with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Mission accomplished. 🙂 Chai spice banana bread; the kids said it was better than all the banana bread I’ve made before (from standard recipes), which was very satisfying. Will post recipe shortly.
I’m going to freeze a few loaves to sell at the Colorful Holiday fair on the 21st, and I think make another batch soon, because we have just THAT MANY frozen bananas in the freezer, and I am going to clear space, dammit.
#serendibkitchen
#blog
Sri Lankan Shepherds’ Pie
(15 minutes cooking time + 40 minutes baking / cooling)
Usually mashed potatoes go pretty fast around here, but we made so much for Thanksgiving that we actually had some leftover. Shepherd’s pie to the rescue — but I had a long work day today, so I wanted a version that required the minimum of actual cooking.
Could I avoid chopping onions and carrots the way we usually would for shepherds’ pie, and still come up with a tasty dish? Yes, as it turned out, if I combined it with the approach we use for ginger-garlic chicken. Though if you don’t have leftover mashed potatoes, you’ll need to make them fresh, which will add a bit of cooking time, I’m afraid.
Ingredients:
2-3 cups leftover mashed potatoes
1.5 lbs ground lamb (you could use beef or another meat instead instead)
1 heaping teaspoon ground ginger
1 heaping teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 – 1 t. black pepper (or cayenne)
1 teaspoon Sri Lankan curry powder
2 T flour
1/4 c. ketchup
1/8 c. Worcestershire sauce
1 c. chicken broth
1 T lime juice
1/2 c. frozen peas
1/2 c. frozen corn
NOTE: If you don’t have leftover mashed potatoes, boil the potatoes and mash them first, before starting the meat, as there isn’t really a good pausing point during the meat-cooking process.
1. Set oven preheating to 400F. Turn lamb into a sauté pan, add ginger, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and curry powder, and fry on high until browned — the lamb should give off enough oil that you have no need for more, although do add oil if needed.
2. Add flour and stir for a few minutes, until flour is browned and the ground lamb is thoroughly coated.
3. Add ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and chicken broth; cook a few minutes, stirring, until well-blended. Simmer a few more minutes until liquid thickens into a sauce. Add lime juice, stir, and adjust seasonings to taste. If there’s excess oil, blot it up with a paper towel or skim it off at this stage.
4. Stir in frozen peas and corn until well blended. Turn off heat and turn mixture out into a casserole dish. Spread with mashed potatoes.
5. Bake at 400F for 25 minutes, until top of potatoes are golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool (and set) for 15 minutes. Serve hot.
I’d hoped to to get all the Kickstarter cookbooks out before December 1st, and we’re not quite making it, but I swear, we’re getting there! Before and after pics.
Tamarind-chili marshmallows — they look a little deflated in the mixed sweets bags compared to the other marshmallows, and I hope people don’t mind — that’s just what the tamarind does to the marshmallow. It still tastes good, I promise, even if it’s not quite as fluffy.
It’s so satisfying, packing up these larger packages, with the sweets and the soaps and all; I’m just imagining people opening them on the other end, hopefully with delight. 
This is an experiment that didn’t QUITE work — I wondered if I could make a sort of bark with milk toffee and chocolate. I usually have a lot of milk toffee bits left after cutting it into squares, and while Anand is happy to eat them all right out of the bowl, it seemed like they might be useful in something.
I have to admit, while it tastes fine (and bittersweet chocolate actually does a good job of balancing the sweetness of the milk toffee), I *almost* didn’t even eat it, because it looked so bad when I was stirring it in the bowl. I mean, it didn’t really look like food!
It looked better once spread out on parchment, hardened, and cut up into bark pieces. But still, I’m not sure I’d make it again. Maybe I’m just shallow — I want my food to look good too.
If you have milk toffee bits left over, I’d recommend stirring them into vanilla or dark chocolate ice cream instead.
We’re really getting very close to finishing Kickstarter shipping on Feast. All the simple packages have been done, and now we’re finishing up the fancier ones, the Sweet Treats and Island Relaxation packages. Gods willing, those will all be going out by Wednesday this week, when the USPS pick-up is scheduled. Some of the marshmallows are pictured below — gingered chai and honeyed rosewater with saffron. Mmm…
Then we’ll just be left with the ‘problem cases,’ where for whatever reason, something is unclear. Addresses missing, orders that don’t seem to match up pricing and items, etc. — we’re going to have to write back to a few dozen people and try to sort out what happened on those.
We’re trying to get these sorted as fast as possible, but we’ve been fighting various illnesses around here that are really slowing us down — poor Stephanie got here and started working this morning, and then got felled by a migraine; she kept trying to power through, but eventually admitted defeat (a solid hour after I told her to just go home and rest…).
It’s hard to stop when we’re so close to the end, but at the same time, if we work tired and brain-fuzzled, we’re just going to make mistakes that will require fixing later. We’re double-and triple-checking every order and still, I’m sure some errors slipped through. If you didn’t get something you ordered, then PLEASE, let us know, and we will do our best to make it right!
I didn’t have time to write up this recipe in the heat of Thanksgiving prep, but it turns out that my kids’ favorite Sri Lankan dish, ginger-garlic chicken, makes a very nice stuffing. I’m eating the last of it for lunch, right out of the Pyrex with a fork. 
I think it’d also make a pretty tasty lettuce leaf wrap.
I love the way the tart sweetness of the cranberry contrasts with the savory flavors. We didn’t make it spicy this year, so the kids could eat it, but I think this’d be even tastier with a hint of cayenne.
***
Ginger-Garlic Chicken Stuffing, with Cashew and Cranberry
(serves 24 as a side dish, 12 as main, 30 minutes)
1 heaping tsp ginger powder
1 heaping tsp garlic powder
1 heaping tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
12 chicken thighs, about 2 lbs., deboned and cut small bite-size
vegetable oil for frying
1/2 to 2 heaping tsp red chili powder (to taste, optional)
1 c. chicken broth or water
1 c. dried cranberries
1 c. chopped cashews
2 c. dried bread cubes
1. Mix first four spices in a large bowl; add chicken pieces and rub with your hands until well coated. Marinate 1/2 hour
2. Heat oil in a large sauté pan or on high; add chili powder (if using) and cook 15 seconds, stirring.
3. Add chicken and sear on high, turning to brown all sides.
4. Reduce heat to low and cover; cook approximately 15-20 minutes, until meat is cooked through.
5. Uncover and add chicken broth or water (if using water, I’d add another 1/4 – 1/2 t. salt), cranberries, and cashews; turn up heat and bring to a boil.
6. Stir in bread cubes and turn off heat. When stuffing is well blended, serve hot, or for later serving, turn into a casserole dish and cover. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes and serve hot.
Just finished packing up another set of Feast cookbook orders, and had to pause again because I’m out of curry powder and need to toast / grind / pack another batch. Back to the stove — good thing I have plenty of dumb Hallmark holiday romance movies to keep me company with all this late-night spice-toasting….
I’ve taken to double-fisting the grinding, because one of my grinders is automated when you push the button, so it really is almost twice as fast to use two. Feels ridiculous, though.
I *may* have put my sister Sharmila to work on arrival, but in my defense, there’s been a LOT of curry powder to toast and grind and pack up in the last few weeks, and Kavi’s getting tired.
A little cousin love for the holidays.
Some in the family may remember that Sharmila is generally not super-fond of cats, as there was an unpleasant incident with a neighbor’s cat when we were children (Robert Garbowski, was that your cat? We were trying to remember…). But Sripati is SO sweet that she ended up petting him anyway. #Spacecats for the win.
Veera and I are twin-braid twinsies today! (We were even coincidentally coordinating in grey and red, both of us with birds on our winter sweaters…)
Brother-in-law Ry N was kind enough to help carry our Christmas tree home for us, and by ‘help,’ we mean he ended up dragging it the whole block himself. Here’s Sharmila telling everyone to say “Christmas Tree!”
Give a girl a sword, and she may use it on her aunt!
Selfies, trying out Beat Saber in VR, and a little piano entertainment from Ms. Veera…
(Kavya is, btw, definitely taller than me now, according to her aunt and uncle. And we’re pretty sure she and Sharmila are the same size in clothes. Kavi is a little bummed that she can’t just go start raiding my sister’s closet — guess we should visit D.C. sometime soon…)
People have been so sweet and complimentary about the cookbook, but then they say something like, “You must be so happy,” and I don’t quite know what to say. Because I am, but also, I still don’t know if we’re going to lose something like $20,000 on it, and so I’m hovering in this sort of frantic anxiety-ridden space in the moments when I think about it too much.
I mean, it’s fine, we’re not going to lose the house or anything if this book bombs and I end up with 2000 copies sitting in a warehouse in Kentucky. But Kev and I don’t really have much margin in our budget (we are house-poor, in that we chose to buy a big, beautiful house that we can only just barely afford on our academic salaries), so if we do lose 20 grand, it’s going to mean some serious budget stress for a few years.
He and I sat down a few months ago and had a tough conversation about whether we wanted to bet on this book. And honestly, we didn’t really know what we were getting into — it’s not as if we had intensively researched budget numbers for the Sri Lankan cookbook market or anything. We just…decided to have faith in how hard I’d worked on it, and my 25 years as a working writer and a good home cook, and take the gamble.
The Kickstarter doing so well was definitely encouraging, but maybe it just reflected my friends and family support? It’s super-hard to tell whether this book will appeal to a broader market. I just don’t know how many people are actually interested in a Sri Lankan cookbook, even if it *is* beautiful and well-done.
I’ve honestly been a little dismayed by how often I hear people saying they wish they could try my food, but they can’t do spicy or are allergic to capsaicin, so they can’t — I hasten to reassure them that in fact, you can make almost everything in the cookbook with no capsaicin at all, and there are plenty of Sri Lankans who neither like nor eat spicy food, including people in my own family.
Sri Lankan cuisine is also mostly coconut-milk based, so it’s great for the lactose-intolerant (and if you’re allergic to coconut, you can totally use regular milk instead)! It works so well for vegetarians and vegans too, both in the fact that most of the book is already in that category, and that almost all the meat / seafood dishes convert easily to vegetarian…
But I can’t personally talk to everyone who might otherwise be interested in the book! I hadn’t realized “Sri Lankan food = super-spicy” was such a pervasive idea. I mean, it *can* be. But it doesn’t have to be!
This coming week, Mascot Books is going to take my cookbook to big buyers. Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Costco, etc. This is one of the main reasons I chose to go with a hybrid publisher, instead of just doing an offset print run with a printer directly; Mascot has industry contacts I don’t, and I honestly have no idea where I’d even start with trying to set up a meeting with Costco! (I actually think this would make a BEAUTIFUL Costco gift book. Will Costco think so? I have no idea.)
I’m also talking to Mascot tomorrow about buying some more publicity services from them — there’s a lot I can do on my own, but there are things they can do that I can’t easily, that will amplify our reach. So maybe another $2000 invested there. Which is, frankly, nerve-wracking. (You may have seen me talking about doing a Buy Nothing January? There’s a reason. I was also thinking of spending the month trying to feed my family well, as cheaply as is manageable with our daily lives, and documenting it all.)
I’m just feeling in limbo right now. Part of me wants to run out and pick up a part-time job as a cashier every time I see a store advertising such, just to have a little more money coming in, to counter all the money that’s gone out and is still going out. That’s REALLY not a good use of my time, when you think about hourly rates!
I probably shouldn’t be making so many bath products either, because I’m not even sure I’m breaking even on those, much less making any money. Kavi was doing them with me, and she started calculating how much it would take for her to make a profit making lip balm and selling it to her friends. She didn’t think the numbers were very good. I do like the creative aspect, though, and doing something with my hands, and blogging about it, so maybe it’s okay if making bath indulgences doesn’t make money.
Better if they don’t lose money, though. And I have to be more disciplined about doing the things that actually do make money, like writing essays and stories and sending them out. And publicizing publicizing publicizing the cookbook. I spent an hour or so on that this morning, and I probably should spend an hour every morning from now until the end of time. Or at least for the next few months.
Mascot sent me a guide for publicizing indie-published books, and I’m going to sit down with Pem and Stephanie on Wednesday to review their recommendations (actually, maybe I should ask them to look at it in advance), and decide what on there we actually want to do. Me being able to keep paying my very part-time publicist & assistant is dependent on this cookbook actually making a profit, so that’s the main thing I should have them helping with.
Anyway. This is all mostly a Sunday afternoon anxiety ramble (ah, Sunday afternoon — the long, dark teatime of the soul, h/t Douglas Adams), and thank you for indulging me.
I *am*, of course, delighted that people seem so happy with the book. I *am* really proud of it, however the money works out.
But if anyone wants to whisper praise for it into the B&N book buyer’s ear, I’d be okay with that….