Looking for recipe beta testers! I’m finally getting around to finishing the little Serendib Tea Party cookbook that I promised as a Kickstarter stretch goal, and I need these recipes tested. In exchange for testing at least 2 recipes, you get a copy of the e-book.
I’d particularly like to get the baked goods tested — I’m pretty confident on the rest of them, but I’m not the most expert baker!
If interested, please drop your name and preferred e-mail in comments below (I’ll only use it for this purpose, promise).
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(NOTE: If you were a Kickstarter backer for Feast, you’re already getting a copy of the e-book. But you can have a second copy to send to a friend!)
(NOTE 2: The menus below are a draft — I reserve the right to tweak them some.)
(NOTE 3: We’ll have a pre-order page up soon! If there’s enough interest, we’ll do a print version of the cookbook too.)
Couple hours layover, going to try to get through a little bit of photo posting.
A few days ago, tried sardines on toast with some Sri Lankan spreads — the eggplant pickle was a little too sweet, I think — a touch of it would’ve been nice, but not on its own. The seeni sambol (spicy-sweet caramelized onions) worked better, but I have to admit, I like mine better than this one that comes ready-made in a jar. On the other hand, for a 3-minute breakfast (just long enough to toast the bread), the jar is awfully convenient…
I had a batch of cashew milk toffee that didn’t *quite* set up. I think I need to check the calibration of my candy thermometer. But I thought it might work well as a crumble topping for brownies.
Folks, it’s delicious. REALLY rich, so I only want it in very small bites, but totally yummy.
I’ll have some at the One Lake Brewing event on Saturday, but I don’t have a lot. Come early. 🙂
Your jaggery (or brown sugar) is too hard to cut? Microwave in a safe dish, covered in a damp paper towel, in ten second bursts, until crumbly. Took about a minute before I could start shaving bits off.
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My semester is almost done (classes ended last week, grading final projects this week), so my schedule has eased up significantly. Going to try to start working on this diabetes thing. As I said before, I don’t need general advice — I had gestational diabetes with Anand fifteen years ago, so I did the five finger pricks / day and carb counting, and I have a pretty clear idea of how I should eat in order to bring my glucose levels down.
That said, eating the same dishes over and over again gets boring — and when I get bored, bad things happen. So one thing I’d like to do is start working on incorporating more fish into my diet. I really like fish, but the kids and Kevin don’t, so we just don’t eat that much of it; it’s easier to default to things they’ll eat too.
But I usually eat breakfast on my own, and I like fish (and savory) for breakfast, so here’s a request — give me your breakfast fish dishes, the more varied the cuisine, the better. If they can be made in less than 10 minutes, you get a gold star! If you happen to know calories / carb counts, even roughly, that’d be helpful to include.
This was this morning’s breakfast, along with a persimmon (I love persimmon season) — I’ll probably have some more fruit mid-morning. Part of diabetes for me was switching to eating six small meals / day, to keep my sugars more regulated — that worked well for me fifteen years ago, and it became part of my regular routine. Second breakfast, afternoon tea, supper — hobbits know best.
This is one slice of multigrain toast — while it’s toasting, take out the whitefish spread (I like the Door County whitefish paté, available at my local Whole Foods, if I’m not making my own), capers, and jar of pickled onions. Slice up some cherry tomatoes (they’re pricey, but we’ve gotten addicted to the Cherry Bombs, Sugar Bombs, etc. lines that have come out the last few years, and when it’s so hard to find good fruit in Chicago in the dead of winter, we’re willing to budget a little more for them). When the toast comes out, assemble. I forgot to salt / pepper this time, but you certainly can, and it’ll be even tastier. It was really delicious as is, though.
5 minutes, start to finish.
Rough calorie count, 250-300.
Rough carb count, 33 grams (mostly from the bread, 21 grams, the rest divided between the fish and tomatoes, with a bit for the pickled onions).
Carbs in a persimmon: 8 grams
Rough guideline: “It can be helpful to eat carbohydrates consistently throughout the day. For example, adults with diabetes may aim for 45–60 grams of carbohydrates per meal and 15–20 grams per snack”
Lazy Saturday morning breakfast; taught Anand how to make breakfast sausages and waffles. He had his waffle with syrup and sausage and grapes; I had mine with spicy turkey curry and tea. So good!
Also on the leftover turkey menu lately, turkey curry and rice, turkey curry on toast, turkey and ham cooked into a veggie soup, sliced turkey breast on toasted multigrain bread with mayo, green chili MD sauce, and cranberry sauce. All yum. But I think I’m ready to freeze the remaining turkey curry for a rainy day. 🙂
Did you have turkey? Did it turn into other things?
We just made the decision to ship the remaining copies of Feast to us. There are about 800 left, out of the original 2000 copy print run. Which is a lot of copies, but given that we were originally scheduled to launch March 2020, and had to cancel an entire summer’s worth of scheduled bookstore and library appearances, I’m reasonably happy that we’ve managed to sell 1200 copies so far.
I do still have a lot of funds tied up in the copies that are left (if I sold all of them at a 25% discount to booksellers, it’d be $24,000), so if you’re thinking someone you know would like a Sri Lankan cookbook for Christmas, now would be an awesome time to order one directly from me. Signed and personalized at request! Link below.
You can also order Vegan Serendib at the link below. And homemade curry powder. 🙂
Now to figure out where I can store 800 hardcover books. Assume something like 14 copies / box, that’s about 58 boxes, and I do have a garage that I think has sufficient space, but I want to make sure they’re raised up enough so that if it floods, they aren’t destroyed…hmm…maybe I need to find somewhere else to store the Halloween skeletons…
“Mohanraj does a superb job of combining easily sourced ingredients with clear, instructive guidance and menu recommendations for all manner of events…a terrific survey of an overlooked cuisine.” – Publisher’s Weekly
“Mohanraj’s research driven approach to recipe development makes Feast a reliable introduction to Sri Lankan cooking for adventurous home-cooks and a sound resource for Sri Lankan families hoping to reclaim their culinary traditions at home.” – Melissa Elsmo, Oak Park Eats
www.serendibshop.com
Did a little writing work today, in between family commitments. This was fulfilling commitments too — way back when, I did the Vegan Serendib kickstarter, and I promised a Serendib tea party sampler cookbook. I’m finally working on that. It’s a blend of Sri Lankan and traditional British afternoon tea, which is what I usually do for my tea parties.
This isn’t final — a few of these are completely theoretical recipes, and I’m going to have to actually make them and make sure they’re delicious before I list them. And I think I want to include a non-tea beverage for each season as well. But it’s going to look something like this. 🙂
We’ll have a pre-order page up soon for the ebook (and of course, if you backed the Kickstarter, you shouldn’t buy another copy!). If you’re interested in being tagged into the pre-order page, comment below. It’ll be $1.99, I think, just like the cocktail party sampler book.
At some point, I’d love to expand this into a proper full cookbook, with about three times as many recipes — the plan would be to do it month by month, rather than season by season. Which should get us close to 120 recipes total, I think.
But one step at a time. We put this together, and then I can set up the Kickstarter for Gluten-Free Serendib, which is the next cookbook I promised to work on. I’m expecting that to go pretty fast, because most of the recipes in Feast and Vegan are already gluten-free — I just need to work on a few of them (and decide whether to use Feast or Vegan as the base — hmm…)
Anyway, nice to be making some progress after too long not writing anything.
Okay, I’m not sure this is the most practical serving board — I wanted to experiment with dried apple slices, and they are definitely somewhat bumpy. I don’t think I’d try to put three or four different kinds of cheese on here, because there’s not that much flat space for them!
But it works reasonably well for a wedge of brie and some crackers — you could probably fit some grapes too. A wee little snack for you and yours. As we head into summer, we’re also heading into the season where a lot of my meals are as simple as possible.
You could also just hang it for kitchen decor. It is so cute, I named this one — “Apple of My Heart.” With pressed chionodoxa flowers (early spring ephemerals) and ferns. Will drop off at the store (Berwyn’s Sprout) sometime soon, probably Thursday, unless someone buys it first. 🙂
NOTE: This is food-safe resin, and you can cut on it, but like any cutting board, it will gather cut marks over time. I wouldn’t recommend using it for heavy daily chopping!
