Kiribath with Lunu Miris

In lieu of a basic intro, I will quote a line from Indika’s email:

“you don’t eat kiribath with pol sambol it should be lunu miris.”

So, Indika’s second recipe for the day is the traditional combination of kiribath with lunu miris.

(a) Kiribath

Cooking time: 30 mins

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 cup rice
Coconut milk
pinch of salt

Method:

Soak 1 cup rice in water for few minutes.
Boil the rice with coconut milk till rice is very soft (When adding coconut milk mix pinch of salt to the coconut milk and add it to the rice).
When the rice is boiling mix with a wooden spoon.

(b) Lunu miris

Ingredients:

10 small onions cut into pieces
02 tablespoons crushed red chillies
Pinch of table salt
Few drops lemon juice

Method:

Add first three ingredients together and mix it in a grinder for 01 minute.
Take the mixture out and add the lemon juice.
Serve with Kiribath.

Recipe Source: Indika K.

Kiri Koss

Today’s guest blogger is Indika and her favourite recipe is Kiri Koss.

Kiri Koss

Cooking time: 30 mins

Serves 5

Ingredients:

3 cups of unripe Jack-fruit
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 green chillies
2 cups coconut milk
curry leaves
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp chillie powder
salt to taste

Method:

Clean and de-seed the the Jack-fruit. Cut the Jack-fruit into thin long stripes. Clean the seeds and cut them into two.
Mix the Jack-fruit, the seeds and all the other ingredients and the the coconut milk in a pan.
Put the pan on a medium flame, cover and cook for about 30 mins, until the jack-fruit is well done.

Recipe source: Indika K.

Polos and Kos Mallung

Jackfruit, both the unripe and ripe fruit, is very popular in Sri Lanka. The unripe jackfruit is cooked in different styles across the country. My mother and I like the Southern style. My mother’s unripe jackfruit dishes therefore are a slightly adapted version of her friend’s recipes for polos and kos mallung. While I will certainly post the long and traditional way of cooking polos when someone sends me the recipe for it, today I would like to share the adapted recipes that my mother uses.

(a) Polos

Cooking time: 1 hour

Serves 4

Ingredients

Unripe jackfruit/ kos/ palakkai – 2 ½ cup (250 g), chopped and cleaned after peeling off skin
Chillies – 2
Coriander seeds – 1 tsp
Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
Cloves – 3
Cinnamon – small piece
Cardamon – 3
Ginger – ½”
Garlic – 3 – 4 cloves
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Rampe leaf/ pandan
Onion – ½, large and chopped
Freshly scraped coconut – ¼ cup
Salt, to taste – 1 tsp
Tamarind extract – ¼ cup or Goraka/ Garcinia Cambogia – small piece
Water – 1 ½ cups

Method:

Put the cleaned and chopped up raw jackfruit in a pot. Add 1 ½ cups of water and cook for about 15 – 20 minutes till the water dries up. Remove from heat and drain off the water.
Dry roast the chillies, coriander and cumin, grind them and add to the pot.
Crush the ginger and garlic and add the ginger-garlic paste to the pot.
Add the cloves, cinnamon and cardamom together with the chopped onion, curry leaves and rampe leaf to the pot.
Blend ¼ cup of freshly scraped coconut with 2 cups of water. Strain and add the coconut milk to the pot.
Add the goraka piece or tamarind extract to the pot.
Add salt to taste and mix all ingredients in the pot well.
Put the pot back on the stove and cook for 10 minutes.
Then, reduce to low heat and simmer for about 30 mins. If the ingredients are scaled up, the simmering time also needs to be increased. For e.g. if 1 Kg of jackfruit is being cooked, the simmering time will need to be at least 2 hours.
If you prefer having more gravy in your polos curry, add a little coconut milk and cook for a few minutes more before removing from heat.
Serve with rice.

(b) Kos Mallung

Cooking time – 25 mins

Serves 4

Ingredients:

Young, unripe jackfruit/ kos/ palakkai – 2 cups, finely chopped after peeling off the skin and cleaning it
Salt – ½ tsp + more, as per taste
Pepper – ½ tsp
Turmeric – ½ tsp
Garlic – 4 – 5 cloves, chopped
Green chillies – 2
Onion – 1, small, chopped
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Scraped coconut – 1 tbsp (optional)
Lime juice – 1 tsp
Low fat oil (canola or sunflower) – 1 tbsp
Water – ½ cup

Method:

Marinate the finely chopped unripe jackfruit flesh and seed with ½ tsp salt, pepper and turmeric powder. Keep aside for about 10 minutes.
Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan and sauté the chopped garlic, chillies, onion and curry leaves for 2 minutes.
Add the marinated finely chopped jackfruit to the pan. Mix well.
Add ½ cup water and test for salt, adding more if required. Cover and cook on low heat for 10 minutes.
Uncover after 10 minutes and if there is still water in the pan, cook till the water dries up.
If you like adding scraped coconut, you can add the freshly scraped coconut now and remove from heat.
Add 1 tsp lime juice. Mix well and serve hot with rice.

Recipe source: Lalitha Senadheera and Raji Thillainathan.

Mixed Veggie Idli with Sambal

My mother’s idlis and vadais are famous amongst family and friends. So, the two are regularly made at home. Unfortunately, I have never been fond of either and used to often eat instant noodles whenever they were being made at home. On the rare occasions that I did eat them, it had to be only that made by my mother. However, I became a fan the first time I tasted my mother’s experimental mixed veggie idli with sambal. I still don’t eat idlis or vadais outside of my home but I am no longer fussy when idli is on the dinner menu at home.

So, today, I am sharing my mother’s recipe for the mixed veggie idli and sambal.

Mixed Veggie Idli

Cooking time: 10 – 15 mins + Soaking and fermenting time: around 12 – 24 hours

Makes 16 idlis

Ingredients:

Urad dal (Black gram) – ½ cup
Basmathi or samba rice – ½ cup
White raw rice – ¼ cup
Carrot – ¼ cup, grated
Leeks – ¼ cup, grated
Onion – ¼ cup, grated
Green chillies – 2, finely chopped
Fennel seeds – ½ tsp
Curry leaves, finely chopped
Coriander leaves, finely chopped
Baking powder – 1 tsp (optional)
Salt, to taste
Oil

Method:

Soak the urad dal, samba or basmathi and white raw rice separately for a minimum of 6 hours. Overnight soaking is better.
Grind the dal and rice together with a little water to a thick batter consistency, much thicker than pancake batter.
Cover and keep for 6 hours.
After six hours, heat a little oil in a pan and lightly sauté the fennel seeds, chopped onions, curry leaves for a few seconds before adding the carrots, leeks and chillies and fry lightly. Remove from heat and cool.
Stir in the sautéed vegetable mixture and the chopped coriander leaves into the batter mix. Add salt, to taste, baking powder (optional) and a little water so that the batter is easy to pick with a scooping spoon.
Pour the batter onto the idli molds on an idli steamer and steam for about 10 mins.
This batter mix makes 16 idlis.
Serve hot with sambal.

Note: For those who do not have an idli steamer and wish to simply try out this recipe once, the alternative would be to pour the batter into a small bowl placed in a larger bowl with water and steamed, similar to a steamed pudding. The steamed idli can then be overturned onto a plate or tray and then cut into pieces. This would mean though that you would not get the standard or usual shape of idlis and would need to repeat the process a couple of times till the batter mix runs out. Then again, if you do end up liking what you eat, you would probably want to invest in a regular idli cooker with a four or five tiered idli stand for the next time around.

Sambal

Preparation time: 5 mins

Serves 4

Ingredients:

Scraped fresh coconut – 1 cup
Dried red chillies – 5, chopped
Onion – 1, medium sized, chopped
Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
Oil

Method:

Heat a little oil in a pan and roast separately the chopped red chillies, then the curry leaves, chopped onion and finally the scraped coconut and remove from heat.
Mix all and dry grind them to make the sambal.
Serve with the mixed veggie idli.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Mushroom curry

My mother tells me that my grandmother was very fond of wild mushrooms and she liked picking them fresh. It seems that mushrooms sprout overnight after a heavy rainfall with a lot of thunder but they turn poisonous once the sun rises and they bloom. My grandmother used to go to her field just before dawn and pick the mushrooms, with its stalks, which grew under a particular huge tree. There were also snake holes around that tree where snakes did live but my grandmother was quite a fearless woman.

While her children and grandchildren no longer neither live near fields nor would we know how to identify good mushrooms and when we should pick them, my grandmother’s fondness for mushrooms has been transferred to everyone at home.

So, here’s my grandmother’s mushroom recipe as remembered and very often replicated at home by my mother.

Mushroom curry

Cooking time: 15 mins

Serves 4

Ingredients

Mushrooms (Button/Agaricus or Crimini) – 1 cup, sliced
Garlic – 3 or 4 cloves
Ginger – 1” piece
Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
Coconut milk – 1 cup (thin or ½ cup coconut milk mixed with ½ cup water) + ¼ cup thick (optional)
Curry powder – 1 tbsp
Mixed dry roasted spice powder – fennel, cardamom, cinnamon and clove (3C + fennel) – 1 tsp
Salt, to taste

Method

Heat 1 tsp oil in a pan and sauté the garlic, ginger and curry leaves.
When the aroma begins to waft about, add the sliced mushrooms and mix well.
Add 1 cup of thin coconut milk and add curry powder and salt. Cook for around 10 to 12 mins.
Add the mixed dry roasted spice powder together with ¼ cup milk, if the curry has dried up or if you prefer it with gravy, and let the curry simmer for a few minutes before removing from heat.
Serve hot with rice or rotis.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Mulai keerai aviyal

This is my grandmother’s recipe, as often cooked at home by my mother. Since I was on an Indian culinary journey last month, I realize that this recipe resembles a simpler variant of the Kerala avial, sans the curd.

Mulai keerai aviyal

Cooking time: 10 – 12 mins

Serves 4

Ingredients:

Amaranth greens/ mulai keerai/ thampala – 2½ cup, washed thoroughly and finely chopped
Carrot – ½ cup, sliced
Chilli – 1, chopped
Onion – 1 small, chopped
Garlic – 1 or 2 cloves, chopped
Salt to taste
Water
Scraped coconut – 1 tbsp

Method:

Put the washed and chopped vegetables in a pot with ½ cup of water and salt. Cook till the veggies are tender and the water dries up.
Add the scraped coconut, mix well and cook for another 2 mins.
Serve hot with rice.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Kiribath with pol sambol and seeni sambol

This is my mother’s version of the traditional South Sri Lankan breakfast. It is very much part of the Sinhalese cuisine and a must during New Year celebrations and birthday breakfasts. I like kiribath, more so than the milk rice equivalent in Tamil cuisine called pongal. Therefore, my mother makes kiribath occasionally at home for breakfast. While I will be posting other kiribath recipes when sent in by friends, I am posting today my mother’s recipe for this coconut milk rice dish and accompaniments.

The recipes below serve 3 – 4 persons.

(a) Kiribath

Cooking time: 20 to 25 mins

Ingredients:

Rice – 1 cup
Coconut powder – 3 tbsp
Salt, 1 tsp or to taste
Water

Method:

Place the rice in a rice cooker and add water to about 2 inches above the surface of the rice. Add the coconut powder and mix. For those who prefer using fresh coconut milk, they can add the coconut milk of medium consistency instead of adding water and coconut powder.
Add salt to the rice and milk mixture and boil the rice.
Once the coconut milk rice has been cooked, it can be put in bowls. Before serving, upturn the molded rice onto a plate or tray.
Serve with pol sambol, seeni sambol and bananas.

(b) Seeni Sambol

Cooking time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

1 onion, large
Fennel seeds – ½ tsp
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Cinnamon – 1” stick
Tamarind extract – ½ cup extracted from 1 small ball of tamarind
Crushed chillies – 1 tsp
Sugar – 1 tsp
Low fat oil (canola or sunflower) – 1 tbsp

Method:

Chop up the onion in thin, long slices.
Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan and sauté the fennel seeds, curry leaves and pieces of the cinnamon stick. Add the onions and sauté on low heat, for about 5 – 7 mins, till the onions lightly brown.
Add the tamarind extract of medium consistency and crushed chillies to the pan and cook till the onion sauce thickens.
Add 1 tsp of sugar, mix well and cook for about 2 mins more before removing from heat.
Serve with kiribath.

(c) Pol Sambol

Cooking time: 5 to 10 mins

Ingredients:

Scraped coconut – ½ cup
Dried red chillies – 3
Onion – 1 small
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Low fat oil (canola or sunflower) – 1 tsp

Method:

Chop up the chillies, onion and curry leaves and lightly sauté in a little oil.
Remove the chillies, onion and curry leaves from the oil and mix with the scraped coconut.
Add salt to taste and grind the mixture to a sambol texture.
Serve with kiribath.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Fish cutlets

Today’s guest blogger is Krishanti Weerakoon, a staff of UN and wife of the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Canada.

FISH CUTLETS

This is a fool-proof Sri Lankan recipe and on all of our postings overseas, this was an absolute favourite. A versatile and excellent snack for coffee mornings, afternoon teas, lunches , cocktail parties,with pre dinner drinks or even with dinner!! Make sure you have enough to go around as these small morsels have an explosion on your taste buds with the spices and aromatics and they are very popular. Reduce the intensity of the chillies depending on your guests’ tolerance for spice!!

Ingredients:
1 tin tuna ( 450 gram)
2 small green chillies cut finely
1 small onion diced
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp chillie powder

I large potato peeled and boiled and mashed
I clove garlic crushed
1 tsp chopped ginger
I tsp each ground coriander and cummin

I tsp lime juice
I lb bread crumbs ( 450 gms)
2 eggs

3 tbsp flour
salt

1 pint oil for deep frying.

Method:
Mix all the ingredients except one egg and flour , breadcrumbs and oil in a bowl. Make small balls about the size of a walnut.

Break the other egg into a bowl and beat lightly with a fork. Then put the flour and breadcrumbs into two seperate bowls. Follow this order; first roll the cutlet in flour, then egg and lastly breadcrumbs. Treat it like an assembly line!! Use up all the fish mixture this way!

Heat oil to smoking point in a wok or fryer. Fry the cutlets until golden brown . Do not add too many at a time as it will lower the temperature of the oil and will not fry evenly. Ensure that oil stays hot when frying to ensure crispy cutlets. Serve with a nice dip either sweet chilli sauce or tomato/barbecue sauce.

Recipe source: Krishanti Weerakoon.

Wattalapam Jelly Pudding

As part of the Eid special series,

(e) Wattalapam jelly pudding

Originally from the Sri Lankan Malay cuisine, wattalapam has become a dessert that is made by all communities in Sri Lanka. This recipe of my mother is an adaptation of the traditional wattalapam into a jelly pudding.

Cooking time: 15 minutes

Serves 4

Ingredients:

Thick coconut milk – 1 cup (this can be obtained by blending ¼ cup freshly scraped coconut with 1 cup of water)
Egg – 1 (can use 2 tbsp corn flour as a substitute)
Jaggery – ½ to 1 cup, depending on taste
Cardamom – 3 or 4, crushed
Vanilla extract – 2 tsp
Agar agar – 2 tbsp
Hot water – 6 tbsp

Method:

Mix the coconut milk and jaggery.
Lightly whisk the egg before adding the jaggery-milk mixture. Blend the mixture well.
Add the crushed cardamom and vanilla extract to the mixture.
Cook the pudding mixture on low heat, stirring continuously, for about 10 mins.
Remove the thickened mixture from the heat and keep aside to cool.
Take 2 tsp agar agar powder and mix with 6 tbsp hot water.
Beat the agar agar mix into the slightly cooled pudding mixture.
Cool and refrigerate.

Recipe Source: Raji Thillainathan.