four filled crepes. Good thing the crepes aren’t that big; I was stuffed by the end of the meal. We didn’t bother with dessert, given the fruit and sweet options, and I think that was the right choice — Kavi and Kevin both ended up with some strawberries and sugar to nibble at the end.

Now, most of us went for fairly standard combinations, but Anand really likes to experiment — so he tried various things, including chicken + banana + sugar!

Which at first, I admit, the rest of us were a little weirded out by, but when you think about it, it’s not SO different from something like a Jamaican chicken with fried plantains dish, right? I wasn’t brave enough to try a bite myself, though.

This was Kavi’s week to pick, so Anand is going next week — he’s requested shepherd’s pie. Kavi’s not a big shepherd’s pie fan, but she’s willing to eat it, and we’re going to pair it with a Caesar salad, which she loves, so that should work. I was thinking about what other Irish appetizers or desserts we might want to include; opinions welcome!