This was one of my favourites, especially on a rainy and slightly cold Sri Lankan day. Roti, served with red hot katta sambol warms you up instantly. Normally I stay away from any recipes with flour, as it gets quite messy and sticky, but rotti is one of the easiest you can make with flour. Butter you use in dish keeps flour from sticking to your fingers !

Ingredients

• 4 cups of flour, you can easily use the bread flour, which is widely available at supermarkets. For best results filter this through a sieve.
• 1/2 cup coconut scraped, freshly scraped if available, if not dessicated coconut is fine. Anyway using desiccated coconut is quicker and easier
• 3 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup of water , take 1/4 of hot water and mix with 1/4 of cold water to get this.
• 1 medium finely sliced onion
• 4 green chilies finely sliced
• 2 Tablespoons of Butter

How to prepare

1. In a large bowl mix flour, coconut, salt, onions, butter, and chilies. Mix thoroughly until pieces of onion and green chilies are coated with flour.
2. Add water and mix to a suitable consistency that will not stick to the bowl. Divide the dough in to 8 equal balls.
3. Flatten them to get a nice round large roti. You can decide the size of the rotti at this point either by fully flattening to achieve a crispy rotti, or by leaving it thicker.
4. Heat a frying pan and add some butter to it. Fry rotties on both sides,
5. Heat pan with stove and bake the rotti on it. When one side is baked, turn over to the other side and brown.

Serve with sambol, curry and rice.

There are two ways you can make Seeni sambol, one I learnt from my mother, the other learnt from the grandmother. By the way seeni is sugar. So this is a delicious spicy recipe of sweet and sour onions. It’s great with rice, roti or even bread.

Ingredients

• 2 Big onions finely chopped, I use a V-slicer for this, it does the job in seconds, without tears !1
• soak 1/2 teaspoon of tamarind in some warm water
• 4 Curry leaves
• 2 Enasal (Cardamom)
• small piece of cinnamon
• 4 table spoons of maldive fish chips
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 8 table spoons of oil (Vegetable , Sunflower or Coconut)

How to prepare

Method 1

1. Fry onions in a oily pan
2. When the onions are dry add curry leaves, enasal (cardamom) and cinnamon.
3. Fry more and add tamarind water without the pieces.
4. Fry more until golden brown
5. Add maldive fish chips
6. Mix and fry more add chili powder (brown the powder in the same pan on a side until dark colored) and salt.
7. Mix and fry more. Add some sugar.

Method 2 (This is the easier and quicker method)

1. Add onions, darkened chili powder (darkened in the pan), curry leaves, enasal (cardamom), cinnamon, salt, tamarind water, Maldive fish
2. Mix the above well.
3. Heat oil in the pan put some curry leaves
4. Add the mixture and fry until golden brown.

Either way you will end up with a great looking delicious dish to server with Rice, rotti etc..
This can be kept in the fridge and used later.

Mallung or mallum is a favourite Sri Lankan dish which is prepared by finely chopping young green jackfruit and mixing with other ingredients and frying. Mallung is by design a very dry dish which has very less or no sauce. By frying the liquids from ingredients are evaporated. This delicious malluma is prepared with tender jackfruit.

• 1/2 Kg of green Kos either fresh, dehydrated or canned
• 3 finely sliced green chillies
• 1 medium onion finely sliced
• 1/4 teaspoon of Turmeric powder
• 1/8 cup water
• salt to taste
• 3 tablespoons of scraped coconut, or desicated Coconut
• 1 teaspoon black mustard seeds - lightly crushed in pestle and mortar
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 cloves of garlic crushed
• 4 curry leaves

Finely shred the canned Cos.

In a large pan, Mix the Kos, green chillies, onion, turmric, salt and water. Close the pan cook until the jackfruit is tender and the water has evaporated.

Add the crushed msutard seeds and pepper to the pan along with coconut, crushed garlic and curry leaves. Mix well and cook for 3 minutes.
Server with warm boiled rice.

Ingredients

2 large Eggplants
pinch of salt
pinch of chili powder
pinch of turmeric
½ small onion finely sliced
2 sliced green chilies
few Uluhal (Fenugreek) seeds
2 table spoons of oil (Sunflower ,vegetable or coconut )
1 table spoon of Maldive fish pieces

Cooking instructions

Cut Eggplant into small pieces.
Mix with salt, chili powder and Turmeric.
Heat some oil in a pan, add onion, green chili pieces, Uluhal
add the Batu mixture to the hot oil, mix all throughly until all pieces are coated with hot oil.
Add a table spoon of water
close and cook for 20 minutes
add Maldive fish pieces at the end

Ingredients
½ a packet or 2 cups of Jack fruit
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 sliced green chillies
1 tablespoon of Maldive fish
1 ½ cups of coconut milk
1 tsp mustard seeds (This is one of the most important ingredients and contributes a lot to the flavor)
4 curry leaves
1/4 tablespoon of Turmeric powder
½ tablespoon curry powder
½ tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon of Oil
salt to taste

Method
If you are using pre prepared Jackfruit, you can skip the deseeding and slicing.
Mix the Jackfruit, and all the other ingredients, except the mustard and the coconut milk in a pan.
Add a cup of water. Cook in medium heat for 20 minutes until the jackfruit is tender. Water should have evaporated by this time.

Add the coconut milk, cook for 10 minutes while stirring gently.
Heat oil in a large pan. Add mustard seeds, and fry for a few seconds until they pop.
Add the above cooked kos mixture to this and mix throughly.
Now you can serve this delicious kos curry with a nice bowl of steamed rice.

This is one of the easiest, delicious and healthiest salads. Salad dressing is slightly influenced by European practices.

Ingredients for salad

1. Hard boiled and sliced eggs
2. Finely sliced carrots
3. Sliced tomatoes
4. Salad leaves (lettuce)
5. pinch of salt, pepper
6. Lime juice to taste
7. Green chilies
8. optionally you can add some sliced Bell peppers to add additional colour, taste, and texture.

For salad dressing

• 1 table spoon of vinegar
• 1 teaspoon of mustard seeds
• 1 teaspoon of olive oil

How to make the salad dressing
Crush the mustard seeds in (Wangediya)
When mustard seeds are crushed, mix in some salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar. This dressing has a very appetizing smell and taste.

Salad
Arrange the lettuce to cover the base of a large plate.
Sprinkle finely sliced carrots on top
add a layer of tomatoes on top
add a layer of sliced, boiled egg on top
garnish with green chilies
drizzled the prepared salad dressing on top.
Sprinkle the remaining salt and pepper to your taste.
Now this delicious salad is ready to be served with a main meal.

Ingredients
1 small potato, peeled, and cut in to small pices
1 carrot , cleaned washed and cut into small pieces
½ small onion, finely sliced
handful of finely sliced Cabbage (Gowa)
½ tomato sliced
1 table spoon of olive oil (or any oil -Coconut, sunflower, vegetable)
2 cups of stock (either vegetable or chicken)
1 table spoon of mysore dhal (Parippu)
pinch of salt and pepper
5 pepper cones (gammiris)

How to cook
Mix all ingredients except oil, in a large pot. Boil for 20 minutes, make sure the potato pieces are well boiled. The soup would become thicker when it’s ready. Stir gently. Heat oil in another pot. Add the cooked soup to this pot with oil. This is called tempering, and it gives added goodness to the taste. If you are extremely health conscious, skip tempering. Now you have a piping hot, delicious soup. Serve with croûtons. If you wish you can make your own croûtons, simply by cutting a few slices of bread into small pieces, drizzling some olive oil on them and put them in the oven for 5 minutes @200 degrees celsius.

If you prefer a meat soup, please fry the finely slices meat at the beginning , before adding all the vegetables. You can add an egg add the end, when the soup is piping hot. This will make it look like a typical delicious Chinese soup.

This is a quick and easy prawn (Isso) recipe, which can be made in less than 15 minutes.

I use large Madagascan prawns, heads removed. You can remove the shell as well but this is entirely up to you. Wash the prawns thoroughly.

Finely slice

• ½ an onion,
• 2 cloves of garlic
• ½ inch of ginger
• 2 green chilies
• 1 tomato

pinch of

• Turmeric
• chili powder
• salt

2 curry leaves

1. Heat oil in a frying pan.
2. Add curry leaves, fry for some time and
3. add ginger, garlic, onion and the sliced tomato.
4. Fry for 2 minutes while mixing.
5. Add chili powder, turmeric (Kaha) and salt.
6. Add the prawns, fry for 10 minutes while mixing.

Prawns will turn to a nice pink colour to match with the rest of the dish.
Serve with boiled rice.

Emile Henry Clay Pot Black

This is an authentic curry from the repertoire of a Sri Lankan cook.

Cut mangoes in to small pieces. If mangoes are sour soak them in water for a few minutes.

To the above Add

1. a table spoon of roasted curry powder.
2. Pinch of chili powder
3. a few curry leaves
4. 2 sliced green chilies
5. salt to your taste
6. 1 tea spoon of sugar

Mix all the above well, until mango pieces are coated with the mixture.

Heat some oil, add mustard seed. Add the prepared mixture and a small piece of cinnamon, a few cardamoms, and a few cloves.

Mix well with hot oil. Add enough water to cover the contents in the pot.

Close and cook for about 20 minutes.

Now you have delicious mango curry to serve with rice. The sauce is especially nice !

Having been to Spain (Barcelona), I couldn’t resist trying the delicious Paella recipes. Of course they had to have a Sri Lankan touch !. It’s quite a simple recipe and a delicious dish. That’s was my first attempt at making Paella. Now through the cooking experiments, I’ve improved the recipe. So here it goes….by the way posh because of saffron, large Madagascar prawns and meaty monkfish. This will be a bit more expensive than my previous paella recipe, but it’s delicious.

Ingredients:

For 4 people

½ large onions

3 large cloves of garlic

½ large bell pepper (red)

olive oil

1 chicken stock cube

1 chicken chopped up into small pieces (could use cooked Tandoori chicken), or you can make this a pure seafood paella.

250g large tiger prawns , I use 12 large, fresh Madagascar prawns.

400g of Monk fish, these are quite meaty, cut this into small pieces of about ½ inch

Turmeric for colouring, this is what I used to use, now I prefer saffron.

4 cups Basmathi Rice (or you can use short grain rice)

4 green chilies for extra flavor

1 table spoon of salt (A lot of salt used in Barcelona !, so according to your health and blood pressure !)

I use a the rice cooker as the Paella pan !, this is very handy

Preparation:

Authentic Paella is made in the same pot from start to finish. This is what I do, and I use the rice cooker.

1) Add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pot, add a bit more, and let it heat up

2)Add the monk fish pieces and stir until fried and lightly brown.

3)Mix in the prawns, as soon as prawns are in the pot, they will get a nice reddish pink colour. Fry all a bit more and add chopped onion, pepper, green chilies and garlic. Fry gently for about 3 minutes, until everything is cooked. When it’s ready the onions get a pale colour.

4. add the crushed stock cube and mixin

5. Add rice and mix with the content until rice grains are well coated, add salt mix more. Soak a pinch (few strands) of saffron in warm water and this to the mixture, mix more

6. add 8 ½ cups of warm water

7. let it cook for 20 minutes while stirring occasionally, you have a nice paella. I am very surprised that this is not a Sri Lankan dish !