Category: Dinner

Needed a photo of broccoli varai for the vegan cookbook, so made it and devoured it for dinner last night. So good! As a bonus, Anand happily ate it too! Kavi likes the broccoli, but says she doesn’t like the little seeds, which I think might be a legacy of having worn braces for years; I might try cooking it with ground cumin & mustard for her next time. But I like it like this.

(30 minutes, serves 4)

A good way to get green vegetables into children.

Note: I keep this fairly mild, so my kids will eat it, but for a spicier (and more traditional) version, chop 2-3 green chilies, and stir them in during step 1.

1-2 tsp. lime juice (optional)

1. Sauté onions in oil on high with curry leaves, cinnamon, mustard seeds, and cumin seeds until onions are golden / translucent (not brown).

2. Add broccoli, salt, pepper, and turmeric; fry, stirring, for a few minutes. (If the broccoli starts sticking to the bottom of the pan, you can add a little water.)

3. Add in coconut and stir for five minutes.

4. Taste, and stir in sugar and/or lime juice if desired. Serve hot, with rice and curries.

I had to retake some photos of uppuma for Vegan Serendib — the photo we used for Feast had a meat curry in the photo too, and we figured it’d be better to get a clean photo for Vegan. I did the super-fast version that I cooked weekly during grad school for these photos, but the full recipe is below.

Okay, now I’m hungry…

*****

(20 minutes, serves 4-6)

When I was harried in grad school, I made a very fast, very simple version of this often — five minutes to boil water, add semolina with some butter and salt, stir, and serve. Served with spicy egg and mackerel curry, it’s a wonderful breakfast or dinner; the soft uppuma blends beautifully with the fish — my ultimate comfort food.

This version, which is a little more time-consuming, offers more vegetables, more interesting seasonings, and a fluffier texture — it’s tasty on its own, or with a vegetable or meat curry. Both versions are great!

2 cups coarse semolina

1. Roast semolina in a dry pan over medium-high heat, stirring constantly for about five minutes, until it’s darkened slightly. This will give the end result a fluffier texture, with less clumping. Remove to a plate and set aside.

2. Sauté onions with seasonings in butter on medium-high for a few minutes.

3. Add carrots and continue to cook until carrots are softened and onions are golden-translucent. Add peas and cook a few minutes longer.

4. Add water; bring to a boil.

5. Turn down to a simmer and quickly pour in the semolina, stirring constantly, making sure all the wheat is moistened. Remove from heat and allow dish to sit for a few minutes before serving. Serve warm.

Note: You can use farina (sold as Cream o’Wheat) instead of semolina for an almost identical result. Semolina comes from durum wheat (high in protein, produces more gluten). Farina comes from any hard wheat but durum.

Ignore spillage! It’s hard to stir with one hand and take video with the other! Hopefully Emmanuel can get a useful video out of this somehow anyway.

More little cooking videos for Emmanuel to put on TikTok for me. Making the uppuma…

(Ignore the loud clicking — our stove does that sometimes when we’ve just cleaned it and the burners are misaligned. I’m so used to it, I don’t even hear it sometimes.)

 

I was, of course, fretting about not having enough food at George’s Sri Lankan feast, so Roshani came to the rescue — she donated a beef curry for me to freeze and take down to Santa Fe, and then *she* was worried that there wasn’t enough of it, so we decided we’d reheat it with a little extra liquid and cook down some chopped potatoes in it when I got there. Worked great!

And really, it’d just be weird to have one person contributing all the dishes for a Sri Lankan feast. When my mom cooked for a big party, generally lots of the aunties and family friends brought a dish to share.

I volunteered to cook Boxing Day dinner for the family, and it went reasonably well, but I made two frustrating mistakes — cooking in someone else’s kitchen is a little stressful, trying to figure out where everything is and how to use unfamiliar appliances, and I guess I don’t always think so clearly in those circumstances.

• carrot sticks and sliced bell pepper, with ranch dip

• sautéed broccolini

• mango fluff

The two mistakes I made? Well, one was a simple error with the mango fluff — I forgot that fresh pineapple will keep the gelatin from setting; usually I remember and use canned, but they had fresh on hand and I just didn’t think about it. Sigh. So it was more mango dessert soup? Still tasty, but a little frustrating.

The bigger mistake was with the chicken marbella. I haven’t actually made it before, and while it’s a simple enough recipe (marinate together: garlic, green olives, prunes, capers, red wine vinegar, oregano, bay leaves, salt, pepper, brown sugar, and white wine with chicken pieces; bake; sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve), the timing was off.

I’m honestly not sure why, but we brought it to the table and served it, and some of the chicken on the bone was still pink near the bone. Argh. We put it back in the oven to finish cooking, and it was totally fine the next day, but frustrating.

Lessons:

• don’t try an unfamiliar recipe for the first time for a big party!

Oh well. Everyone ate well anyway, because I made too much food per usual, and we had enough for leftovers the next day, and it’s all fine. Just a little irritating!