I almost never make biryani, but I don’t know why, because I really like it. There’s a big debate about whether potatoes do or don’t belong in biryani — I am agnostic on the subject, so I made it without, but served some roasted potatoes on the side. 🙂
I don’t remember Amma making green mango curry when I was growing up — this is a recipe I developed for Feast, and supposedly was served at King Kasyapa’s court in 5th century Sri Lanka. I make it pretty often now, when I’m making a party’s worth of rice and curries — the fruitiness of the mango is a great element to contrast with the other typical dishes.
I ended up cooking a lot last Friday — invited my local aunts over to my dad’s house, along with his good friends Kanagaratnam Jegathesan and Kanthimatthi Jegathesan. I’m not really sure why I spent the whole day obsessively cooking — it was an impulse, to invite people over at all.
I suppose it’s just that we were in CT for a week to do college tour and spend time with my dad, and given the timing (we were leaving Saturday morning), I knew it wasn’t so likely that Kavi would see her other relatives unless we made an extra effort, so having people over seemed like the thing to do.
The aunties brought curries (crab and fish) and short eats (ribbon sandwiches and stuffed shrimp and mutton rolls), and both my dad and Jega Uncle ordered vatallappam, so it was a proper feast — way too much food, honestly, but that’s okay, we packed up the leftovers and sent them home with people, as we do. Hopefully nobody had to cook all weekend.
(Marina Aunty brought two large trays of short eats for me to bring back to Chicago, per usual — she is amazing, and her stuffed shrimp, mutton rolls, and milk toffee are perfect.)
It was great spending time with relatives and friends, but sad too. Cooking in Amma’s kitchen, hosting people the way she did so often, when it’s been two years since she’s been able to host people there. Kavi and I went to see her in the memory care unit on Thursday, and as expected, she didn’t recognize us. This is how I remember her best, I suppose — cooking her food.
These shrimp toasts are her recipe — Priya helped me prep and assemble them, but I should’ve made them spicier, and a little tangier, and we think they needed a little more mustard on the toasts. Guess I need more practice.
Lovely to see you, Jega Uncle and Kanthi Aunty! Glad you could join us. Wish Amma could’ve been with us too.
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…
I might’ve done a lot of cooking today. Sri Lankan dinner for twelve. Other people helped shop and chop and did all the dishes while I was cooking, and all the cleanup afterwards. It was actually a lot of fun — it’s been a while since I had time to cook like this. I love composing a complex meal, and even dealing with restricted ingredients can add a fun challenge.
AND I finished a story draft today. Today gets an A+ on the personal front.
Menu:
• cheese and chutney (from a jar) and crackers
• mango-passionfruit mimosas
• red samba milk rice
• basmati rice
• seared ahi tuna, seasoned with a marinade of green chili, onion, and pink Hawaiian sea salt (this was an experiment, turned out well)
• local beef (from a family farm) curry
• tempered red lentils (one guest liked it so much, she took a photo of the recipe in my cookbook)
• egg curry
• eggplant and date curry (no tamarind easily found nearby, but dates worked well in a complementary sort of way)
• papaya and pineapple curry (v. popular)
• kale salad
• cucumber salad
• yogurt (okay, I didn’t cook this, but it was on the table, so)
• vanilla ice cream and store-bought cookies — in theory, I was going to make fruit salad, but ran out of energy, alas. But the papaya-pineapple curry was actually really good / interesting on the ice cream!
Tried an experiment tonight — usually when I make Sri Lankan Beef Smoore, I use chuck. But brisket was on sale (half the price of steak), and I couldn’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t work — just maybe take a little longer, so I’d need to start a little earlier?
So I tried it, and it was good. It’s not quite as sliceable as chuck, which usually ends up with a roast beef kind of consistency — when you slice this, it shreds some. Yet I didn’t cook it so long that you can easily use two forks to shred it the way you might normally with brisket. (Maybe another 30 minutes would have gotten it there.)
So it ended up a texture that’s sort of neither one or the other…but a deliciously tasty texture, easy to eat with your hand. Kevin did fine with a fork. 🙂
I spent most of the day hauling stuff around the house in a big re-org, and stayed up most of last night nursing Kavi (so tired!), so I wasn’t really up to cooking anything else.
But I’m thinking I’ll save this to put out at the potluck we’re hosting on Sunday (Kavi is FINALLY on the mend from her traveller’s bug, so we should be an illness-free house by Saturday, knock wood!), and tomorrow I’ll make a veg. or two to go with it. It could use a cabbage & coconut mallung, or a bright carrot pickle, or a fresh kale sambol…
Recipe is in my Feast of Serendib cookbook. This took 2 hrs marinating time + 2 hr 15 min. simmering time. You can also cook it in an Instapot to speed things up — link below.
We divvied up the Thanksgiving dishes pretty well this year. I made the turkey and cornbread-sausage stuffing and mango fluff. Kevin made the mashed potatoes and Caesar salad. Kev and I made the artichoke dip. Kavi, Kev, and I made the eggplant parmesan (somewhat random last-minute addition that Kavi learned how to make in her culinary class, delicious). Kavi made the crescent rolls. Nara brought the green bean casserole and Daniel brought the pumpkin custard pie. I forgot to put out the cranberry jelly, but it’ll be around for sandwiches tomorrow.
