Sunday, November 3, 2019

The Sri Lankan Cuisine at #WildAsparagusTable – Episode Four




The romance with #WildAsparagusTable continues




Sometimes I feel I am sailing in a cruise called #WildAsparagusTable, stopping at one city to try the cuisine of that place. Our captains, our guides…Ananya Banerjee and Saloni Malkani…steer the ship towards one destination every month, and we learn not just about food, but culture, dress style and sometimes pick up few language skills too. We have covered France, Mexico, Germany and this month it was SriLanka.

We are inspired and encouraged to swim into unknown waters, experimenting cuisines that we have never tried before. One month we spent sailing through net, googling-reading different food blogs, admiring food pictures, watching videos and hoping that we are able to match the ethnic taste of the natives.

During this month I learnt that #SriLankancuisine is the mixture of many cuisines (Indian, Indonesian, Singaporean, Asian) with different curries, flatbreads, rice. The ingredients popularly used are coconut (in different forms) tamarind, curry leaves, caramelised onions, chilies and spices.

What I didn’t know was that it has such a big variety of curries and desserts….my foodie friends surprised me when I finally saw the menu. Yes it’s a potluck. Each member prepares one speciality of the place, it may be tried and tasted, or just an experiment with new ingredients to explore new cuisine.

Eyes opened wide when the menu is made



And the eyes opened wider when The food is cooked…..we stand drooling, wondering what to start with, how much to eat. Everybody takes great effort to make a dish, so it will not be fair if we are too full to skip any dish. The trick is to skip dinner and breakfast and concentrate on only one lunch, savour each dish slowly, enjoy the fragrance, the textures, and the flavours of each dish.Take your own sweet time….



Our hostess, Rummy (Inderpreet Nagpal) had taken utmost care in setting the long dinning table with beautiful serving dishes and cutlery, a big spread of jasmine flowers surrounded the rows of burning lamps, Great selection of books lined neatly over the shelf, drinks were served from revolving turn table at the bar and the centre table  in the living room displayed assortments of Vegetarian thali, Non-vegetarian thali and great variety of desserts. The beauty was that every dish was cooked with love and interest and every dish tasted awesome.




To add to the zest of the feast, some were dressed in typical Sinhalese sarees. Common ice-breaker was “So, what did you cook?” Discussion was mainly around, (what else?) Food and recipes….

Throughout the afternoon there was uproar of happy laughter, as different jokes did their rounds in-between mouthful of tasty bites.



Ananya cooked the traditional dish Lamparis.

The Lamprais, an influence of the Dutch Burgher community. It's rice that's been cooked in meat stock, stuffed with curry, meatballs and brinjal. This is wrapped in a banana leaf packet that's then steamed.”-She said. It was  Delicious!






During my research, I discovered that Wambatu mojo is the favourite dish prepared in every Sri Lankan home. It’s a kind of Brinjal pickle, it had interesting recipes and I decided to experiment on this dish




It was a simple recipe.

1. Half kg of brinjals are cut into thick strip, salt and turmeric is added to it and is kept for some time and then deep fried in small batches till dark brown.

2. Half kg of shallots, slit and deep fried

3. 100gms of green chillies, slit and deep fried.

4. 50gms curry leaves washed and deep fried

5. Pound together into a smooth paste
1tbsp mustard seeds
4 cloves of garlic
1inch ginger
1tbsp sugar
1tsp red chilli powder
salt to taste

6. Add vinegar
combine and it should be sweet sour and hot.

7. Mix in with deep fried brinjals, shallots, green chillies and curry leaves.

8. Keep it for few hours to mature.




Enjoyed meeting all the home chefs and came home with the tastiest SriLankan pickle made specially for all by our most gracious hostess. 







Thank you so much!!






A special thank you to our afternoon refreshment courtesy 



No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

p1

Thank you for your appreciation