I still get a lot of pleasure out of wrapping up pretty presents of cookbooks and homemade curry powder for folks, especially when they’ve asked me to inscribe a sweet note along with it. 
Pretty Presents
Rhubarb From the Garden, Strawberries From the Market
Rhubarb from the garden + strawberries from the farmer’s market + butter and sugar and spices = spiced strawberry rhubarb topping, lovely with a vanilla ice cream, or pancakes, or cheesecake…
Rescue Cooking Turned Out Well
Rescue cooking last night turned out well. We’d gotten some Thai basil chicken last week that wasn’t great — lots of meat, not enough sauce, not enough other stuff. So last night, I took some of the green onions from the farmer’s market, added in a cube of frozen ginger-garlic, sautéed them with bell pepper and a chopped green chili and about a cup of chopped basil (also from farmer’s market), added the leftover chicken and a cup of freshly-mixed sauce (chicken broth + soy sauce + oyster sauce + fish sauce + white sugar + brown sugar), simmered it all for a few minutes, and served it over hot rice.
SO TASTY.
The only thing that would’ve made it better is if I’d had Thai basil instead, ah well.
Tomato-Mozzarella-Basil Salad
Tomato-mozzarella-basil salad, composed of ingredients from the farmer’s market. Also some cute little mini-baguettes; we get these frozen from Trader Joe’s, and it’s very satisfying to pop a couple in the toaster oven for 3-5 minutes.
Busy Morning Today
I had an iGov meeting from 8:30 – 9:30, and then I lured Anand into accompanying me to the farmer’s market with the promise of fresh donuts. He didn’t realize that it also involved being a beast of burden until AFTER we had gotten there…
Saw multiple people I knew, including the OPALGA+ folks staffing the donut booth, some old friends, a parent from OPRF who knew me from board meetings, etc. Anand was a little bewildered, “Do all these people actually know you? Do you know them?” Well, they know my face, anyway — that’s part of what happens when you run for office. Suddenly, you get a lot more visible, and people have opinions about you…
Lots of fun stuff at the market, per usual. Along with the staples, I got a ghost cucumber (supposed to be thin-skinned, basically like a regular cucumber, but cool-looking), and some sprigarello (a leafy Italian broccoli, apparently). Not sure what to do with the latter, suggestions welcome! We got a 3-year-old cheddar and a 6-year-old cheddar because Anand asked what the difference was, so we’ll do a taste test later and see which he likes better.
I’m mostly excited to make myself a tomato-mozzarella-basil salad for dinner, with olive oil and balsamic. I’d do it sooner, but the next few hours will also be hectic — I have a Clarion training from 12 – 1:30, and then we immediately drive Kavi to the airport for her flight to Argentina, and then we come back and drive Anand to a birthday party at 4.
But there will be chill time after that. And I got half a peach pie, so that’ll likely be part of dinner as well…
What Ended Up in Earth Treat Boxes
I have been more scattered than usual lately, and as a result, completely forgot to label my spring Patreon treats before sending them out. But this was what ended up in the Earth treat boxes:
- one iced vanilla sugar cookie
- two lime & white chocolate shortbread cookies
- one strawberry marshmallow
- two pieces of Sri Lankan cashew milk toffee
- one mini chocolate fudge bundt cake with chocolate ganache
- one piece of Sri Lankan love cake
- one chocolate-tamarind scone
- one little bottle of redbud syrup (nice on pancakes or in cocktails / mocktails; store in fridge for up to 6 months)
- one mehndi tea light (not made by me, but so cute)
- one bar of handmade soap
- one lavender heart sachet
- one resin pendant / necklace
Whew! There’ll be some more items in the higher tier boxes that I’ll send out next week, but at least for now, I’m suspending the higher tiers, as they were getting a little complex for me to manage and cutting into writing time. So just Earth tiers right now — $10 / month gets you a treat box 3 times / year. The next box will ship around September / October.
(And in theory, you can request just food items if you’d prefer and I’ll put in more of those, but I completely forgot to do that with Dawn‘s this time, sorry, Dawn! I was losing my mind a little bit the last few weeks…)
A Cinematic Adaptation of A Feast of Serendib
I get a lot of spam related to A Feast of Serendib (I think because it was hybrid published, and that put me on a list somewhere), from people who claim that it has great potential and they want to partner with me to publish it.
Which I think basically always means they want me to give them some thousands of dollars and they’ll make vague promises and do nothing effective to sell more copies — it’s actually super-annoying, and I particularly hate that they call my cell phone with these spam approaches.
But this was the funniest approach yet (via e-mail this time) — because, you know, it’s a COOKBOOK:
*****
“I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to inquire about the film rights to your book that is stated in the subject line of this email. I believe that your work has tremendous potential for a cinematic adaptation and I would love to discuss the possibility of a collaboration between our respective industries.
As you may know, our production company has a successful track record of adapting popular books into compelling and critically acclaimed films. We have a team of experienced filmmakers who are passionate about bringing great stories to the screen, and we believe that your work would make a fantastic addition to our portfolio.”
*****
I’m now trying to figure out HOW you’d do a cinematic adaptation of my cookbook.
• let Maitreyi Ramakrishnan dance for you, while she gently plucks the rose petals for a traditional rose petal salad?
• next Kumail Nanjani (shirtless, of course) and Hassan Minhaj will have a vehement debate in the kitchen, about whether or not potatoes belong in biryani?
Maybe it could be done after all….
(EDIT: Here’s the book! https://serendibkitchen.com/a-feast-of-serendib/)
A Cake We All Love
The Carleton let us bring in our own birthday cake, so I made Kavi a cake we both love: Sri Lankan butter cake, done ribbon style, with a mango-peach glaze, lemon curd, fresh strawberries, and passionfruit buttercream.
(This isn’t exactly the same, but very close, if you want to try making it yourself: https://serendibkitchen.com/…/sri-lankan-butter-cake…/)
The Carleton staff person was very complimentary — she said it was beautiful, and when I demurred, she said, “No, really! And we see a lot of cakes!” They ate some afterwards, and said it was delicious too.
I’m still not the neatest cake decorator, but fresh pansies from the garden cover a multitude of sins. Someday I will learn how to use an offset spatula properly (it probably would have helped if I hadn’t been too lazy to go down to the basement and dig up the cake turntable…)
I didn’t actually remember to take a photo of the finished cake! But here is a slice, at least.
That’s it for party pics for tonight, I think. I’ll get some Conservatory pics up tomorrow, although we also had a professional photographer there, so there’ll be another set of nicer pics in a few weeks.
So many pictures. My family is a little photo-happy.
Mandatory Short Eats
If you’re going to have Sri Lankans over, short eats are pretty much mandatory. I think I have rolls and mackerel cutlets down, but my patties still need work — they look fine when waiting to fry, but when we fried them, they didn’t puff up properly — I think we may have over-worked the pastry dough. And my filling was a little bland. Apologies to those using my cookbook! Must continue practicing, clearly.
The problem is, the only way I have the patience to do this kind of fiddly cooking, is if I have people helping, and it’s particularly nice when they are people who already know how to do it, like my sister and cousins…clearly, they just have to visit more often!
We also baked Kavi’s birthday cake — Sri Lankan butter cake, done in a ribbon style, hence the mixing color into the different layers…
Thanks for the middle-of-the-night cooking help, Sharms Murraj, Natalie John, and Michele Jayk!
Making Mackerel Cutlets
