♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Today on Milk Street, we're gonna explore the cooking of Sri Lanka.

Now, most of you haven't made these recipes, but we absolutely love them.

So the first recipe is dal, which of course originates in India, which is cooked lentils.

In this case, they cook it with coconut milk and spinach and they top it with a tomato tarka, which is a spicy sauce on top.

Then we do Sri Lankan deviled shrimp, which is sort of a mash-up of a curry and a sweet-and-sour dish.

And finally, we do what we call sort of a dump-and-stir chicken curry.

It's made with a homemade roasted curry blend.

It's very easy to do, but really amps up the flavor.

Finally, we taste turmeric, both dried and fresh, and tell you what we like and what we don't.

So please stay tuned as we investigate the cooking of Sri Lanka.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - So, the first time I had dal, I was at a Jain monastery about 90 minutes north of Mumbai.

It was a very simple affair.

Yellow lentils simmered gently in water and topped with what's called a tarka, which is just where you melt fat-- in this case, ghee-- and you bloom some spices in it, maybe some tomato, and you pour that on top as a contrast.

Very simple, very comforting food.

The second time I had dal, it was a very different experience.

I was in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and I was at a lunch shop where dal is a mainstay.

The bowl they served me, however, was wildly different.

It was still yellow lentils, but they were incredibly creamy this time.

And they also had spinach stirred into them almost at a one-to-one ratio.

I was so smitten with this version of dal that I had to learn how to make it.

So I hunted down a home cook, Mohara Dole, who agreed to teach me her version of what she calls nivithi dal.

♪ ♪ - My name is Mohara Dole, and I'm from Sri Lanka, in the city of Colombo.

I have my home here, and I have a cooking class which I do called Cooking by Color.

Everyone who came experiencing my cooking program have fallen in love with the Sri Lankan food.

It's varied, it's spicy, it's sweet, it's sour.

This country is so abundant with food.

I mean, you throw some seeds out in the garden, in a week, you find a vegetable growing.

Use this in our deviled prawns.

Yeah?

So keep it with you.

- Okay.

- We are one of the largest exporters of cinnamon.

So we have the best cinnamon.

And the cinnamon goes into lots of our dishes.

This is cinnamon.

You want to have a smell?

You just... See it.

You can add it to a curry when you cook.

- Hm, oh, it does smell.

That's amazing.

- I mean, I learned my cooking from my mother, and we lived in the jungle in Vavuniya, and families used to come to spend their holidays with us.

I started learning how to cook for large numbers.

So if you say, "Tell me today, can you cook for 20 people tomorrow?

", I'll say, "No problem, can do it."

I, I love cooking.

For me, it's like prayer and worship.

This is called the holy trinity: garlic, ginger, and onions.

It goes into every curry.

(pot sizzling) Out of all the curries we cook, I think dal is one curry that is cooked in every home.

Maybe once, maybe three times a day.

Actually, you don't have to make much more.

Because dal, with a little pol sambol, or a little bit of chicken curry or fish curry, completes a meal.

The dal doesn't have any fuss in it.

It's just the dal, a few onions and green chilies.

And just add the milk, and you're done.

So in this case, I'm making the dal with spinach.

Because the spinach adds a, a different flavor to it.

♪ ♪ After that, I temper onions, garlic, a little ginger, tomatoes, green chilies, curry leaves, a little bit of chili flakes to give it color, with a little mustard, of course.

Mustard is very important.

That adds the aroma to the thing.

And then I pour this tempered mixture on top of the dal.

And it, it changes the texture, the taste, and the aroma of the curry-- quite rich.

♪ ♪ - The first thing that Mohara explained to me was that unlike Indian dal, Sri Lankan dal is not cooked with water.

Instead, it's cooked with coconut milk, which is a main ingredient in Sri Lankan cooking.

Another thing Mohara taught me was that it's not just that there's coconut in it, but that there's many layers of coconut in the dal.

In fact, there are four instances where coconut flavor is added to their dal, both as coconut oil and coconut milk.

So this first stage, we're gonna use about a tablespoon of coconut oil, and we're gonna use that to lightly cook about half of a medium red onion.

We're just looking to soften it up.

After our onions have cooked for about four or five minutes and softened up a bit in the coconut oil, we're gonna add the rest of what's considered the holy trinity of Sri Lankan cooking, and that is onion, fresh ginger, and some fresh garlic.

You'll find this combination as kind of the flavor base of a lot of Sri Lankan cooking.

We're also gonna add a little bit of dried turmeric.

Okay, now, to that, we're gonna add one cup of red lentils that we've just rinsed and drained.

Now, to that, we're gonna add one-and-a-quarter cups of water.

(pan sizzling) And our second stage of coconut flavor, one-and-a-quarter cups from a full can of full-fat coconut milk.

So after 15 minutes, our lentils have broken down.

They're creamy, they're rich, they're smooth, and they've got this wonderful tropical, coconutty aroma going on.

And that means we can continue on with our third stage of coconut flavor, which is the half-cup of coconut milk that was remaining in the can.

Now, what I love about this third layer is that, unlike the initial batch of coconut milk, which is cooked for 15 minutes, this batch is only gonna cook for a few minutes at a low simmer.

And that means it's gonna preserve the kind of the fresh tropical notes, and that's gonna come through in the finished dish.

One of the things I really liked about Sri Lankan dal was the ratio of spinach to lentils.

It was almost one-to-one, which, at first, I thought was gonna be a little too much, because dal is supposed to make the lentils be front and center.

But this was just a great balance of wonderful green, earthy spinach against those creamy, sweet lentils.

It was like you had stirred some spinach into polenta, and it was just a wonderful combination.

One of the commonalities between Indian and Sri Lankan dal is that both of them are topped with what in India is called a tarka, which is where you bloom spices and some aromatics in hot fat, and in that case, ghee.

In Sri Lanka, they call this a temper, but it's the same process.

You melt some fat-- in this case, coconut oil-- and you bloom some spices-- in this case, a lot of spices-- and some fresh chili and tomato to create this wonderful topping to contrast the dal.

I also really love Mohara's use of curry leaves in her temper.

You know, they have such a unique, almost like roasted garlic, citrusy flavor.

It's hard to replicate, but, boy, when it's there, it adds such a wonderful nuance to the dishes, and they use them in everything in Sri Lanka.

Okay, our temper is great.

It's perfect, it's wildly aromatic.

Tons and tons of flavor in here-- that's ready.

So now we can serve our dal topped with our temper.

So, going to spoon some of our dal into a serving bowl.

Now, some people do add the temper directly to the pot of dal.

I prefer to do individual portions.

♪ ♪ And for some bright, citrusy notes, a squeeze of fresh lime juice never hurts.

This is a dish that's all about contrast.

You have the rich, creamy, polenta-like lentils married to that kind of tropical richness of the coconut milk.

But you got the robust spinach in there that gives it kind of herbaceous, kind of greenery.

But then you have this wild pop of sweet acidity and spice from the temper.

It's a really wonderful combination, mm.

♪ ♪ - All three recipes of this Sri Lankan episode contain turmeric.

You may be used to seeing the ground, dried, brightly, brightly colored powder.

We're also beginning to see fresh turmeric in a lot of grocery stores across the country, and for good reason.

And we wanted to dive into, what is the difference between the ground and the dried?

Turmeric is a rhizome, from the same family as ginger.

It grows horizontally in the ground like this.

When it's harvested, it is in root form like this.

And it's a little bit smaller than ginger, but you can see already, without peeling it, it's really brightly colored.

The peel of fresh turmeric can be extremely bitter.

So I just like to use a teaspoon.

It's very soft-- it's not nearly as woody or fibrous as ginger, and you can peel the peel super-easily.

I just had one of those memories from my childhood.

You know when you smell something and it takes you back?

My father and my brother are farmers, and they grew sugar beets.

Harvest time, when you pull those beets out of the ground, this is what they smell like.

When you cut into them, they're, they're really bright and sweet-smelling.

This has almost a citrusy aroma-- just beautiful.

Okay, now we've peeled the turmeric, you just grate it.

Use a wand-style grater with really small holes and you can grate it just like ginger.

So that turmeric is ready to use.

You can stir it into soups, you can make dressings with it, you can use it in curries and long braises.

Now, we also see dried turmeric root, just like this.

These are full pieces that are completely dried.

(tapping) These are typically used, smashed up, to make tea, to make broths.

But actually, this gets ground up into this.

So we thought we'd do a little comparison between fresh turmeric and dried.

We have a delicious recipe for honey turmeric panna cotta that we tried equal parts fresh and equal parts of the dried ground turmeric to see what the flavor differences are.

You can see there's a little variation in the color here of these panna cotta.

The fresh is a little bit paler.

Both really delicious, but, I have to say, for my money here, though, I like the fresh a little better in the panna cotta.

It's a little bit softer.

It melds a little easier with the other ingredients in there.

The ground is very present, also delicious, but it's a lot brighter and much more noticeable in this panna cotta.

Let's move on to something more savory and do the same comparison.

We used the exact same amounts of ground dried turmeric and grated fresh-- just in a basic, steamed basmati rice.

Very, very subtle there, very subtle.

You can definitely taste the turmeric in the rice here, and it actually works a little better than the sweet application.

The fresh turmeric is just a lot more subtle.

So when you want to use turmeric in your cooking, we found the ground dried to be the best for savory applications.

For soups, for stews, for rice dishes, it's perfect for that.

For sweeter applications and creamy things like drinks, the fresh is the way to go.

However, if you do have fresh, by all means, cook with it.

You're just going to need about three times the amount of fresh turmeric, grated, as you use of the ground dried.

♪ ♪ - So J.M.

came back from Sri Lanka with a long list of recipes, and each has proven better than the last.

I love all of them, because there's really dynamic flavors going on, and most of them come together really quickly.

And the shrimp dish we're gonna cook now is just my new weeknight favorite, because it takes minutes to cook, and it's got these really bold, dynamic flavors.

So in Sri Lanka, deviling is a particular flavor profile.

It's spicy, it's sweet.

It's this real mash-up of South Asian curries and a bit of Cantonese sweet-and-sour influence.

The first thing we're going to do is season our shrimp.

We're going to use extra-large shrimp, so those are 21 to 25 count.

And we're gonna season those very simply.

And it's just a quarter-teaspoon each kosher salt and black pepper.

And then a half-teaspoon of turmeric.

Now, the turmeric's gonna add a lot of color and it's gonna add depth to it.

So these shrimp have been peeled and deveined.

They've also been patted dry.

Now, that's a really important step I think a lot of us skip at home, but what patting the shrimp dry does is, it means they're gonna brown faster, they're gonna cook faster.

Our shrimp are seasoned.

Let's go ahead and start our sauce.

So two tablespoons of soy sauce, showing that Chinese influence in Sri Lankan cooking, and a tablespoon sugar.

That sugar is gonna glaze the shrimp, lay the foundation for that sauce, but it's also gonna temper the heat.

And here we go with the heat.

So it's about a half-teaspoon to three-quarter-teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes.

So we're gonna heat one teaspoon of coconut oil.

If you don't have coconut oil, a neutral oil will work just fine.

But that flavor of coconut oil works really well with this dish.

So to ensure the shrimp don't overcook and turn rubbery and tough, we're gonna cook just one side of the shrimp.

This is a technique we use a lot here, and it really guarantees that the shrimp are really juicy, flavorful, and tender.

So as they tighten up, you know they're cooking through and just about ready to pull.

So let's go ahead and take a peek at one.

Yeah, perfect-- so let's go ahead and pull these.

We cook our pound-and-a-half of shrimp in two batches.

And as you can see, one side is really well-browned.

You see that gorgeous browning, and the turmeric just really makes the color pop.

But that other side is still fairly translucent.

Shrimp cook through really, really quickly.

So let's go ahead and finish that sauce off.

So we're gonna add our remaining teaspoon of coconut oil, one small red onion, diced fairly large, and one to two serrano chilies.

And now we're gonna add one of my favorite ingredients of all time, curry leaves.

If you can't find them, the dish works great.

But whenever I can find curry leaves, I keep them in my freezer.

They store just great in the freezer, and I love them with roasted potatoes.

I love them in lentil dal.

Use them a lot.

And now we're gonna add just a quarter-teaspoon more salt and pepper to the dish.

We're gonna add a tablespoon of grated ginger and four grated garlic cloves.

It's a lot of garlic, and it really comes through.

Okay, this smells like heaven.

You're getting the garlic and ginger wafting up with the curry leaves.

Now we're gonna add that sauce we made and we're gonna add the shrimp and all the juices.

They may exude some juices there.

Get it all into the pan, toss to coat, and the shrimp will finish cooking through in seconds.

And then I'm going to add a couple chopped plum tomatoes.

Left pretty large pieces-- these really function as a nice foil for the shrimp.

They're going to add a little acidity.

They're going to add a little sweetness.

So that's it-- it takes under ten minutes, including all the prep work, it is so fast, making it a perfect weeknight dinner.

Let's go ahead and add our fresh scallion garnish, which really makes the shrimp pop.

Pull a few onto my plate here.

Okay, more than a few.

(chuckles) Oh, excited for this.

Pull that tail off.

♪ ♪ The shrimp are so tender.

They're very sweet, beautiful flavor.

They're not overcooked-- they're very, very tender.

You get this bit of soy, get the rich, deep seasoning, the bit of sweet.

And the chili, I mean, that fresh chili from the serrano is just delicious-- it's not too spicy.

There's enough sugar to balance it all out.

You get that sort of sweet-and-sour flavor profile of Chinese cooking, but with the turmeric.

So it's a really unique flavor profile.

You get amazing flavors.

Frankly, I would want a little more devil in here.

So I'm going to go find the hot sauce.

(horns honking) - Then we are going to make seeni sambol.

- Okay-- okay.

- It's a caramelized onion dish.

And we're also making a chicken curry.

- Okay.

- And deviled prawns.

- Are they mostly simple recipes?

Are they complicated?

I, I have found that Sri Lankan cooking is very fast.

- It's... - The cooking goes like that.

(snaps) - That's because of the experience, I think.

- All right.

- So I'll make the chicken curry very simple way today, yes.

- I love simple.

(both laugh) ♪ ♪ - The different between Indian and Sri Lankan cooking, I think ingredient and the way of preparation.

For example, in Sri Lankan cooking, mostly we use curry leaves, but in Indian cooking, they use coriander leaves.

And all the spices are also different.

We have, like, raw curry powder and roasted curry powder.

For different dishes, we use it differently.

And the way of using coconut.

Mostly for curries, it's coconut milk.

(people talking in background) And for coconut sambal, we make with the scraped coconut.

That's the coconut flakes.

- And am I doing that right?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Okay-- I don't think I'm nearly as quick as you are at this.

- (laughing) - And so do you rotate it as you go?

- Yes.

- It goes like this, like this.

- Okay, and is there a right way?

- We start with the corners.

- Clockwise?

- Yeah, we go with the corner, then go to the middle.

- Okay, okay.

- Yeah.

(pan sizzling) ♪ ♪ The chicken curry I made is something that I've seen my grandma makes.

Instead of, like, adding oil and tempering the onion, garlic, ginger, everything, just put all of them at once.

Like, I added garlic, ginger, onion, roasted curry powder, chili powder, green chilies, a little bit of tomato.

At the end of it, add little bit of thick coconut milk into it and simmer for about five to ten minutes.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Kukul mas maluwa is a Sri Lankan curry.

It's fragrant with coconut in a deeply toasted spice blend.

And the spices are the reason I chose it for this episode.

It's both the blend of spices, but the technique that enchants me.

We made this twice in Sri Lanka, once with Mohara Dole and the mother-and-daughter team of K.S.

Luxmi and Shasikala Samuel.

There was one technique that really stood out to me, and it's that the spice blend is super-deeply toasted.

It becomes really aromatic and nutty.

This reminded me to keep an open mind about how I cook with spices.

Let's step back and think about curry in general.

In India, a lot of people are familiar with vadouvan, which has shallots and mace and fennel and coriander.

Or maybe Madras curry, a fiery curry with chilies and cinnamon and fenugreek, which is one of my favorite spices, and curry leaves.

But Sri Lanka, just south, is an island where many of the spices we love come from.

It used to be known as Ceylon.

So when you hear Ceylon cinnamon, that's Sri Lankan cinnamon.

And the spice blend we're gonna make today has coriander, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, star anise, and turmeric, which we'll actually use twice.

One of the things I found really lovely about this spice blend is the proportions of spices.

So we have a heavy amount of savory spices-- citrusy coriander and sort of gamey, pungent cumin.

But then we have this quattro of sweet spices-- the cinnamon, the cardamom, the clove, and the star anise.

And they add this beautiful floral and sweet undertone, so that it's neither too savory nor overbearingly sweet.

And then the turmeric rounds things out at the end.

So these are all the whole spices.

We'll add the turmeric later.

(grinder whirring) All right, finely ground-- so now we're gonna do the key step, which is deeply toasting it, that signature Sri Lankan flavor.

So we're gonna add the turmeric, which was already ground up, so it didn't need to go in the grinder.

If you have time, put your burner on as low as possible.

And if you can toast this for up to five minutes, you're gonna develop really nuanced flavor.

A very key thing when you're cooking with any spices is, the cues are, toast until aromatic.

Spices are already aromatic.

So give it a smell now so you understand when there's an aroma change.

There are also visual cues-- so right now, look at the color, look at what color brown it is.

It's going to get a couple of shades darker.

What's also nice now is, as I toast it, I'm going from smelling single spices to smelling the blend.

And also it's going from sort of sharp, raw spice flavors, of grassier, to something much richer.

And when you take time to make your own spice blends, this is really all a quick weeknight dinner needs.

You can have any sort of bland base, and you have a spice blend you've made, and immediately, it's elevated.

You roast potatoes in this, throw on some cilantro at the end, and I don't know, I don't think you need anything else for dinner.

Maybe some thick yogurt on the side.

I've really smelled a transformation from those high, grassy notes to something rich and savory.

And I'm gonna call this done.

And we're gonna go ahead and make our curry, which is now just a dump-and-stir affair.

Now we've got our chicken thighs.

We're gonna add some more turmeric, some lime juice, pepper, and salt.

So the recipe calls for lemongrass or curry leaves.

I have some curry leaves over here from our little demo of Madras spice blends.

So I'm gonna put some of those in because I like both.

You can use one or the other or neither.

I recommend both.

And we're gonna add in some chili-- two serranos-- garlic, ginger, sliced red onion.

I love when a recipe calls for sliced red onion-- it means I don't have to mince it, I cry less.

And two plum tomatoes.

We're also gonna add in a little bit of liquid.

While the onions and the tomatoes will reduce liquid over time, we don't want it to burn at the beginning, so we're adding in some water.

Last but not least, the star of the show, our beautiful toasted spice mix.

Once it's at a simmer, we're gonna partially cover it.

A little evaporation will concentrate the flavors.

And then after 30 minutes, we're gonna add the coconut cream then.

So now we want to bring it up to a simmer again and we're gonna cook it for about 25 more minutes uncovered.

We want everything to concentrate and for the sauce to become glossy.

Turn the heat off, and we want to stir in some lime juice and some cilantro.

So I'm gonna go ahead and serve this on a bed of rice.

And then the magic is this sauce.

Travel's always worth it.

You learn something new, and in Sri Lanka, we learned to deeply toast our spice blends.

So give yourself the gift of this spice blend.

Make a big batch, and then when you want to make this beautiful chicken curry, it's a simple dump-and-stir affair.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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