When I wrote about our attending a Dewali festival Saturday, I didn't write that it was also a potluck.
We don't have any Indian cookbooks, but we do have a Sri Lankan cookbook. We bought it at the Sri Lankan Curry House in Uptown of Minneapolis well over fifteen years ago. I have a few interesting stories about this restaurant, but suffice it to say that we bought it on one of our infrequent visits. In fact, the author, Heather Jansz Balasuriya, signed our copy of "Fire & Spice: The Cuisine of Sri Lanka", "You gotta come back more than once a year. Best Wishes enjoy". How's that for a multicultural name?
Migosh! I just looked up Balasuriya on Google. Amazon has one new copy of her book at $155, a collectible version at $175, and 13 used copies from $30 to $155! We never thought our $19.95 list copy would be so valuable!
And the web serendipity goes on. Heather Jansz no longer works in a restaurant, but she does catering. You can find more about her services at
http://www.heatherjansz.com
Back to the Dewali potluck. It was to be vegetarian and we leafed through "Fire & Spice" looking for suitable recipes. We found two we liked: one for a tomato-raisin chutney and one for an eggplant pizza. We thought the chutney would be more appropriate for the potluck; we would have to make two or three pizzas to make an appropriate contribution to the potluck. We thought we would do the pizza for ourselves another night.
Following the chutney recipe, we had about three cups of chutney. When the potluck was over, one needed a piece of naan to scrape up what was left. Unfortunately, the naan was long gone. (Naan is a popular flat bread.)
Tonight, we tackled the eggplant pizza project. It called for six chilies, my wife said three was enough. We doled out the tasks. One of mine was to fry the chilies.
Since the recipe said to fry and crush them, I chopped off the stems and put them in a bit of peanut oil. That didn't seem to work very well. I then thought I should have taken out the seeds first and then fried them like bacon strips. Oh, well! I did chop them as finely as I could. When I looked at the pile of chili bits, I thought that one chili would be enough for my half of the pizza. (My wife has to be careful of her innards after surgery.)
On top of a store-bought "thin" crust we piled on pasta sauce, eggplant slices, chopped onions and garlic, a bit of curry powder, lots of shredded mozzarella, and one bit of chili. It really looked pretty.
We let it bake and it took longer than the 12-15 minutes recommended in the recipe. We probably should have turned it because the back side was darker than the front side. But it looked good!
And it tasted good! But it was filling! Of course, for my part, the two glasses of beer during preparation didn't help. My wife didn't quite finish her quarter serving and I made it through only two-thirds of my quarter. But the heat was just right for my tamed taste buds. Thanks, Jan, for your restraint at the grocery store.
Gosh, that's quite a comedown from when I would order the moderate dishes at the Sri Lanka Curry House in Minneapolis fifteen to thirty years ago.
But, I look forward to leftovers for dinner tomorrow night!
For a bit more on Heather Jansz, see also Jeremy Igger's column "Heather Jansz: Still Spicy After All These Years".
