Tag Archives: sri lankan cooking

Godambah or stuffed roti

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I’m convinced every country has their own version of a stuffed pastry. They differ in names, they differ in flavours, but essentially it’s the same kind of thing, a little bit of vegetables or meat thrown between  some pastry or bready outside and then cooked. Quite often frugal in ingredients, seasonal and easy to use up what ever is going on in your fridge….and so far, I like them all.

England has the pastie.

Italy has the calzone.

Eastern Europe has the pierogi.

Japan has the gyoza.

India has the samosa

South America has the empanada.

Australia has the pie

and

Sri Lanka has the godambah, or stuffed roti.

Street food at it’s best. I ate these in Sri Lanka teamed up with a feisty chilli sauce, and usually wrapped up in yesterday’s news. An easy food to eat while you wander around.

I hadn’t made them up until now, as roti and I were not friends. As  much as I had tried, I just couldn’t master the little buggers. Then I caught sight of this cookbook lying idly on its side waiting for a good page flipping.

Bingo…oh big bingo! Loved it.

 Stuffed roti, along with a whole lot more goodies to be cooked on other days. Now there is nothing I like better than Sri Lankan food. Every thing about it speaks to my senses. Visual, taste, smell it’s all there. I’d made curries before and Love Cake but it was now time to give the Godambah a crack.

For the original recipe please see here. For how I did it, see below.

Vegetable Godambah

* adapted from Sri Lankan Flavours– Channa Dassanayaka

Roti

2 1/2 (375g) cups plain flour

1 (250mls) cup water

1 tsp salt

Mix ingredients together, and let rest, covered for a couple of hours. Give it a quick knead and divide dough into 8 balls. Roll balls on a pizza tray (or something stainless steel.) Then store in a well oiled bowl. The oil  is important to get the right consistency when rolling out the roti.

Get a ball, and spread out dough with your finger tips, pushing out to a rectangular shape. Place a good sized spoonful of mixture in the middle and fold up. Then fry each side until golden.


Roti Mixture

a couple of slurps of vegetable oil

1 onion diced

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sambal olek

Fry until fragrant and then add potatoes, carrots and 1/2 cup peas.

(Use what ever  vegetables take your fancy, and incorporate mashed potatoes in there to firm up the mixture. I used…)

3 steamed potatoes- mashed

1 steamed carrot- diced

Once all parcels are cooked up, serve with some chilli sauce.

* Roti can be cooked up as a flat bread as well and served with a curry. Just fry quickly in an oiled fry pan or wok.

sourdough hoppers- Frugal Friday

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For people reading you’re probably thinking one of two things…

1/ what is a hopper?

or

2/ THAT is not a hopper!

To answer Number 1/ A hopper is a cup shaped rice flour pancake basically. There a few different types, (string, egg, plain…) A staple from Sri Lanka quite often eaten for breakfast. Nothing tastier than dipping a freshly cooked hopper into some curry with attitude.

hoppers photo from ‘lanka.com’

In answer to Number 2/ I don’t have a hopper pan, or anything remotely like it. Which is why my little hoppers look like plain old pancakes. If you had a deep enough wok, it would work just as well, (I have a flat bottomed one.) A traditional hopper pan is like a mini wok, and I am on the look out, yes I am…

This recipe is my take on the delicious hopper. So maybe not traditionally correct, but they still work.

I even got my mum’s vote of approval.

Sourdough Hoppers

1 cup sourdough starter

1 cup rice flour

1 tps salt

1 cup coconut milk/ or coconut cream

1/2 cup water

Add all ingredients together, and let sit for approximately 5 hours. Mixture is a like a pancake consistency, and should be bubbling away happily, when the time is up and they are ready to cook. Pop some of the mixture into the pan, if you are doing it in a rounded pan, let the edges get a little crispy and then popping a lid over the top to enable the steam to cook the inside. (The middle part will be thicker.) For egg hoppers, drop an egg into the middle, just before the lid goes on to steam.

Serve with a great curry, ripping off bits of the hopper and dunking it in.

Or, easy thing to have on Frugal Friday. Make the batch up in the morning, forget about it, then they will ready to cook up by dinner. Serve with some lightly cooked vegetables in some vegetable oil, garam masala, salt and pepper…and maybe a dollop of natural yoghurt on the side.