Sri Lankan Curried Roast Squash with Cashews

(1 hr, serves 6-8)

If you’re going to be roasting squash, you can quickly knock up a lovely curry sauce while the squash is cooking. This is a long list of spices, but the process is very simple — just sauté onions with seasonings, add some tang and coconut milk, and you’re basically done. Cashews add protein (and deliciousness), helping to make this a complete meal.

You can use any squash, but I think the combo of butternut and acorn is particularly delicious.

1 butternut squash
1 acorn squash
1/4 c. vegetable oil (to drizzle)
2 t. salt
2 t. pepper
2 t. jaggery or brown sugar
2 t. Sri Lankan curry powder
1/4 c. vegetable oil
2 red onions, chopped fine
1-3 green chilies, seeded and chopped
1 T ginger, chopped fine
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 t. black or brown mustard seed
1 t. cumin seed
1 stick cinnamon
3 cloves
3 cardamom pods
1 stalk curry leaves (about a dozen leaves)
1 c. cashew halves
1 t. tamarind paste
1 c. coconut milk
a little more curry powder and salt, to taste
lime juice, to taste
1/2 – 1 c. sultanas, optional

chopped cilantro or other greens to garnish, optional

1. Prep squash with first four seasonings and set squash to roasting, per previous recipe.

2. Sauté onions in oil on medium-high heat, stirring. Add in chilies, ginger, garlic, mustard seed, cumin seed, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom pods, curry leaves, and cashews; sauté until golden.

NOTE: If you’re not strictly vegan, it would be culturally appropriate to add 1-2 t. dried Maldive fish or something similar with the sautéing onions, which will bump up the umami component; if you do that, you may want to reduce salt.

3. Add tamarind paste and coconut milk, stir until well combined. Taste and adjust seasonings — you may want to add a little more curry powder, salt, and/or lime juice. If you want a more liquid sauce, add water and stir to blend well; if you want it thicker, let simmer to desired thickness.

4. When you’re happy with the curry sauce, add cut up roasted squash (if the squash isn’t ready yet, just turn off the heat on the sauce until it is). Roast squash should be somewhat sweet already, but I like adding in some sultanas for added pops of sweetness in the curry, to balance the tang and the spice.

Serve hot with rice or bread. Lovely with sambols and pickles.

Sri Lankan-Spiced Roast Butternut Squash

(10 minutes prep + 50 minutes roasting time, serves 2)

Roasting in an oven is not a common process in tropical Sri Lanka, but I live in Chicago, and roasting squash brings out the sweetness beautifully. This is a simple dish, super-easy to prep on a night when you’re tired, especially if you’re looking for something warm and comforting.

Squash can be a little difficult to cut up, so I tend to just split it and then roast; it’s easy to peel afterwards. But if you have the energy to peel and cube it raw, then you can get seasonings spread more evenly on all the sides of the cubes.

1 butternut squash, split in half
drizzle of oil (about 1/4 c.)
1 t. salt
1 t. pepper
1 t. Sri Lankan roasted curry powder

1 t. jaggery or brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 450 F.

2. Split squash (or peel and cube), drizzle with oil and seasonings. Place cut side up on foil-covered baking sheet (for ease of clean-up.) Bake about 50 minutes, until tender.

3. Let cool slightly, then peel and cut to bite-size pieces.

Serve hot with rice; I’ve added a topping of fresh micro beet greens here. This is very simple as is — you could add a coconut milk drizzle, another vegetable dish (a varai, perhaps), or a sambol or pickle accompaniment, to add complexity and interest.

Nice to Wake up to Scones

Nice to wake up to scones. 🙂 The kids, sadly, don’t love these because of the ginger — it’s a bit too intense a flavor for them. So I’m going to be packing most of them up later today to drop off to a few neighbors. But it was nice to wander down, a little groggy, and have these waiting for my breakfast. Reheat in toaster oven a few minutes, split, spread with butter and mango-passionfruit curd. YUM.

Vegan Mango & Ginger Scones

(40 minutes, makes 16 mini scones)

When researching vegan scone recipes, I found many versions that used ground flax seeds, which seem to be used as an egg substitute — but I don’t generally have flax seeds on hand, and was hoping to avoid buying extra ingredients.

Honestly, these didn’t seem to need them! Cream scones don’t generally require eggs. The solid coconut oil happily takes the place of butter, and rich coconut milk substitutes beautifully for cream. They’re delicious, light and tender, and quite more-ish, just as they are!

4 c. flour
2 T baking powder
2 T sugar
1/4 t. salt
1/2 c. room temperature coconut oil (solid)
1 1/3 c. coconut milk
1/4 c. dried mango, chopped
1/4 c. crystallized ginger, chopped

2 T. jaggery or dark brown sugar, optional

1. Preheat oven to 425 F.

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

3. Chop coconut oil small and rub into the flour with your fingers until the flour looks pebbly.

4. Add coconut milk and gently combine with a silicone spatula or fork; do not overwork. Stir in mango and ginger.

5. Refrigerate dough for 15-20 minutes for better rise.

6. If using a mold, spray with oil; alternately, spray oil or add a sheet of parchment paper to a baking sheet. Fill mold with dough, pressing gently to fill. Alternately, press dough into a circle and cut into wedges, or cut out circles. Places wedges or circles about 1″ apart on sheet. Sprinkle scones with jaggery or brown sugar.

7. Bake for 14-18 minutes, until scones begin to brown. Remove from oven and serve warm. Traditionally they’d be split, and spread with butter, jam, clotted cream, curd, or whatever you like.

NOTE: Scones may be cooled and stored airtight at room temperature for several days; they can be frozen for longer storage.

Mango & Ginger Cream Scones

(25 minutes, makes 16 mini scones)

Fast, simple, classic, delicious. I find kitchen shears work best for chopping up dried mango and ginger.

3 c. flour
1 T baking powder
1 t. salt
1/4 c. sugar
1 t. vanilla
1 1/3 c. heavy cream
1/4 c. dried mango, chopped into small pieces
1/4 c. dried crystallized ginger, chopped into small pieces
2-3 T additional heavy cream, optional

a few T sugar, optional

1. Preheat oven to 425F.

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.

3. Combine vanilla and cream, drizzle over dry ingredients, stirring gently to combine. Try not to overwork, or scones will become tough. Stir in mango and ginger.

4. If using a mold, spray with oil; alternately, spray oil or add a sheet of parchment paper to a baking sheet. Fill mold with dough, pressing gently to fill. Alternately, press dough into a circle and cut into wedges, or cut out circles. Place wedges or circles about 1″ apart on sheet.

5. Optional: brush scones with cream and sprinkle with sugar.

6. Bake for 14-15 minutes, until scones begin to brown. Remove from oven and serve warm. Traditionally they’d be split, and spread with butter, jam, clotted cream, curd, or whatever you like.

Served here with mango & passionfruit curd (recipe: https://serendibkitchen.com/2021/01/17/mango-passionfruit-curd/)

NOTE: Scones may be cooled and stored airtight at room temperature for several days; they can be frozen for longer storage.

The Perfect Ceylon Curry

Reminder note about two cook-alongs this week — Wednesday Jan 27 & Friday January 29! For Friday’s class, I’m tentatively planning to do both a meat and vegetarian (in fact, vegan) option (probably eggplant curry). Classes start at 5:30 CST, and people are welcome to just watch, chat, (and knit or crochet if they like) if they don’t feel like cooking along.

“Join us and special guest Mary Anne Mohanraj (2020 Fiberworld host!) to create the perfect Ceylon Curry mix! Mary Anne will take us through creating this delectable mix and then follow up with a hands-on make-along on January 29th to make the dish (YUM!). Join us for one or both events to put some spice in your new year!”

You can also buy a ‘spice bundle’ on the Fiberworld site, but it would arrive after the class. So if you’re signing up and want to make curry powder along with me, you might want to pick up the ingredients and supplies yourself in advance. You’ll need:

1 c. coriander seeds
1/2 c. cumin seeds
1 T fennel seeds
1 rounded t. fenugreek seeds (aka methi seeds)
1 cinnamon stick, about 2 inches
1 rounded t. whole cloves
1 rounded t. cardamom seeds
2 T dried curry leaves (optional)

2 rounded t. cayenne (optional)

+ a mortar and pestle or dedicated spice grinder (I use a coffee grinder)

Sign up here: https://fiberworldshow.com

A Kickstarter for Vegan Serendib?

Folks, I am contemplating whether it makes sense to run a little Kickstarter for the Vegan Serendib cookbook. Originally, I hoped the profits from Feast would just cover the production costs, but the pandemic kind of shattered that hope — not anytime soon, anyway.

We’re not doing a print run, just POD, so I don’t need to raise a large amount of money in advance, thankfully. But there ARE some costs — aside from my time (ha ha), there’s Stephanie Bailey’s time editing and producing the book, the cover artist’s cost, etc. I feel like I JUST ran a Kickstarter for the podcast, and maybe my readers have Kickstarter fatigue from me? But maybe this is a completely different set of readers, and I shouldn’t worry about it?

I think we’d keep it very simple — essentially, Kickstarting it would be letting you pre-order it at a small discount — probably free shipping (plus possibly getting it a few months early).

Production costs are something like $3000 or so, so at $40 for a hardcover, 75 people pre-ordering through Kickstarter would cover it. Thoughts?

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Mango & Passionfruit Ice Cream in the Dead of Winter

Why am I making ice cream in the dead of winter? Well, we’ve almost finished eating all the ice cream from the summer, and we wanted more ice cream. Also, I had a lot of mango-passionfruit curd (made because I had a lot of egg yolks left over after making chai meringue kisses), and I wanted to try something, hence: mango-passionfruit ice cream. It is VERY good.

This did push the capacity of my little ice cream maker, so you might want to reduce quantities a bit. But this is what I made.

*****

Mango & Passionfruit Ice Cream

2 c. heavy cream
2 c. whole milk
3/4 c. sugar
2 t. vanilla
pinch of salt

1 c. mango-passionfruit curd (plus more for topping)

1. Prepare ice cream bowl the night before (mine requires freezing overnight.)

2. Whisk all ingredients except the curd together until the sugar dissolves, pour into ice cream bowl and churn following manufacturer’s instructions.

3. After about 10-15 minutes, it should be starting to look ice cream-ish. Add in passionfruit curd. (Could you just add it in at the beginning? Probably, but I didn’t try that, so no guarantees!) Continue to churn until you reach soft-serve consistency — generally 25-40 minutes total.

(Alternately, you should be able to make the vanilla ice cream, transfer it to a container, add the mango-passionfruit curd, then use a knife to drag it through, creating a ribbon of curd through the vanilla ice cream. I haven’t tried that yet, though!)

4. Transfer to an airtight container and freeze. (When I pulled mine out the next day, it was a soft frozen consistency, easy to eat with a spoon, creamy and delectable.)

5. Serve with a little more mango-passionfruit curd dolloped on top. Whipped cream and/or hot fudge would also go very nicely.

NOTE: For a Sri Lankan-style ice cream sundae, consider this ice cream with plenty of fresh mango, banana, avocado, a little drizzle of lime-ginger syrup to tie it all together, and some salted roasted cashews on top!

NOTE 2: Curd recipe is here.

Mango & Passionfruit Curd

(makes approximately 2 1/2 c.)

I doubled the amount when I was making this, because I had PLANS for my passionfruit curd. But this is probably an appropriate amount for reasonable people. 🙂 Fabulous topping for vanilla ice cream (or mixed in while making your own, to create mango-passionfruit ice cream), equally fabulous on a scone, ideally with a bit of clotted cream or butter.

(Honestly, sometimes I just open the fridge, grab a jar, and help myself to a spoonful straight up. It’s fruit! And eggs! Surely that’s good for you…)

Recipe adapted from Nik Sharma’s recipe for passionfruit curd. Sharma uses fresh passionfruit for his, so has lovely little seed flecks; you can certainly do that as well, if you have fresh passionfruit on hand, though it’s a bit more work and does change the texture. A food thermometer is very helpful for making curd of any kind, though not a requirement.

Ingredients:

2 large eggs plus 2 yolks
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. passionfruit puree
1/2 c. mango puree
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cubed and softened to room temperature

1/4 tsp fine sea salt

1. Make a double-boiler: fill a medium saucepan with about an inch of water and bring to a simmer; place a large heat-proof bowl over the saucepan. (The water shouldn’t touch the base of the bowl.)

2. Place the eggs and sugar in the bowl and whisk about 6-8 minutes; mixture will thicken and turn pale yellow (around 151F). (You may want to use an electric beater, to save your arm.)

3. Whisk in the passionfruit puree, mango puree, butter, and salt until combined. Switch to a silicone spatula, and from this point on, stir constantly, scraping the sides of the bowl regularly. Cook until the mixture thickens, about 10-12 minutes (to about 165-170F). You’re aiming for a thick, custard-like consistency. Congrats, you’ve achieved curd!

4. Remove and transfer the curd to a container — if you’ve whisked and stirred well, there shouldn’t be any scrambled egg bits. If there are, you can strain the curd through a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth.

5. Cover (a piece of plastic film pressed against the surface will avoid a skin forming) and refrigerate at least 4 hours until chilled. Keep refrigerated and use within one week. (It never lasts that long here.) You may also freeze it for up to one month.