Category: Lunch

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Curried Beet Tea Sandwiches

Curried Beet Tea Sandwiches

(45 min. — makes 16 tea sandwiches)

1 medium onion, chopped fine
2 T vegetable oil
1/4 t. cumin seeds
1/4 t. mustard seeds
1/2 lb. beets, chopped into matchsticks
2-3 green chilies, seeds removed, chopped fine
1/4 t. salt, or to taste
1 t. lime juice, or to taste
8 slices bread (wheat, white, or multigrain, your choice)

1. Sauté onions with oil, cumin seed, and mustard seed until golden-translucent.

2. Add beets, green chilies, and salt and cook on medium-high, stirring as needed, until beets are cooked through and starting to caramelize, which will bring out the flavor.

3. Stir in lime juice and simmer 5-10 minutes more. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired.

NOTE: If you want the spread to be very fine, let cool, then process in food processor. Sometimes I do this, sometimes I go with a more rustic tea sandwich, usually depending on what kind of bread I’m using.

4. Spread curried beets on four slices of bread; top with other four slices.

5. Trim off edges, and then slice in quarters (use a damp paper towel to clean the knife before and between quartering cuts for a pristine appearance).

NOTE: Curried beets can be made a day in advance; it’s best to assemble sandwiches just before serving.

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Curried Mushroom Tea Sandwiches

Curried Mushroom Tea Sandwiches

(45 min. — makes 16 tea sandwiches

1/2 lb. mushrooms, chopped fine
3 T stick unsalted butter
1/4 t. salt, or to taste
1 t. black pepper
1/4 – 1/2 t. Sri Lankan curry powder
1 t. lime juice, or to taste
1/2 c. heavy cream or coconut milk
8 slices bread (wheat, white, or multigrain, your choice)

1. Sauté mushrooms in butter and salt and cook on high heat until quite reduced, stirring frequently.

2. Add curry powder, pepper, and lime juice and cook until juice is absorbed. Mushrooms should be glistening and slightly fried, not sitting in liquid.

3. Stir in cream or coconut milk and simmer another 10-15 minutes, until liquid has thickened and you have a spreadable paste. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired.

NOTE: If you want the spread to be very fine, let cool, then process in food processor. Sometimes I do this, sometimes I go with a more rustic tea sandwich, usually depending on what kind of bread I’m using.

4. Spread curried mushrooms on four slices of bread; top with other four slices.

5. Trim off edges, and then slice in quarters (use a damp paper towel to clean the knife before and between quartering cuts for a pristine appearance).

NOTE: Curried mushrooms can be made a day in advance; it’s best to assemble sandwiches just before serving.

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Egg Salad Tea Sandwich

I promised a tea party digital cookbook as a stretch goal on Vegan Serendib, and it’s been holding me up on starting a Kickstarter for Gluten-Free Serendib, so I’m trying very hard to finish that little cookbook up.

Which means making lots of tea sandwiches, because I apparently have no good photos of many of them, and some of them, I don’t even have recipes written down for. Pity me — I have to eat lots of delicious little sandwiches in the next few weeks…

The following is a very basic recipe — not particularly Sri Lankan! Though we do eat them — thanks, colonialism!

Egg salad tea sandwiches are much the same the world over, I suspect. I don’t usually use the curry powder for these myself.

*****

Egg Salad Tea Sandwich
(30 minutes, makes 16 tea sandwiches)

4 large eggs, hard-boiled and peeled
1/4 c. mayonnaise
2 T Dijon mustard
1/4 onion, diced
1 t. fresh chives, chopped
1/4 t. curry powder, optional
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
8 slices bread (I like multi-grain with egg salad, but wheat or white is fine)

1. Mash eggs with mayo and Dijon; a potato masher works well, but a fork is just fine.

2. Stir in onions and chives (reserving a small portion of chives for sprinkling at end), curry powder if using, salt, black pepper.

3. Spread egg salad on four slices of bread; top with other four slices.

4. Trim off edges, and then slice in quarters (use a damp paper towel to clean the knife before and between quartering cuts for a pristine appearance).

5. Sprinkle with chives and serve.

NOTE: Egg salad can be made a day in advance; it’s best to assemble sandwiches just before serving.

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Little tea party for Roshani’s birthday

Little tea party for Roshani’s birthday. I made tea sandwiches: egg salad, curried mushroom, curried beet, chili leeks, pork and potato. Others brought Sri Lankan fish rolls. Mini apple pies and carrot cake and a ghosty cake (from local baker Sugar Fixé). Tea. Pimm’s cocktails, tawny port, mango soda, wine and prosecco.

We managed to not think about the state of the world for several hours, although we did get into a rousing debate about a West Wing issue towards the end of the night. 🙂

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Sadly, I can’t share the food with you!

I mostly had a grounding-myself day today — spent some time straightening the basement studio (lots more to do, alas), finished some jewelry pieces (I like the new rectangle-in-rectangle style!). Also made a nice pasta salad for dinner, with a white-balsamic, garlic, basil, and thyme dressing, with salami, fresh mozzarella, and grilled peppers and red onion (including one orange pepper from our garden). Plus some roasted potatoes with rosemary and garlic. Sadly, I can’t share the food with you! But the jewelry will be down at Berwyn Sprout by the end of the week, unless someone claims it here first.
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Mas Paan: Perfection

One of my favorite snacks is mas paan (buns stuffed with beef and potato curry) and malu paan (buns stuffed with fish curry). It is very comforting, having a few dozen in the freezer, knowing that you can pull one out whenever you’re having a curry craving, and just toast it up in the toaster oven and enjoy with a nice hot cup of sweet milky tea. Perfection. I did develop a dough recipe for the cookbooks, but the truth is that I never actually make it from scratch. I just buy frozen bake-and-serve dinner rolls at the grocery store and use those. I recently had both beef curry and cabbage varai on hand, and I thought they might go well together — Dear Reader, they are DELICIOUS in a roll, and now you’ve got entire meal in there, with a veg. as well as the bread and meat. Perfection. I also tried cooking some carrot in with the beef and potato, and that worked great too. (I recommend at least two rolls for lunch. Three or four if you have a hearty appetite. If using the frozen rolls, follow the instructions on the package to let them thaw and rise. Then tear them open and stuff them with curry and shape it into a ball again, with the seam on the bottom. It’ll look lumpy, but don’t worry about it, and don’t feel like you need to let it rise again — just pop those in the oven for 15-20 minutes, and they’re good Hmm…I think I need some breakfast.
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Fritzi’s Delicatessen

I stopped in at new Fritzi’s Delicatessen on Oak Park Ave., and asked the nice young person behind the counter to recommend some things. I tried everything he recommended:

• whitefish w / bagel
• pastrami sandwich on challah
• matzoh ball soup
• beef short ribs braised in pomegranate sauce

And also:

• potato knish
• savory and sweet blini

Of these, my favorite was the knish, which isn’t surprising, since that was the main thing I was excited about getting — I used to get knishes at a deli when I worked downtown, and I’ve missed them. I had really wanted the meat knish, but it was sold out — need to get there earlier in the day than 4:30 p.m., apparently! The potato knish was crisp on the outside, soft and flavorful on the inside — I was going to split it with Kevin, but I apologetically ended up eating the whole thing myself.

The beef short ribs were also very good, tasty and tender. I personally would’ve liked even more pomegranate in it, but I really like the fruit & meat combo, and I suspect this is a better level of that for most people.

Kevin enjoyed his pastrami sandwich, though he thought the challah was an odd choice for it — they did also include some slices of what I think is rye, though I’m not sure what that came with. I tried a bit of the pastrami, and thought it was yummy, though I’m not a pastrami connoisseur.

I was a little surprised by the latke, which I didn’t order — not sure if it typically comes complimentary with the pastrami sandwich, or if they just threw it in. I was a little sad that there wasn’t applesauce for the latke, but I suppose I shouldn’t look a gift latke in the mouth. I do like applesauce with my latkes, though. (Editing to note that yes, they did provide sour cream for the latkes, but I prefer applesauce, and previously when I’ve ordered latkes, they’ve included both.)

The matzoh ball soup, I have a question about, I suppose. The broth was quite salty, and the matzoh balls seemed mostly not salted. So together, they made a reasonably flavored bite, but is that typical? Personally, I would’ve pulled back on the salt in the broth and added a little bit to the matzoh balls, but I am not Jewish, and I don’t want to stomp on tradition here…

The sweet blini also surprised me, because while it was mild, it didn’t seem very sweet. I almost wanted to drizzle honey over it. Is it meant to be actually sweet? I haven’t had blinis enough to be able to comment on that.

In any case, I feel like I’m quibbling — overall, I think this is a great addition to the neighborhood, and I do plan to stop back sometime soon, earlier in the day, to try that meat knish! They have lots of seating, so while I got takeout, you can certainly enjoy a nice family meal inside. I arrived in between the lunch and dinner rush, but it was starting to fill up as I left.

Is it too early to wish folks a happy Rosh Hashanah? I think it starts at sundown tonight, or possibly tomorrow?

May the coming year be filled with peace, health and prosperity for you and your loved ones!

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Brunch at Priya’s

She was trying to serve a ‘light’ brunch, because we were going out to a fancy dinner that evening. This is our family’s idea of a ‘light’ brunch. 🙂

Also served with sliced bread, not pictured. Curry with pol (coconut) sambol and sliced bread is v. delicious, but you make the sambol a little differently to eat with bread, I think, if I was understanding my aunties correctly — more moist, maybe? It tasted different than Marina Aunty’s sambol the night better — both delicious.

Both of my aunties also chopped the pol sambol really finely, apparently with a ‘chopper’ that they promised to show me, but we never got around to it, so now I have to nag on Facebook — what is this magic chopper, Priya Vytheswaran?? I need a link!

Priya also served the curries with yams, and we got into a long conversation about what kind of yams they were (taro? manioc?), and what they were actually supposed to be, but I’ve now gotten them all confused in my head again. These are not the yams she was trying to find, I think.

There are many yams traditionally eaten in Sri Lanka, though, so I’m entirely unsure which ones she was aiming for. Here are some pretty photos, though:

http://science.sjp.ac.lk/…/traditional-foods-in-sri…/

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Sri Lankan Beets Are the Best Beets

Kavi asked if she could invite friends to the tea party, and I told her to invite ALL the friends. She didn’t invite all her friends, which is probably just as well, as they would have eaten all the food, but three did come over and I think had a good time. Here you see Dani chipping in with Kavi and Lori’s friend Kim on the ribbon sandwich cutting.

People who were wondering what the spicy element is in the ribbon sandwiches — it’s green chili. Just a bit! I was pleased that Kim, who said she normally hates beets, liked these sandwiches, despite the beets. Or perhaps BECAUSE of the beets? Sri Lankan beets are best beets. 🙂