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. 🙂
I’m making a few food items for the One Lake Brewing market on Saturday; I’m planning to bring my cookbooks and some serving items there. I won’t have a lot of any of the food items — no time to cook in bulk. So come early if you want first dibs. 🙂 I’ll be there 11-3.
Spiced cashews is a simple and delicious vegetarian treat — the only tricky thing is nuts want to burn, so don’t cook on too high heat, and do keep stirring throughout. (Use vegan butter or coconut oil to make it vegan!)
Cover a baking sheet with foil. Toast about 2 c. cashews on medium until they start to smell nutty. Add 2 T butter. Add 1-2 t. cayenne. Add 2-3 t. jaggery (or brown sugar). Add 1 T lime juice, 1 t. salt, and enough water to make a glaze. Cook, stirring, for a few minutes, until cashews are cooked. Spread out on foil-covered baking sheet, sprinkle with flake sea salt, and let cool.
Variation: add 1 c. chopped dried fruit (and reduce sugar). Mango, etc.
Still a little too harried to bake from scratch (Kev comes back today, yay!), but I’ve found a banana bread mix I really like (yes, I know those are pumpkins, but I have multiple pretty pumpkin molds, no banana molds (haven’t found any pretty ones), and a habitual excess of bananas in our freezer), and that makes it easy. Miss Jones mix (link in comments). Zinnias by neighbor Sera Sera.
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.
Composed a Sri Lankan-style (sort of, anyway) trail mix. Pistachios, cashews, sultanas, candied ginger, ruby chocolate.
Apparently I even want my trail mix to be pretty. 🙂.
Also pictured, a fruit tisane: dried mandarin, apple, lemon, with Ceylon cinnamon and a four peppercorn blend.
For the Patreon treat boxes, $40/box. Http://patreon.com/mohanraj
I pretty much exactly followed the one I found here.
Came out great – I only regret that I don’t have enough elderberry syrup left from this summer’s berries to make many truffles. Vaguely healthy too – dark chocolate, cashew butter, and elderberries are supposed to be good for warding off winter colds. Shipped some off in the Patreon boxes, and there are a few boxes left for the flash sale. And then that’s it until next summer.
Someone asked me what my signature dish was last night, and I was totally stumped. I don’t actually have one! But I do like all of these.
I wanted to keep this event vegetarian for the South Asia Institute, so I skipped some of the classic Sri Lankan short-eats – if it weren’t vegetarian, maybe mutton rolls would be the signature dish. I don’t like the typical vegetarian version nearly as well, though. Maybe I should try making it with jackfruit…hmm.
This layout worked pretty well for an event, so noting for the future:
• three kinds of frozen samosas – these I just baked / fried as instructed. Pumpkin samosas from TJ’s (which I haven’t tasted yet, so not sure if they’re any good), paneer-chili samosas (don’t remember the brand, but spicy, good), and potato & pea Punjabi samosas (Swad). I’m really glad I got a deep fryer, because it makes this kind of thing SO MUCH easier.
Set the temp. to 350F (or whatever is appropriate), and then it’s just popping them in, waiting five minutes, popping them out to a paper-towel-lined plate. Transfer to foil pans, pop in warm (low) oven to keep warm until ready to transport / serve. Easy-peasy. Would’ve been nice to serve hot, but they work fine at room temperature, served with tamarind chutney and coriander chutney (decanted from store-bought jars).
• ribbon sandwiches (beet / carrot / spinach) — Pepperidge Farm Very Thin bread is key
• mini naan rounds (quartered) from the grocery store, with four dipping spreads: jackfruit curry, potato curry, eggplant pickle, mango-ginger chutney
I forgot to bring cheddar cheese cubes, which go great with the mango-ginger chutney and naan, but otherwise, happy with the savory options.
SAI provided beverages, which made my life simpler!
