Category: Dinner

Kevin decided the kids could use a mid-week treat, so made crepes + fillings dinner, which all of us love. I may have eaten several spoons of the apple filling straight up. Shh…. He is such a nice boy.

Anand’s newest food experiment — Nutella + Italian sausage. Um. MIGHT be okay? He ate it, anyway!

Please ignore my super-fuzzy hair. I blame the pool.

Morning peoples! I meant to post this Sri Lankan beef smoore recipe on Saturday, because this Dutch-influenced dish is more of a Sunday roast sort of thing, but this weekend was VERY hectic for me, and I forgot. On the other hand, with so many folks working from home, maybe that’s less relevant than it used to be.

If you do it the old-school way, it’s long, slow cooking on the stovetop — with a slow cooker or Instant Pot, you can speed that up dramatically. Like most roasts, this is great for a luscious dinner, and the leftover slices makes fabulous sandwiches in the days after. It’s the sauce that really makes it spectacular. 

Link to the Instant Pot recipe at the YouTube site. The stovetop recipe is in my cookbook, A Feast of Serendib!

Lots of posting this morning, but now I’m going to turn off FB for a while and try to write. I leave you with a one-pot dish — take my Sri Lankan ginger-garlic chicken, cook it most of the way, add 1-2 cups of water, bring to a boil, dump in a bunch of leftover takeout rice, cook the water out, taste and add more salt if needed, stir in some frozen peas.

Easy way to feed the kids around here and also to use up leftover rice that’s starting to get dry. 

Beef curry really is one of my staples; when I was learning to cook, I probably cooked it once every two weeks, and ate it for 3-4 days straight. These days, it’s very lovely to have with an egg hopper and some tempered potatoes. Feels indulgent. 

(Also was so much food that I ended up saving half of my breakfast for lunch…)

Tempered potatoes. The kids liked it! Woot. I am inching them towards Sri Lankan food, bit by bit.

Okay, I admit, no one came clamoring to me and demanded that I make a video on how to cook chicken liver curry. My daughter refused to even taste it. But I love it so, so much, I actually crave it sometimes, esp. when I’m feeling depleted. Chicken liver curry is a) cheap, b) nutritious, and c) delicious. So here you go!

Maybe it’s just me, but I kind of think chilaquiles and kottu roti are kind of the same thing? Along with kedgeree / khichuri, and probably lots of other similar dishes from around the world. (Casserole is related, though baking rather than stovetop is a different process.) All ways to salvage dried out leftovers and transform them into something fabulously delicious.

For example, I had some leftover restaurant fish tacos. They were cold and dry and completely unappealing, but we don’t waste food in this house, so I was going to make myself eat them. But we also try really hard not to eat sad food in this house, so I had to make them delicious first. A variation on chilaquiles was the obvious answer.

– I chopped a shallot and some green chili and sautéed it in a good amount of oil
– I chopped up the tacos and added them to the pan, sautéing them all together
– I poured in some jarred tomatillo sauce (Kevin made a batch a while back, so it was particularly tasty tomatillo sauce, but any will do)
– I could have stopped there, but we had fresh cherry tomatoes, so I chopped some of those and stirred them in too, after taking it off the heat — a great contrast
– if we’d had fresh cilantro, I would have topped it with that. A little queso fresco would be nice too. Could’ve added some chopped raw onions for a little more bite and freshness

But this took may 5-10 minutes to make, saved the tacos, gave me lunch today and probably breakfast tomorrow, and was SO, SO tasty.

This basic process, of rehydrating and cooking dried out protein + starch in a sauce, ideally with some fresh elements added too, is a pretty key cooking skill, I think. Easy, frugal, yum.

This isn’t so much a recipe, but a what-do-you-do-with-veggies-that-you-need-to-use-up approach to cooking. My default is to turn it into a Sri Lankan varai, a lightly cooked vegetable dish.

In this case, I had leeks, cabbage, and carrot that I needed to use.

• Chop leeks (remember to rinse them, or you may end up eating grit)

• Sauté in a bit of oil until golden-translucent, with mustard seed and cumin seed.
• Add chopped cabbage. Add carrots, cut up small. (This method also works with thawed frozen mixed veg; drain the excess water).

• Stir on medium-high for 5-10 minutes, until partially cooked and a little browned. If you want it spicier, add chopped green chilies (or crushed red pepper, or cayenne).

• Stir in desiccated (not sweetened!) coconut, salt (1 t.), and a little turmeric

  

• Cover and turn to medium low for 5-10 minutes, so veggies can cook through (depending on what veggies you’re using, you may be able to skip the covering stage — peas don’t need it, for example)

  

• Remove lid and cook a few minutes more, stirring, until water has evaporated. Serve hot with rice and curries.

  

NOTE: Day after, this is easy to reheat with a little oil and leftover rice, scrambling a few eggs in, to make a healthy and filling vegetarian meal. You could also sauté some ground beef, and stir this in with rice similarly; we’ll be doing that for dinner tonight.