Scrumptious Sri Lanka Part 2 11 August 2016

Breakfasts in Sri Lankan guesthouses were pretty good. A  couple of them served eggs and toast but most of them served an assortment of fresh fruit : bananas, watermelon, papaya, pineapple and if you were really lucky mango.
Then there were pancakes with a shredded coconut filling, coconut roti, potato curry, coconut sambal, dhal and of course a nice big pot of tea. Some days i couldn't eat it all so kept some of the roti to snack on during the long public bus trips.

Sigiriya breakfast

Breakfast in Ella

Halfway through my Kalkudah breakfast

Breakfast in Arugam Bay

Coconut pancakes in Sigiriya

Scrumptious Sri Lanka. Part 1 August 10 2016

It's almost two months now since I spent a fortnight in Sri Lanka. I wanted to go somewhere for a food experience and I well and truly got one. By staying in small guest houses and travelling around on local transport I felt I got a truly authentic experience.

Rice and curry is sort of the national dish and although I had this almost every night, not one meal was the same as the next. I was always given a big plate of rice but it was the accompanying curries which varied so much. Six or seven curries was the standard fare well as pappadums. Usually one curry was a meat or seafood dish : chicken, fish, prawn, crab, cuttlefish. The rest were delicious vegetable curries using eggplants, cabbage, spinach, jackfruit, tomato, beans, banana flower, sour mango,soy, carrot lentil dhal, and some vegetables which I didn't recognise. The curries were nicely spicy, not too hot and made with freshly made coconut milk.

Mrs Siva's Crab curry in Kalkudah

Mrs Will's Rice and curry in Ella

Mama's cuttlefish curry in Galle

And what better to accompany the meal - take your pick of fresh juices from mango,papaya,lime ,banana,pineapple,King coconut.

More Kalkudah curry from Mrs Siva

Fish curry in Unawatuna

Chillies Wednesday, February 24th 2016

Last weekend my sister in law gave me a bag of chillies which flourish all year round in a protected warm spot on her garden. She assured me that they weren't too hot but a scratch of the skin made me think otherwise. She wasn't sure of the species but distinctive features of black seeds and slightly hairy leaves made it quite easy to identify as Capsicum pubescens, a pepper of Central and South American origin known as Manzana. It was rated as "very hot"! As I am not a great fan of mouth burning foods, I had to find a way of modifying the heat to make good use of them.

My first experiment in the Preserving Patch Kitchen was to try adding them to my standard Zucchini pickles recipes. This recipe requires you to salt the zucchini, onion, lemon zest overnight which I thought might be a way of drawing out the heat. Next morning, I heated up cider vinegar, sugar, turmeric, dill seeds and mustard seeds then added the veges and brought quickly to the boil for 5 minutes. I bottled the pickles and they looked beautiful with touches of red throughout the jar. These pickles you can use straightaway so I was able to do a taste test. The pickling did modify the chilli heat and made it quite palatable. Winner.

Next experiment was to try to preserve some under oil,I've I do for artichoke hearts. This involves bringing the chilli slices to the boil in white wine and white wine vinegar. This kills off any surface bacteria which could cause botulism. You then cover the slices in oil to keep them long term. The result of the taste test this time was quite different. Hot, hot,hot. Something to use sparingly in a curry perhaps. It looks lovely on the windowsill though. I tasted the vinegar as well and that was even more potent. That was definitely destined to be poured down the sink. 

Delicious Dukkah Sunday January 10 2015

Last night when I decided to barbeque salmon coated in dukkah for dinner, I discovered my homemade dukkah jar was almost empty. Time to replenish it. My recipe is very easy. 

Dry roast:  1/4 cup sesame seeds, 1/4 cup coriander seeds, 1/8 cup cumin seeds. 

Grind and mix with 1/2 cup hazelnut or almond meal ( you could dry roast whole nuts and grind for a slightly different flavour), 1/8 teaspoon salt and a little bit of pepper. 

That's it! Great for coating fish or dipping into with some bread dipped in olive oil.

Reblochon Tuesday January 5th 2016

The Reblochon cheese which I made at the end of November last year is starting to get really stinky now. This is a washed rind cheese which has a particular bacteria in the mix, brevibacterium linens ,which gives the characteristic yellow rind. Washing with a weak salt solution every second day helps the rind to develop while the inside softens as it matures. We had some for Christmas but it was still a little young at that stage......this one will be ripe for eating in a coup,e of weeks. Luckily the smell is can natives within a plastic box in the cheese fridge!