with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Made this tonight, from the Skinny Taste air fryer cookbook, because Kev got us an air fryer a while back and I figured I should learn how to use it. This was good, but dang, white people food makes a lot of mess to cook. So many dishes! And then you need utensils to eat it too…
Took a little time to make a nice dinner tonight; chicken piccata with linguine and roasted broccolini.
Didn’t sleep well last night, which is very frustrating, because while I made it through teaching okay, I’ve just been dragging since 3 p.m., too tired to do anything. But lying on the couch not doing things (and playing Polytopia while watching re-runs of New Girl with Kavi) eventually just makes me feel depressed. Gah.
I finally managed to eat some dinner, which helped, and Kevin made me tea, which helped, and then I came up and lay in bed instead of on the couch, and looked for a dumb but pretty movie to watch, and settled on Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love, which is kind of perfect because what sounds really nice right now is jetting off to a foreign country, ideally a warm one.
She’s just made it to India, and I’m rested enough to pause and post a few photos off my phone from the last few weeks, clearing it out a little, which is sort of like being productive.
This is a mix of basmati and Sri Lankan red rice, served with chicken curry and chili leeks.
Sigh. I wrote up a perfectly good vegan garlic curry recipe for the vegan cookbook. It was delicious. But then I thought…you know what this would be great as? The base for a chicken curry. So I cut up six chicken thighs and tossed them in, simmered for 15 minutes or so, and oh my god, that’s stunning.
I’m never going to manage to go fully vegan, folks. I just don’t have the willpower. I’ll have to settle for just reducing meat consumption, at least for now. (I still dream of discovering massive reserves of willpower in my old age….)
This is a dish you can get in restaurants and homes all over Sri Lanka, just a classic. It’s my parents’ 50th anniversary today, and this is one of the dishes I learned from Amma. She made chicken curry probably once a week for my entire childhood, and my recipe is still pretty much identical to hers, almost thirty years later. Standing the test of time!
3-5 medium onions, diced
3 TBL vegetable oil
1 tsp black mustard seed
1 tsp cumin seed
3 whole cloves
3 whole cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick, broken into 3 pieces
1-2 TBL red chili powder
1 TBL Sri Lankan curry powder
12 pieces chicken, about 2 1/2 lbs, skinned and trimmed of fat. (Use legs and thighs — debone them if you must, but they’ll be tastier if cooked on the bone. Don’t use breast meat — it’s not nearly as tasty.) (Alternately, use 6 pieces of chicken, and three russet potatoes, peeled and cubed)
1/3 cup ketchup
1 heaping tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 TBL lime juice
1. In a large pot, sauté onions in oil on medium-high with mustard seed and cumin seed, cloves, cardamom pods, and cinnamon pieces, until onions are golden/translucent (not brown). Add chili powder and cook one minute. Immediately add curry powder, chicken, ketchup, and salt.
2. Lower heat to medium. Cover and cook, stirring periodically, until chicken is cooked through and sauce is thick, about 20 minutes. Add water if necessary to avoid scorching. Add potatoes if using, and add milk, to thicken and mellow spice level; stir until well blended. (Be careful not to cook on high at this point, as the milk will curdle.)
3. Cook an additional 20 minutes, until potatoes are cooked through. Add lime juice; simmer a few additional minutes, stirring. Serve hot.
Our Sunday dinner was a little harried this week, because I was still sick on Sunday, so we pushed it to Monday since there wasn’t school, and then I forgot that Kavi had an orthodontist appointment, plus I was finally making good progress on my revision after much procrastination, and Kavi was super-tired, so we ended up pulling back on the planned menu, skipping the roti and the roasted broccoli / cauliflower I had planned, and just having Kevin and Anand cook steamed broccoli to go with ginger-garlic chicken.
But Anand prepped broccoli for the first time, and also cut up chicken for the first time, and even seasoned the ginger-garlic chicken too. And we sat down and lit a few candles and ate together for at least 15 minutes, and even played a game of Geography over dinner, and we had the mango pudding that Kavi and I made on Saturday, so I’m going to call it success.
At the commencement welcome, one of the conference chairs of SALA made a joke about how we’re going to talk well and eat well. I’m not sure I’m talking all that well (still tired and a little out of it!), but my gosh, they do feed us well here.
Breakfast & lunch for two days are included in your registration, along with a very hearty closing reception that they said could easily be your dinner that night; coffee and tea service is also laid out throughout, which has been very handy for me, as I duck out of my room, grab some hot coffee, and duck back in to work a little more.
But just look at what they’ve served us so far! (I forgot to take photos of the avocado tartine and the fig tartine at breakfast, but they were very pretty.) One slight tweak I’d suggest for the hotel — I love that they used chicken thighs instead of breast, in terms of flavor, but personally, I wouldn’t have served it on the bone for a buffet like this. Too difficult to eat while sitting on low couches, managing drinks, etc. Nothing that requires knives!
I think my favorite, flavor-wise, was the combination of the curried salmon w/ the roasted sweet potatoes. Mmmm… I liked it so much I decided to skip dessert and go back for seconds of that instead. The roasted potatoes were also perfectly done, and delish.
This ginger-garlic chicken salad was the biggest success of the bagel experiments — I would totally serve this either on a bagel (it was great on sesame) or wrapped in lettuce. Or honestly, just straight up on its own, or in a sandwich with a hearty French bread, etc….
Ginger-Garlic Chicken Salad, with Cashews and Cranberries
1. Make my regular ginger-garlic chicken (see Serendib Kitchen website for recipe).
2. When it’s cool, run through food processor with some mayo (maybe 1/2 – 1 c.?), careful to pulse and leave some shreds, rather than turning it into puree. Transfer to big bowl and clean out food processor bowl and blade.
3. Chop cashews in food processor, and then combine with chicken.
4. Add dried cranberries and stir to combine. (Sultanas would be more traditional, but I love both the color and the tang of the cranberries. V. autumnal!)
SO GOOD.
Amanda Daly took some great photos at our Collaboration Brunch today. 
So good to get some of her bagels; it’s been too long!
(I, um, may have eaten three so far today, and am eyeing a fourth….)
I was too busy talking to folks to take many photos — a great group for today’s Daly Bagel brunch, and a particular shout-out to my high school friend, Carmela Diosana, all the way down from Madison. Great to see you again and delighted to pass your Feast of Serendib orders to you!
Lovely brunch all around. Much fun foodie conversation!
For today’s brunch, Karina had suggested a kithul treacle & strawberry shmear, which we’d seen at a fancy hotel in Sri Lanka that had a bagel bar in their Western section. That gave me an idea — I had some sugar pumpkins that had come in our imperfect produce order, that I hadn’t figured out what to do with yet. So I split one in half and roasted it, then scooped that out and combined it with whipped cream cheese and kithul (palm) treacle. Makes a great bagel shmear, as it turns out — I had mine on an Amanda Daly chai bagel. Mmm….
My standard Sri Lankan curried salmon + cream cheese = yummy curried salmon shmear with a little bite to it. The shmear bites back.
We’re not vegetarian, but we’re trying to be more ‘lessertarian’ these days, for a variety of reasons. Anand is tender-hearted, and would rather be vegetarian if he could bring himself to give up meat. It’s clearly better for the planet if we eat more plant-based, and it’s generally healthier too.
But it’s going to be a process in our household getting there, as the kids aren’t used to eating beans and chickpeas and the like, and of course, I really like and cook with meat all the time. So, a compromise — we’re starting with trying to incorporate more vegetables and beans into our meat dishes, which I think of as Mediterranean-style. We’re aiming towards Meatless Mondays within a few months, but it’ll help a lot if they start actually liking beans! (I have some sympathy, as I didn’t start liking beans until I encountered Ethiopian food in my 20s. Then I fell in love with them. Yemisir wat, shiro, yum.)
This dish was a success on the flavors front — I took our standard ginger-garlic chicken that the kids love, added a cup of canned chickpeas (it would’ve been better texture with soaking dry chickpeas overnight, but I was also aiming for easy dinner on a week night with no planning ahead) partway through.
I added some peas at the end, to bump up the vitamins and fiber a bit, which were pretty and tasty, but got mushy on sitting, which is not ideal, esp. as Kavi already doesn’t like cooked peas. Next time I try this, I might try this with kale or spinach, though the kids are even less likely to like those.
I really liked the dish as it came out, and though I had mine with some toasted ancient grain naan (which Whole Foods carries now, which kind of bewilders me, but okay), if you served this with rice, it’d be a great gluten-free dinner option. Or you can skip the starch entirely — it’s on the salty side, though, so something to cut that would be nice. The kids had theirs with lots of raw bell pepper, which is one of their favorite veg.
Anand ate the chickpeas (though he preferred the chicken). Kavi tried one chickpea and refused to eat the rest; I didn’t push her, because she gets very distressed when forced to eat food she doesn’t like, and no one wants a sad Kavi.
But I think we’ll make this with the chickpeas from now on, with the hopes that if she tries one or two every time, she’ll eventually get used to them, and even start to like them. That’s generally how it works with her — it’s just a slow, slow process. Patience is key to changing food habits around here!
Will have the recipe in the new Gluten-Free Serendib ebook going out to Kickstarter backers, but here it is, just for you!
*****
Ginger-Garlic Chicken with Chickpeas and Peas
(90 minutes, serves 6-8)
1 heaping tsp ginger powder
1 heaping tsp garlic powder
1 heaping tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
12 chicken thighs, about 2 lbs., deboned and cut bite-size
vegetable oil for frying
1/2 to 2 heaping tsp red chili powder (to taste, optional)
1 c. canned chickpeas, drained (or dry chickpeas, soaked overnight)
1/2 c. frozen peas
1. Mix first four spices in a large bowl; add chicken pieces and rub with your hands until well coated. Marinate 1/2 hour
2. Heat oil on high; add chili powder (if using) and cook 15 seconds, stirring.
3. Add chicken and sear on high, turning to brown all sides.
4. Reduce heat to low, add chickpeas, and cover; cook approximately 15-20 minutes, until meat is cooked through.
5. Uncover and cook until all the liquid is gone. Stir in frozen peas and cook a minute or two more.
6. Tilt pan and push chicken pieces to one side; allow excess oil to drain to one side for 5 minutes. Remove chicken to dish and serve hot.