Friday 11 January 2013

Sri Lankan cookery lesson


Had quite an interesting experience this evening. Arranged to attend a cookery lesson and a trip around a spice garden.
There were six of us in the group and we set off first to look at the plants. Straight away things started biting our legs so I was getting panicked, and then someone told me to be wary of the leeches. Of course I thought one had just landed on my leg so I completely freaked out. Could have been embarrassing but I was too frightened to care.
Didn't listen to another word about the garden or the first part of the cookery class, but calmed down slowly.
After a while I started to pay attention and then realised how weird the other students were. They were two couples from England who had not met before but were like four peas in a pod.
They were super posh, questioned every instruction endlessly and wrote unbelievably detailed notes in special notebooks.
The cooking was done by a very friendly young man while his mum kept popping in to check on him, and he did his best to field their questions and get on with the cooking. Worst dish was garlic curry, not that it tasted bad, but because I question the wisdom of putting 90 cloves of garlic in one dish.
Best dish by a mile was a side dish called coconut sambal.

Recipe
Half a fresh coconut grated finely
Red onion well chopped
Quarter of a tomato well chopped
Green chilli sliced
Half teaspoon chilli powder
Teaspoon salt
Juice of one lime

Method
Grind all ingredients except coconut and lime juice until a paste. Add lime juice and mix. Add to the grated coconut and mix well. Serve as an accompaniment to curry and rice.
Lovely

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