I’m celebrating New Year this weekend, so thought you might appreciate a rewind of New Year’s recipes — basket
The new year is typically commemorated on January 1st, although many cultures and countries also have their own celebrations. For instance, many South Asian / Southeast Asian countries have their New Year in April while East Asian countries have their New Year in January or February. Wikipedia has an extensive list of new year celebrations.
In my culture, some of the traditional foods to celebrate the new year include:
Kiri bath (literally “milk rice”), which is white or red rice cooked in coconut milk and then cut into squares. It goes well together with curries or sambols such as lunumiris (“spicy onion”) for a bit of extra flavor. It’s very common to have kiri bath for breakfast, particularly on auspicious days such as the first day of the new year.
Recipe
Clean and wash the rice. Put the rice in a pan, stick in the
index finger on surface of rice and fill water upto slightly above
the 2nd joint of the index finger. Cover and cook the the rice
under low heat.
When the rice is almost done, mix the salt with the coconut
milk and add to the rice stir and cook for a few more minutes.
Serve the hot rice on to a platter and flatten it using flat spoon
or spatula. Cut it into squares and serve with Seeni sambol,
cutta sambol or juggery [hard treacle].
From Malini’s Kitchen
A popular snack is kokis, which most likely was introduced by the Dutch when Sri Lanka was a Dutch Colony in the 17th century. Kokis can be very addictive, particularly if you have a lot of relatives (cousins/aunts/uncles/grandaunts/etc.) or have a large social circle!
Kokis gets its distinctive shape from a mould, which is typically in a star-shaped or round pattern.
Recipe
Beat the egg. Sieve flour into a bowl and add the egg, turmeric, salt and sufficient coconut milk to make a thick batter. Heat the oil and when bubbling hold the kokis mould in the oil until the mould is hot. Carefully dip the mould into the batter, taking care not to submerge it completely.
Remove from the batter and place in the hot oil where the batter should separate from the mould but still retain its
shape as it deep fries.
If the batter sticks it may need to be eased from the mould with a wooden toothpick. Repeat the process until all the batter is used.
From InfoLanka
I don’t have the ability to make any of these, so I can only eat them when I’m at my parents’ home, visiting Sri Lanka, invited to someone’s house or attending a social event to sample them. It makes the experience of savoring them that much more worthwhile, in my opinion. Though some of them are very, very sweet, and should only be eaten once a year at most, too.
Well, that’s all from me for today’s instalment of Sunday Breakfast.