Re-blogging Susan from Watch Hatch Fly‘s lovely version of the spicy curd dish… Thank you, Susan, for trying out the recipe and sharing! Warm greetings from sunny Colombo!
I always pack food for the trip, because the lake is located in the twilight zone of Pennsylvania. It’s difficult to describe the area, certainly beautiful, very rural and NO grocery stores. There are a few little stores that will do in a pinch. They tend to carry only essentials (such as ammo or bait. It’s big hunting territory.)
Vegans don’t require ammo or bait, and the blackberries aren’t ripe yet. So, we pack!
I decided to bring Spicy Curd Rice from Ahila@A Taste of Sri Lankan Cuisine. Ahila kindly followed me shortly after I began blogging in October. She generously comments and visits regularly. She always says something about the dogs. Louie would like to say something back:
I had leftover chick peas, so I threw them into the rice. I used a dried Thai pepper that I bought…
As today is my eldest sister’s birthday, I felt like sharing one of her recipes today. I decided to bring one of the cakes she enjoys making to the Fiesta Friday together with some lovely music. The recipe is given below after the music fest.
The featured musician today is Hariharan. He trained in both Carnatic and Hindustani music though he is foremost a prominent ghazal singer and has released lots of ghazal albums. While Hariharan started his playback singing in the late 70s in Hindi movies, he was introduced to the south Indian movie world only in the early 90s by A.R.Rahman. Since then, he has been awarded both state and national awards for some of his songs. Hariharan was awarded the Padma Shri award by the Indian government in 2004.
I first chose to share a ghazal piece from the launch of the album Hazir 2, Hariharan’s second one with tabla maestro, Zakir Hussain.
The second clip is from a concert where Hariharan sings with Chitra one of their songs from the movie Love birds, the soundtrack of which was composed by A.R.Rahman.
While selecting the last clip to share here, I was trying to decide between two songs. One used to be very popular on Sri Lankan television in the late 90s, Krishna Nee from the self-titled Colonial Cousins album of the music duo – Hariharan and Leslie Lewis. The other was a Bathiya and Santhush single with Hariharan. Finally, I decided to share the one with the Sri Lankan musicians.
250g self-raising flour (optional: can reduce the amount of flour and add roasted semolina ensuring that the total is 250g)
250g margarine
250g sugar
5 eggs, separated
250g dates
100g ginger preserve
Vanilla essence
Method:
De-seed the dates and chop them up roughly before letting them soak in a bowl of hot tea.
Chop up the ginger preserve separately and keep aside.
Whisk together the margarine and sugar.
Add the egg yolks and the vanilla essence and continue beating the mixture.
Then add some of the flour, chopped dates and ginger preserve, egg white and mix well before repeating the process till all the ingredients have been mixed well.
Today’s guest blogger is Refinceyaa Patterson. She mentions that this dish is a creation of her aunt who runs a pre-school in Trincomalee and enjoys cooking. This dish is generally cooked at her home on Sundays or special occasions as it is a favourite of their family.
Courtesy of Refinceyaa Patterson
In the continuing South Indian movie song theme, today’s featured singer is Sujatha Mohan. She started playback singing while still at school in the 1970s. After a hiatus in her singing for most of the 80s, she became popular again when A.R.Rahman had her sing in several of his songs in the 90s. She won state awards for some of these songs composed by A.R.Rahman.
The first song clip is from the 2007 movie Mozhi (translation: Language).
The second song clip is another live performance, this time of Sujatha and Mano, of the song from Bharathiraja’s movie Kizhakku Cheemaiyile (1993). With music composed by A.R.Rahman, this was the song that made me notice Sujatha as a singer. I guess I am partial to folk tunes.
The last clip is not a song by Sujatha but that of her daughter Shweta Mohan, who started her playback singing career in 2006. In this clip, Shweta was invited for a surprise appearance on the set of a music contest where her mother is one of the judges. She sings a few lines of a poem by Bharathiyar, my mother’s favourite poet.
Hope you enjoyed the voice of Sujatha Mohan and do let me know how this recipe turned out for you!
During a recent visit of my father to Jaffna, he brought back some mangoes from my mother’s childhood home. My mother said that the particular mango tree had been planted by her father. As the mangoes were half-ripe, cooking mangoes, my mother decided to make some chutney out of them. This is a simple, quick to prepare chutney. I have shared earlier a mango chutney recipe that my mother makes when she wants to store the chutney for a few days. I am sharing this instant mango chutney recipe with the Fiesta Friday group as well.
Continuing with the theme of featuring south Indian singers whose voice I have enjoyed and appreciated along with the recipes this month and next, today’s featured musician is another of my mother’s favourite singers – renowned south Indian singer K.J.Yesudas. A classical trained musician, he began his movie playback singing career in the early 1960s. Yesudas is said to have sung and recorded over 50,000 songs over his five decade career in most Indian languages as well as foreign languages such as Arabic and Russian. I do not know how he managed the volume because it roughly translates to about 1000 songs a year. He was awarded the Padma Shri (1975) and the Padma Bhushan (2002) by the Indian government.
While selecting Yesudas song clips to share here, I decided to share first an excerpt from one of his older classical concert clips as he is foremost a classical Carnatic musician and I like his Carnatic music repertoire better than his songs for movies.
The second song is from the 1968 Malayalam movie Bharymar Sookshikkuka. This clip is a live performance of K.J. Yesudas with Chitra and Sujatha.
Wrapping up today’s music selection, the last clip is from a very famous popular Tamil song of Yesudas from the 1992 movie Mannan.
Hope you enjoyed the voice of K.J. Yesudas and do try out this chutney!
Today’s recipe is a slightly different variation of bitter gourd/ pavatkai curry that my mother makes. The recipe for the more common way that my mother makes this dish is given in this earlier post.
Continuing with my sharing of Indian movie songs, today I would like to feature one of my mother’s favourite singers – S.Janaki and a few of the songs I like of hers. Janaki was born in 1938, started her musical training at the age of 3 and her movie musical career in the latter part of 1950s. According to my wikipedia source, she has sung around 20,000 songs in various Indian languages and won state and national awards for some of them. She made headlines last year when she refused to accept the Indian government’s prestigious award – the Padma Bhushan.
The first song here is from K.Balachander’s movie Varumaiyin Niram Sivappu (translation: The colour of poverty is red, 1980) starring Kamal Haasan and Sridevi. The music composition is by M.S. Viswanathan (MSV), who was more popular between the 50s to 70s. The singers are SPB and S. Janaki.
I couldn’t resist sharing another song from one of my favourite movies, Salangai Oli/ Sagara Sangamam (1983) whose music was composed by Ilayarajaa. This time it is a solo song by S.Janaki and the two actors/ dancers, Kamal Haasan and Manju Bhargavi, in the song are trained classical dancers.
The last song is a relatively more recent song from the movie Sangamam (literal translation: Confluence, 1999) and the music was composed by A.R.Rahman. The singers are Janaki (lead vocalist), Unnikrishnan and Madhumita.
Hope you enjoyed the movie clips and do try out this bitter gourd recipe!
Today’s recipe is another way my mother cooks mulai keerai (amaranth greens, I think the scientific name is amaranthus blitum). I have posted earlier the traditional way it has been cooked in my home across generations.
Since selecting the movie clips that I shared yesterday, I have been listening to lots of 80s and early 90s Indian movie music and remembering the stories behind the songs. I felt like sharing some over the next several posts. If you are not interested in reading about or listening to some south Indian movie songs, please skip directly to the recipe given below.
As today is S.P.Balasubrahmanyam(SPB)’s 68th birthday, I will share a couple of his popular songs. While not having had formal musical training, SPB’s natural inclination towards music made him drop out of his engineering studies and pursue a musical career in the 60s. SPB is most known as a playback singer, having recorded more than 40,000 songs in several Indian languages according to my Wikipedia source. In addition to winning several Indian state and national awards for his songs, he has also composed music for several movies, acted in some and given voice overs for popular actors due to his multilingual skill. The Indian government awarded him the high civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan (2011) and Padmashri (2001) awards, for his distinguished service.
The first is an upbeat song from K.Balachander’s Tamil movie Punnagai Mannan (translation: King of Smiles, 1986). This is the first song that SPB and Chitra sang together and features Kamal Haasan and Revathi. The soundtrack of the movie was composed by Ilayarajaa with A.R.Rahman, then a part of Ilayarajaa’s music team, at the keyboard.
The second clip is from a concert where SPB sings a song of his from the 1979 movie Pagalil Oru Iravu (translation: A night in the day), soundtrack composed by Ilayarajaa.
Hope you enjoyed SPB’s songs from the 80s as much as I enjoyed listening to several and selecting these two.
Today, I would like to share my mother’s recipe for date and walnut cookies. She often substitutes cashew nuts for the walnuts when we run out of walnuts.
I also wanted to mention a start-up that came to my attention recently and thought it might be of interest to those planning travels around Asia. Withlocals.com is a venture, currently covering 7 countries including Sri Lanka, initiated by a group of self-labelled ‘digital geeks with a combined passion for travelling, food and people.’ The interesting part of their services is ‘Eat with locals,’ where local hosts register to offer home-cooked meals. I might take up the offer of Martin (a staff at Withlocals.com) to try one of the eating experiences listed, next time a non-Sri Lankan friend visits me, provided the host is willing to share one of the recipes on this blog.
In the meantime, do enjoy these delicious date and nut cookies! 🙂
May this special day of Wesak, which celebrates the day of birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha, bring you peace!
Blue water-lily – the national flower of Sri Lanka
I am sharing this post on Angie’s challenge for this month with my recipe for turmeric coriander bread filled with seeni sambol. Ever since I started baking last year, I have found that I enjoy baking different types of bread. One of my favourite and successful breads is rosemary olive oil bread (recipe source: Jessie@A Hint of Honey). Using her recipe as a base, I have sometimes played around with herbs to make different versions of the bread and today, I would like to share my Sri Lankan twist to this bread.
Stir in 1 tbsp sugar and 2 tsp yeast in 1 cup of warm water in a mixing bowl and let it sit for about 10 mins till it becomes frothy.
Sift the flour and set aside.
Add a cup of flour to the yeast mixture and add the salt, turmeric, pepper, chopped coriander or powder to the mixing bowl.
Mix well before adding the sesame oil and add the remaining flour ¼ cup at a time till the dough is formed. Knead for a few minutes till it is smooth.
Lightly dab the mixing bowl with a little oil and cover, leaving the dough to rise for about an hour.
Transfer the dough to a floured surface and roll out the dough.
Spread the seeni sambol mixture over the surface. Starting from one end, roll the dough into a log.
You could leave the dough as a log or connect the ends to make a round bread or cut into 8 equal pieces. If you cut into 8 pieces, make each piece into a ball ensuring that the ends are closed and that the filling is not seeping out of the dough.
Transfer the dough to a lightly greased baking tray. Cover and refrigerate till about 30 minutes before you plan to bake.
Leave the tray out in the kitchen for about 30 minutes before brushing the bread with either a little melted margarine or dissolved sugar.
Bake the bread at 175⁰C/340⁰F for 20 mins. Check at intervals as the baking time differs depending on the oven.
I wish to wrap up the rice series by re-posting a delicious fried rice recipe from the first month of this blog.
To go with this post, I chose to feature two musicians who were born in Sri Lanka and started their music careers here. They have expanded their musical repertoire since moving/ migrating to the west in the 80s and have made some impressive music.
The first musician to be featured today is Carnatic musician Manickam Yogeswaran. While primarily a classical musician, he has worked with several music groups including fusion group Dissidenten on the Instinctive Traveller album and Jocelyn Pook Ensemble on the sound track of ‘Eyes wide shut‘ and ‘Brick Lane.’
This song is a recording of a bhajan at the sacred music and dance festival held in Berlin last year.
I also wanted to share a song from his 2005 album ‘Peace for Paradise.’
Finishing this post with an upbeat song – Herb Alpert and Lani Hall Quintet’s version of Puttin’ on the Ritz from their grammy award-winning album Steppin’ Out. The second musician I am featuring today is Hussain Jiffry, the bassist in this quintet. He has worked with several musicians including Sérgio Mendes and Yanni.
As part of the rice series, I thought I would repost the recipe for a rice porridge that I had originally posted during the first month of this blog last year. I like this murungai ilai/ moringa leaves rice porridge that my mother occasionally makes.
Further, as I am reposting an older post, I thought it fitting to feature two musicians famous for their baila music from the 70s and 80s. Baila music is a form of popular Sri Lankan music that has its roots in the Kaffringha music of Sri Lanka. The Kaffringhas are descendants of Africans who were brought to Sri Lanka during the European colonial era and with them came a unique mix of creole music and dance that found its way to mainstream Sri Lankan music in the 60s and came to be known as Baila.
While personally not a fan of Baila music, I find some interesting.
The first baila song I will share today is ‘Cooranjaneetha Thurannai’ from the early 70s by A.E.Manoharan, an actor and a famous baila singer and composer both in Sri Lanka and in Tamil Nadu, India. I consider his most popular hit song as ‘Surangani‘ which he first wrote and composed in Sinhala then in the bilingual Sinhala and Tamil version which became very popular in South India that several versions of the song have been made since.
The second baila song is that of the Gypsies. The peak period of this group was in the 70s to the 90s. Their last album released in 2001 was called Ai (Why?) and included several baila songs satirizing the local socio-political environment. While I most remember their peace song ‘Lowe Sama‘ that was continuously played on TV and radio stations throughout the 80s and 90s, in keeping with the baila music of this post, I thought I would share a song from there last album here.
Enjoy the baila songs while preparing this kanji! 🙂
A Taste of Sri Lankan cuisine 