Your favourite haunt cooks up festive fare
View(s):Green Cabin’s chef Lal De Silva gives Smriti Daniel a taste of old and new
Lal De Silva only considered a career as a chef because he thought it would be a great way to see the world. It turns out he was right. Since he left Sri Lanka in the seventies, he’s worked in five stars on both sides of the Atlantic – London and Dorset on one side and Boston, Atlanta, California, Richmond, Seattle, Indianapolis on the other.
Vastly experienced: Chef Lal
He once cooked for George Bush and he’s been on teams that served African heads of state and the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. He’s also cooked in Dubai and in the Sultanate of Oman, but some of his most challenging stints have been in international waters, where he’s known both what it meant to be a lowly third cook and later to manage a large team as the second executive chef.
Though he’s enjoyed the opportunity to travel, for Chef Lal life has come a full circle. Having decided he wanted to return to and settle in Sri Lanka, he’s allied himself with one of Colombo’s oldest and most beloved restaurants – Green Cabin.
Behind the counter, the kitchens are a hive of activity, and Chef Lal leads us through to where a quiet table is reserved. December is one of the busiest times of the year for the restaurant – particularly since they turn out all the traditional treats from mince pies to cake and Dutch Breudher. The last is an old favourite with Chef Lal – he says that there’s a certain moistness in these that he missed in the ones he’s eaten in Vienna and Germany. It’s a recipe that’s decades old, and he hasn’t touched it.
Part of his mandate as Executive Chef has been to know what’s working and to leave it well alone. That includes signature dishes like clay pot cooked Chatty Roast Chicken, the tomato curry and even the eclairs that are filled with buttercream icing instead of custard cream. The old Sri Lankan favourites he tells me are the province of Ramani Maldeniya. A soft-spoken, diminutive woman, Ramani tells us she’s worked at Green Cabin for 50 years and remembers when they cooked with firewood and coal. She’s proud of the old recipes like the Panadura style stuffed cuttlefish and the Tuna Kutti with mustard.
A seasonal favourite: The Dutch Breudher. Pix by Susantha Liyanawatte
Chef Lal says he counts on her experience and that of the rest of his team. “A chef’s greatest assets are his people. Without them he’d be like a general without his army,” he emphasises. What he’s bringing to the table comes from his long experience in working in professional kitchens under well-known chefs like Jean George Vongeruchtine, Jean Murry Mullion, Peter Kromberg, two Michelin star Chef Gerard Vie and three Michelin star Chef Louis Othier. Those experiences he says have given his own imaginative cuisine a subtle French accent. The dishes he’s added to the menu at Green Cabin draw from both the Western cuisine his mentors specialised in and the food he grew up eating. Hence his additions to the menu – dishes like the curd and treacle gateaux and jaggery mutton – offer authentic Sri Lankan flavours with a twist.
“I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into,” Chef Lal confesses, explaining that he had never really worked in an environment like Green Cabin before and that his previous experience had been mostly in large hotels. Aboard the cruise ships of course the quantities they prepared dwarfed anything he had worked on before or since – amounting to as many as 3000 meals a day. Still, “working at Green Cabin has been a very rewarding experience for me,” he says, explaining that he’s focused on tweaking the restaurants set up so that the food is more consistent as well as varied.
This week he shares some of his favourite Green Cabin recipes for a festive menu with the Sunday Times.
Mutton Jaggery Curry
Ingredients Green Chillies 0.15 gms
Coconut 1
Bombay onion 0.50 gms
Mutton cubes 1 kilo Ghee 3 tbsp.
Kitul jaggery 125 gms
Salt To taste
Chillie powder 0.10 gr
Curry powder 0.10 gr
Dill seed 0.2 gr
Pepper powder 0.5 gr
20 gr
Cinnamon,Sera,rampe,curry leaves, ginger, mustard seeds, garlic, tumeric
Method – Mix all the dry items except the jaggery with the mutton cubes and marinate for an hour. In a clay pot temper the sliced onion, rampe, sera, curry leaves, ginger, green chili and garlic (all the miscellaneous items) in the heated ghee. Add the mutton cubes and cook till the pieces are nice and brown. Dissolve the jaggery in the first squeeze coconut milk and add to the mutton. Simmer slowly on a low heat till the gravy thickens and the mutton is cooked. Serve with rice and other accompaniments.
Serves 12
Chatty Roast Chicken
Ingredients Broiler chicken 1.200 Kg.
Ghee 3 tbsp
Curry powder dark 1 1/2 tbsp
Salt To taste
Soya sauce 1/4 cup
Pepper powder 1 tsp
.15 gr
Rampe, sera, curry leaves, ginger, garlic,
Bombay onion .300 gms
Suduru ½ tbsp
Vinegar 1 tbsp
Cinnamon 1 stick
Chili powder 1 tbsp
Corn flour 1 tbsp
Turmeric ½ tsp
Chicken stock or water 2 cups
Chatty Roast Chicken
Method – Mix the vinegar, soy sauce, salt, pepper, turmeric, chili powder, and curry powder. Rub well on the chicken especially under the skin. Marinate for one hour. Heat the ghee in a clay pot, add the sliced onion, rampe, sera, ginger, garlic, cinnamon, curry leaves and the suduru and a little more chili powder if you prefer it hot and temper for a few minutes. Add the whole chicken and brown on all sides by turning.
Cover the pot and roast on a low heat turning the chicken occasionally to make sure it does not burn.
Sprinkle the corn flour, mix well, add the cooking sauce and enough chicken stock or water to make the gravy. Keep turning the chicken to coat it with the sauce. Present the chicken whole with the sauce and cut into eight pieces for serving.
Tuna Kutti Curry
Ingredients
Yello fin tuna cut into chunks 1 kg
Ginger 25 gr
Garlic 50 gr
Cinnamon 2 gr
Corn flour 1 tbsp
Black pepper 1 tsp
Salt to taste
Vinegar 1 tbsp
Soy sauce 1 1/2 tbsp Mustard – ground with the vinegar 2 tbsp
Small b onions 2
Rampe / sera/ curry leaves
Tomato sliced 1
Ghee 1 tbsp
Spring onion chopped 1 tbsp
Red & yellow bell pepper, diced ½ each
Lime 1
Fish stock or water 1 cup
Season the fish with salt, ground mustard, pepper, soy sauce and marinate for half an hour
Heat the ghee in a clay chatty and temper half a onion chopped, ginger, garlic, cinnamon, rampe, sera, and curry leaves
Add the fish kuttis mix well with the tempered items, sprinkle the corn starch, mix, add a little fish stock or water, cover with a lid and cook for ten min. controlling the heat
Tuna kutti
Slice the tomato and the rest of the onions. Temper in a little ghee with the diced bell peppers. Keep aside
Take the cooked fish out of the chatty and arrange on a platter or dish. Correct the consistency, seasoning, add half a lime juice and strain the sauce over the fish pieces and garnish with the tempered tomato, bell peppers and onions. Sprinkle with the chopped spring onion leaves and serve.
Mango Soufflé “Peter Kromberg”
Ingredients Egg yolks 4
Egg whites 4
Flour 33gr Sugar 25gr
Milk (333 ml) 1 1/2 cup 2 tsp Mango extract or 2 tbsp fresh mango puree made with a ripe mango.
Corn flour 1 1/2 tsp Ripe but firm Mango (karthakolomban ) 15 gms
4 Medium size Ramekins well buttered and coated with sugar
Method:
Sift the flour and corn flour. Keep aside.
Mix the egg yolks and 10 gm sugar, slowly add the flour, corn flour mix. Bring the milk to a boil and add to the egg yolk, sugar and flour mixture, slowly, mixing well. Add the mango extract. Return to the pan and cook on the stove until the mixture becomes thick.
Take off the heat and let the mixture cool, if using mango puree add that and the finely diced mango and mix well.
Whip the egg whites and as they start to get stiff slowly add the 15 gm sugar and beat until stiff and the egg whites stand up on its own.
Fold in the egg whites to the egg, flour mixture (No. 3) gently. Pour in to the buttered and sugared ramekins , in equal quantities, right to the top of the ramekin.
Bake in the oven by placing the moulds directly on the oven floor itself and not on a baking sheet.
Bake for 15 min at 220
Once the soufflés are on the serving plate sprinkle a little powder sugar, make a hole in the centre of the soufflé pour in the Chocolate sauce just before eating.
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