with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Well, this is lovely. 
Check it out!
‘A Feast of Serendib’: A culinary journey to Sri Lanka is a celebration of diversity
One way to satisfy a yen to travel in these lock-down times is to explore the foreign cuisines. The newly published cookbook, “A Feast of Serendib,” (Mascot Books, $40) offers a trip to the far-away island of Sri Lanka.
Still thinking about the Little Free Pantry we’re setting up by our garage. I think I’ve talked before about how I get a little squirrelly about having lots of food on me when I’m flying? That comes directly from the one time when I got stuck on the tarmac for several hours; hunger pangs you can’t address are weirdly panic-making, even when you know you’re not actually in any real danger. Ever since, I’ve generally carried a day’s worth of power bars and such with me while traveling.
It makes me similarly crazy when I think there might be people on my block who are hungry. I mean, I spent years writing a cookbook, people. Feeding people is intensely important to me, in a way I find hard to explain.
I had one bad summer after college, where I went to job interview after job interview, and I just couldn’t find a job, not even temp. secretarial work. The economy was bad, and there were no jobs to be had. I once dodged my landlord in the street — I literally ducked into an alley when I saw him coming, because I hadn’t paid rent in two months. There was a month or so that summer when I mostly lived on 20 cent packets of ramen, because that’s all I could afford.
I was never really poor, to be clear — I could’ve called my parents, I had friends with money who would’ve loaned me a $20 to get through the week, etc. I had resources available to me, in a way the truly poor don’t. But I had credit card debt I didn’t know how I would ever pay off, and I was broke enough to be a little scared.
And it’s one thing to be a 20-something in that position; my body could handle living on cheap ramen for a month. I’m sitting here in my writing shed with a lovely garden view. But there are apartment buildings right next to our house, and I can’t stand the thought that there might be a parent in there who’s been out of work for months, and now can’t afford nutritious groceries for their kids.
Okay. The pantry is set up, we have our monthly donations to Beyond Hunger in place. Sitting here fretting isn’t helping anyone. Going back to work now.
One more batch of madeleines for the treat boxes. I’m experimenting with different types of packaging, and I really like these little waxed paper bags. $7 for a 100 4×6 bags; good deal. Functional and charming.
I had some extra melted chocolate at the end, so went ahead and dipped half a box of strawberries in there. Such an easy way to surprise and delight the family.
“Are those strawberries for us???”
Yes, yes they are.
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.
This is another swing-and-a-miss. I like my chocolate-spiced cookies; the hint of cayenne brings out the chocolate beautifully, and the dough takes embossing well, letting me have fun with decorating. But they’re a little plain, and they seemed to be crying out to become sandwich cookies. I could’ve gone with an Oreo-type filling, which honestly would likely have worked better, but I thought a mango filling would taste even better with the chocolate and cayenne. So far so good…
…but I had some homemade mango curd left in the fridge, and I think that’s where my frugal instincts betrayed me, because I tried to make that into a filling, mixing it with confectioner’s sugar and melted butter. It tastes nice, but it was just too goopy, my friends. If you refrigerate it for an hour, and then pull it out to serve, I think you’d be okay for a bit, but after 30 minutes, it’d soften so much that it’d be squishing out filling with every bite, which not ideal.
Back to the drawing board — I need to figure out a good mango cream filling from scratch, instead of attempting a false economy. Can do. (I wonder if I can use amchur powder to get strong mango flavor, without the moisture of the mangoes themselves? Hmm….)
Hm. I’m going to call this recipe a qualified success. I went looking for lemon bars with cashew and coconut, because I thought that might be nice, and I found this recipe, which I think might actually be gluten-free, as the entire base is just cashew, coconut, honey, coconut oil, vanilla, and salt. That part is pretty yummy.
The lemon bit, though, tastes…healthy? Even though I upped the honey from what they suggested. I mean, it’s nice, and both Kavi and Kevin said it was good too, and we’ve certainly been eating them, so I guess if you want a healthy-dish lemony snack, this is a good option.
But when I want a lemon bar, I don’t usually want something that’s good for me, you know? I want a puckeringly sour, but also beautifully sweet dessert, and this isn’t that. I think I’m going to try again, probably marrying elements of this crust (which I really did like) with a completely different lemon bar for the filling. Interesting.
A journalist is writing a piece on my cookbook for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which is lovely, and she sent me a fact-checking query about how long I worked on the cookbook, so I went to go look at my blog to confirm that I spent a summer developing recipes, and wow, my memory is terrible. I started work on Feast in May 2015, finished recipe development in August 2017, and handed a final draft off to layout in October 2017.
A summer is not the same as 2+ years, Mary Anne. Time is blurry.
I’m not going to write up a recipe for these, because I pretty much just used The Kitchn’s recipe for the madeleines themselves — first time making them, wanted something reliable. I didn’t have lemons, so I used lime zest instead, and used Baker’s Joy to spray the pans instead of making a melted butter+flour combo, but otherwise, followed their recipe pretty exactly.
These came out great, with the characteristic ‘hump’ that Paul Hollywood seemed so obsessed by on GBBO.
Then I melted some semi-sweet chocolate (1/2 power in the microwave for a few minutes, stirring) and dipped them, laying on parchment paper. Easy-peasy way to dress them up, and while a naked madeleine is just perfect with a cuppa, the chocolate makes it more of an eat-by-itself dessert.
I added passionfruit flakes, just for a little extra sparkle and a touch of tang. Honestly, you can barely taste them, but still, a little extra fun. Will be including a few of these in the September treat boxes…hope the chocolate doesn’t melt in shipping!
Started working towards the September Patreon treat boxes. (Reminder — I only offer a limited number of these, so there’s only, um, 8 of 25 spots left? I think so. $10 / month for a box once a quarter.) This is a nice, simple chocolate combo I’m enjoying — semi-sweet chocolate with goji berries and coconut. One bar might have broken apart when I was unmolding it, so oh no, I had to eat it. Alas.
(Seriously, though, I need to up my activity levels a bit this month, because when I’m making a lot of sweets, I have to taste them, and that way lies a much rounder Mary Anne unless action is taken. I actually put my Fitbit watch back on again a few days ago, and yesterday, I added in an extra walk instead of driving to the drugstore to pick up my meds and hit 10,000 steps for the first time in forever. Slept better too. Activity, good.)
You know what’s even better than buying a mask? Or buying a cookbook? Buying a mask AND a cookbook. Hope someone is thrilled when their order arrives.
