Mushroom Soup

I was away for a couple of days and discovered a kilo of mushrooms in the fridge when I arrived home. Apparently they were on sale! This fact, combined with the sudden cold, wet and dark weather, called out SOUP. So I made a huge pot of mushroom soup. I'm halving the recipe here because it's not usual to buy a whole kilo of mushrooms unless you are cooking for a large number of people. Since you are making half of what I made it is also likely that you can make it in less than 1 hour.

Preparation time: 1 hour; makes 1.5 l  

Ingredients:

50 g	Butter
75 g	Onions, diced
1 tsp.	Garlic, finely diced
50 g	Flour
600 ml	Water
1	Vegetable cube
600 ml	Milk
500 g	Mushrooms
	Salt & Pepper, to taste
2 tbsp.	Lemon juice
4 tbsp.	Cream

Method:

The thing that took me forever was washing the mushrooms. I learned recently that you are not supposed to wash mushrooms because they absorb the water that you wash them in and don't taste as good. I'm still going to wash my mushrooms because they are always dirty, but apparently you could buy a special mushroom brush to brush away the dirt. Just another gadget to have in an already overstuffed kitchen! I think not.

Well once they are washed I trim off the ends of my now "soggy" mushrooms and then slice them roughly. If you want to have a chunky soup and don't want to run it through a liquidizer then you will have to dice them, or slice them, finely. I personally don't like chunky soups.

Then dice the onions and the garlic.

Heat the butter in a large, heavy bottomed saucepan on medium heat. If you burn the butter tip it out and  start again, else the soup will not taste good. Once the butter has melted add the onions and the garlic and stir (to prevent burning) for around 3 minutes, or until the onions are cooked. The next step is to add the flour to the mixture and continue to stir so that the flour does not burn or stick to the bottom of the pan. Cook it for about 1 minute. Next you have to slowly add the water. Add about 1/2 cup of water, stirring it in until you have a lumpless paste. If your Sri Lankan then the instructions would be... it should look like pappa (which is a glue made out of flour and water that we are all too familiar with)! Then continue adding water 1/2 cup at a time until all the water is used up. By this time your soup should be quite liquid. Now add the milk. If the soup is already liquid enough then just add the whole thing in there and stir it around. Also put in the vegetable cubes. 

If you are going to liquidize your soup then you don't need to be too worried if there are lumps of flour in the soup. 

Bring the whole thing to a boil (you can increase the heat to get it to boil quicker) and add the mushrooms and salt and pepper to taste. 

Be careful, the vegetable cube is quite salty so make sure you taste it before adding more salt. Allow your soup to simmer over low heat for another 10 minutes or so. Then it is almost done. All you have to do is liquidize it. I am a fan of the stick mixer with a metal stick. This can be inserted directly into the boiling soup and the soup can be pulverized. However, you must be very, very careful and know how your gadget works. Else you will end up with hot soup splashed all over you and some pretty nasty burns. If you are not sure allow your soup to cool first (this cooling is not accounted for in the preparation time. One way to decrease the time would be to add the mushrooms to the mixture once the water has been added, then remove the pan from the heat and then add cold milk to the mixture. This should bring it to a decent temperature to experiment with.) If you use a liquidizer then you have to cool the liquid all the way down before liquidizing. Again, the preparation time does not take this into account. Once you have the required smoothness, bring the soup back to the boil. 

Remove it from the heat and add the lemon juice and cream. You can also add the cream later into the individual bowls to make it look fancy. No time for that over here. Soup has to be served piping hot. That means that it cannot be served in the kitchen and then left to sit on the dinning table!

NOTE: This soup freezes pretty well. So if you happen to return to a fridge full of mushrooms you know what to do.

Chef friendly version

Breadfruit Curry - Sri Lankan Style

On the weekend I had to drop off my eldest at a lazer tag establishment. We were surprised to find that it was right down town! Since we were the first there and had a few minutes to spare I dropped into an Asian store that was a few doors down. I was happily surprised to find that they had breadfruit in their vegetable section, and one good one too! As I picked it up one of the people working in the store, who was of South Asian decent, asked me what I would do with it. It always surprises me that the people selling these things don't know what they are! Sometimes in the Sri Lankan store in Dortmund I have people ask me what I do with the vegetables I buy. They are usually rather embarrassed by the question since I look German and they look Sri Lankan!! Maybe I should have a little card with my blog address on it and tell them to check up in a few days to see what was done with it :)

Breadfruit is one of my favourite vegetables. Unfortunately it is never in season when I visit Sri Lanka so I have not had it for years. I also love kiri kos (jak fruit in a milky curry) and have no recollection when I last ate it. A very sad state indeed. I have hope though. Maybe eventually I will be able to get unripe jak fruit here in Germany. I can already get ripe jak fruit, although it does not taste as good as the stuff in SL.

If you happen to find a breadfruit, buy it and cook it. It is really easy to prepare and delicious to eat.

Preparation time: 1 hour; serves 4 if served alone with rice 

Ingredients:

600g	Breadfruit
1 sprig	Curry leaves
3	Green chilies, roughly chopped
1 tsp.	Salt
1/2 tsp.	Tumeric
1 cup	Water
1	Onion, diced
12	Black pepper seeds
4 tbsp. (heaped)	Coconut milk powder
2 tsp.	Roasted curry powder

Method:

The hardest part about making breadfruit is the cutting and cleaning of it. As you can see above I cut mine into quarters and then cut the middle piece out (kind of like I would take the core out of an apple). It is possible that white milk will leak out of your fruit. This did not happen to me but I think it is because the fruit was probably not very fresh (as it had not been picked just yesterday!). The best way to deal with this white milk is to wipe it off with newspaper. If you get it on your hands or knife clean with oil and newspaper. If you try to wash it off everything will just get stickier.

Peel the fruit with a potato peeler and then cut it into cubes. You don't want small cubes else it will disintegrate. So nice big cubes about 1.5 inches wide. Then I sprinkled mine with tumeric and salt and rubbed it well. It's kind of like using a scrub on your vegetable. This 'scrub' will take off anymore milky stuff that is on your fruit.

Wash the fruit and put it in a saucepan. Now add all the ingredients except the 1/2 the water, the coconut milk powder and roasted curry powder.

Cover the pan and bring to the boil. Then reduce the heat and cook until the water has been absorbed (about 15 minutes). Mix the remaining water with the coconut milk powder. It helps if the water is luke warm. You can also use thick fresh coconut milk or coconut milk from a can. The canned milk tends to be quite  thick so you may have to dilute it a bit. Add this to the pan and bring back to the boil. Allow to simmer for another 15 minutes.

Once the fruit is cooked it will be soft, like over boiled potatoes. Remove it from the heat and add the roasted coconut powder. It is now ready to serve.

The method is relatively simple and I'm guessing if you are not being neat and pretty and taking photographs that you can probably put this together in less than an hour. The big time consumer is letting it simmer at the end for 30 minutes, but this gives you time to make other delicious things (and if nothing else at least your rice).

NOTE: I have found that breadfruit curry tends to turn very quickly. It's best to eat it within 24 hours.

Bratkartoffeln - Fried potatoes

This is a simple recipe that my children love. The only problem with it is that it cannot be really eaten alone, except maybe as a snack. When I make it we have burgers, sausages, or schnitzel together with a vegetable (last night it was carrots).

Preparation time: 45 minutes; serves 4

Ingredients:

1kg	Potatoes
1 tsp.	Salt
	Oil

Method:

Peel and wash the potatoes and then cut them into small pieces about 0.5 cm thick. For smaller spuds I cut them in two first and larger ones into four.

To fry these potatoes it is important that you have a heavy bottomed frying pan, preferably a cast iron one that is well seasoned (i.e. nothing sticks to it). If you use a non-stick pan the potatoes will not get as crunchy and brown. Heat the pan on medium heat and add enough oil so that the bottom of the pan is covered (I need about 1/4 cup). Don't put so much oil in that the potatoes are swimming. You need just enough so that they all get coated with the oil. Once the oil is hot you put in the potatoes, sprinkle them with the salt and toss them in the oil so that they are all coated with oil. If there is not enough oil to coat them just add some more.

Continue frying them, stirring every now and then until all the potatoes are cooked and are as brown as you like them. This takes me 20-30 minutes. If you feel like your potatoes are sticking you can pour in a bit more oil. Scrape the bottom of the pan while you are frying to ensure that nothing sticks to the pan and burns.

You can sprinkle a variety of other things on top of your potatoes once they are cooked through. Roasted onions, garlic powder, cheeses, chilies, herbs are a few that come to mind.

Serve hot.

Guacamole

Yesterday I took my youngest grocery shopping with me. I usually do this all alone while I am waiting for my eldest to finish her gymnastics training. I am so used to doing it alone, which  makes it difficult to do it any other way. I get so distracted by the company and they get me to buy all kinds of things that I don't want and cause me to forget half of what I do want.

Well yesterday I was made to buy avocados and tortilla chips. The demands were very clear: "Can we have guacamole for dinner?" There were other demands made like "Can we have salad with pomegranate? Can we have Oreos? Can we have Jaffa cakes?" but only some of them were granted, including the guacamole.

We love the stuff, and I am not sure why I have never made it in Sri Lanka given that avocados are so cheap and good and all the ingredients are available. It either is because I don't have the recipe with me (no more excuses now) or due to the lack of chips to dip. A few years ago I had guacamole in Arugam Bay and they served it with papadum which is a brilliant idea (might be best to bake them though instead of frying!).

Preparation time: 30 minutes; Makes a big bowl

Ingredients:

1	Onion
2-3	Garlic cloves
2.5 cm	Ginger root
4	Haas Avocados (about 2 Sri Lankan avocados)
2	Limes, juice and grated rind
4 tbsp	Coriander leaves (cilantro)
2 tsp	Ground coriander
2 tsp	Ground cumin
1 tsp	Chili powder
2	Ripe tomatoes, diced
1/2 tsp	Salt (to taste)

Method:

So there are two ways to make this. You can either have the chunky variety or the smooth variety. We usually go for chunky.

If you want to go for smooth just put the onion, garlic and ginger into your food processor and pulse. Then put in everything else except the tomatoes and pulse until smooth. Stir in the tomatoes and serve!

You might consider chunky to be a bit more time consuming but you save on cleaning the food processor!

So I first put the avocado in a bowl and smash them up to the size that we like. Then grate my ginger and garlic into the bowl. The onion I dice finely and add that together with all the other ingredients.

You can adjust the spices as you like and I was very tempted to add some finely chopped green chili but I didn't have time. If your tomatoes are watery dice them, let them sit for a few minutes and drain off the water. The tastier your avocados and tomatoes are the better your guacamole will taste.

As you probably all know avocados turn brown very quickly. To keep your guacamole a bit longer you need to stop the surface coming in contact with the air. To do this I take some cling wrap and press it down onto the surface of the mixture making sure to press any air bubbles out. Then to be extra careful I put another layer of cling wrap on top. The guacamole should be chilled before using so pop it back in the fridge until you need it. In my house it never goes back into the fridge (unless we are having visitors) but straight into some warm tummy's!!!

This is half the recipe

Pasta with zucchini, mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes

My mother-in-law arrived today to visit and cleaned up the kitchen after dinner 😁 leaving me with a bit of time before getting to bed to finish this blog post. This recipe was totally inspired by some vegetables that were lying around the house that had to be used up. My family insisted it be repeated! It is quite good and I'm really proud when I make something up all on my own and the family likes it. Makes me feel so good. I hope you enjoy it too.

Preparation time: 45 minutes; serves 6 - 8 (figure out how many it will serve based on your usual pasta consumption)

Ingredients:

600 g	Mushrooms
2	Zucchini, medium
500 g	Macaroni, dried
1/4 cup	Chopped dried tomatoes (around 4 large ones)
1/4 cup	Chopped cilantro
4 small sprigs	Oregano
50 g	Butter
250 ml	Whipping cream
2 tbsp.	Thyme infused oil (or oil plus a few sprigs of thyme)
2 tbsp.	Olive oil (if necessary)
1/4 cup	Grated parmesan
1 tsp.	Salt (to taste)

Method:
The first thing I did was to put the water to boil to make the macaroni. While waiting for the water to boil I took the opportunity to wash and chop my vegetables. Interrupting the washing in order to put the pasta in the pot and once again to take them out once cooked. I am horrible with cooking pasta so I always follow the directions on the packet. I always set my timer for the pasta once the water has returned to the boil, otherwise they seem so not done. Al dente is fine but crunchy is not happening. Although maybe Italians like their pasta crunchy! When we were in Rome this spring our host recommended a local restaurant to us. The pasta was so crunchy that we couldn't eat it. We were thankful that the portions were small (although the price was not) so we didn't have to waste too much.

Finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes with some oregano fresh from my garden 

When I made this I purposely cut the vegetables into large chunks so that we could actually taste the vegetables. The sun dried tomatoes were finely chopped since their taste is so intense. Likewise the cilantro and oregano.

I happened to have some thyme and lemon flavoured oil and I used this to fry the zucchini. Fried over high heat until golden. Once I run out of this oil I will just sprinkle the zucchini with fresh thyme. I have a large patch now in my garden.

I removed the zucchini from the pan and put them into a large bowl and threw in the mushrooms into the hot pan adding a bit of olive oil (you might not need any oil to fry the mushrooms and this is okay). This were also fried over high heat, continuously stirring. I think that the high heat helped seal the juices into the vegetables and by cooking them separately neither was was over cooked and each preserved their own flavour. A bit of caramelization just added to the taste.

Now that the mushrooms were cooked I turned them into the bowl with the zucchini and added the chopped tomatoes.

To complete the sauce melt the butter  over medium heat and once the butter has melted add the whipping cream. Keep stirring until the two ingredients are well combined. Make sure the sauce does not boil, simmering is okay. Then just add the vegetables, reheat . 

Add the macaroni or what ever pasta you are using. I like something tubular so that the sauce goes inside and gets stuck there!

Finally I took the pan off the heat and mixed in the salt, cilantro and oregano leaves. As always our kids have to have fresh Parmesan sprinkled on top. With them its usually the more the better (below is my plate!).

Agri Park, Kandy - Fantastic day out

Last summer we visited the Eden project in England and we had a long discussion as to how it would be so easy for someone to come up with something like this in Sri Lanka. After all they don't even need the green houses. Everything would grow just fine outdoors. A few months later when I visited Kandy, I found that there was something vaguely similar. In fact it could be as good as the Eden project if someone had remembered to put in the infrastructure and remembered that people don't necessarily want to see acres of different types of paddy! But if you remember to take a lot of water and some snacks this can be a most wonderful place to visit.
Just across the river from the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens is the much cheaper Agri Park. To get here take any bus heading towards Peradeniya or Penideniya and get out at the Dangolla Junction. Walk over the Mahaweli, Sri Lanka's longest river, and the ticket office is about 250 m on your left.
As of this month the tickets were 10/20 LKR for locals and 100/200 LKR are tourists (child/adult).

I so think that it is worth seeing that I made a little map in google so that you could find some of the nicer things. There are lots of things missing because I just have never had the time to see everything.

Hanging over head as you head to buy your tickets

Dragon fruit on the fence to the road by the ticket counter

Humungous ladies finger in the home garden

Crazy sign board telling you what is good for you when you have heart disease

What is good for oral health?

We were told by one person that we could climb up but then someone with more authority told us that it was not allowed. It looked quite dangerous. It's the kind of hut the farmers sit in to stay out of the way of elephants.

Feeding the goats

A kid with its mother

Paddy fields with the trash sculpture in the background

End of your tour with a visit to the Hela Bojun food stalls where you can buy all kinds of traditional foods. Sweet and savoury. Try the ulundu wade if there are any left by the time you get to the front of the line. They are amazingly good. If the ladies at Hela Bojun are not working (you are either too early or too late) go around to the back of the building where you will find a small eatery. The food there is good and freshly prepared. At the end of the Hela Bojun food stalls are some basic toilets for a fee.

Once my husband has gotten round to getting our vacation photo's off his camera I might be able to upload some nicer pictures!

Channa Masala (chickpeas) with spinach

So one of my daughters was on a class trip and my husband was away on business so I agreed to inviting two of my little ones friends over to spend the night. I was a glutton for punishment! But better a full house than an empty one. At some point in the afternoon I realized that I had not planned dinner and that I did not want to go out shopping for fresh vegetables. No fear, I figured, a pot of dahl always goes down well, except, of course, when you are out of lentils!! Luckily the pantry was not bare and I found a couple of cans of chickpeas. So I put on a simple meal of chickpeas and rice. It was such a hit (there were not enough left overs for a second meal!) that I reproduced it last night for the rest of the family (and wrote down the recipe to share).

Preparation time: 1 hour; serves 4 if served alone with rice 

Ingredients:

1 (75 g)	Onions, chopped
1/2 tbsp. (4 cloves)	Garlic pulp
1/2 tbsp.	Finely chopped ginger
50 g	Butter (or ghee)
1 tbsp.	Ground corriander
2 tsp	Cumin seeds
1/4 tsp.	Chili power (or to taste)
1 tsp.	Tumeric
2 tsp.	Ground cumin
1 tbsp.	Amchur or lemon juice
14 oz	Canned tomatoes (or use fresh ones)
480 g	Cooked chickpeas (= 1 large can of chickpeas)
150g	Frozen spinach
2 tsp.	Garam masala
1/2 tsp.	Salt

Method:

The method is relatively simple and I'm guessing if you are not being neat and pretty and taking photographs that you can probably put this together in less than an hour. The big time consumer is letting it simmer at the end for 30 minutes, but this gives you time to make other delicious things (and if nothing else at least your rice).

Since the first part of this recipe is cooked pretty fast, and because I didn't want to burn anything, I got most things ready before melting my butter. I had two piles. One of chopped onions, garlic and ginger

and one with all the spices

There are heaps and heaps of spices here because I made two cans of chickpeas i.e. I doubled the recipe. Here is everything except the salt and the garam masala. Once I had these two piles set up I put the butter in a heavy bottomed pan and melted it over medium heat. Then added the onions, garlic and ginger, increased the heat, and cooked them until they were soft.

You should stir them every now and then so that they are evenly cooked, but in between there should be enough time to crack open the canned tomatoes and roughly chop them. I first made this with fresh tomatoes and it came out fine. It's just a bit less... well ... tomatoey! 

Once those onions are done it is time to add the spices. I again reduced the heat because I did not want to burn the spices and over a low heat cooked them for 1-2 minutes. Keep stirring them so that they don't burn. Then in go the tomatoes and their juices. Now I put this up to around medium and heated it through. 

While this was happening I drained off the chickpeas and then added them to the pot and gave it a really good stir. On went the lid and I allowed it to simmer while I put together our now favourite potato masala and some rice. After 15 minutes of simmering I added the frozen spinach. I am sure you can use fresh spinach as well but I would cook it and drain the water first (else the masala will become watery). 

Continue cooking for another 15 minutes. Add the garam masala and salt to taste and enjoy!