--- Watch The Cook Up with Adam Liaw weeknights on SBS Food (Ch.33) at 7.00pm. Stream all episodes anytime at. ---
Minoli De Silva, the chef and co-owner of Sri Lankan restaurant in Darwin, is convinced that anybody can make coconut roti at home.
"It's probably the simplest flatbread that I know how to make. It's so delicious and it doesn't take any real skill," she promises.
The base ingredients are flour, coconut (fresh or desiccated) and water (or coconut milk). They are kneaded together with aromatics like curry leaves, shallots and green chillies. The dough is then flattened and cooked on a hot pan.
"You can add some chilli flakes, replace water with coconut milk or add beetroot juice. You can play around with it and get as creative as you'd like," she says, recommending pairing the roti with coconut sambol or eating it as a vehicle for , the spiced coconut milk gravy. You can also simply enjoy it by itself.
READ MORE
Pol roti with pol sambol
"I grew up cooking in my mum's kitchen where she basically cooked just with pots and pans. I really did build a lot of technique using very little cooking equipment and ingredients," she says. "In this day and age, you can overcomplicate cooking, and I think it's important to remind everyone that to cook really, really good food, you just need a few staple items in your household. The rest is fluff."
The chef and former MasterChef contestant keeps cumin and coriander seeds, apple cider vinegar, Murray River pink salt and peanut oil in her pantry. "I feel like peanut oil was a marker of me becoming an established adult; when I went from using vegetable oil to peanut oil," she laughs.
READ MORE
Jaggery goat curry
Chicken is an ingredient that she always comes back to, so much so that it has become a running gag in her family: “When I was a kid, it somehow became a joke that chicken was my favourite food, and my cousin would always tease me about it. Even when he introduced me to friends when I went to New York, he was like, 'This is my cousin Minoli, she really loves chicken!' This joke has been going on for 35 years!"
It's so simple and just mouth-wateringly good.
She especially loves marylands and chicken thighs. She uses the former in her mum's chicken curry.
"She cuts through the bone and then the chicken curry gets all the marrow."
The curry includes dark roasted Sri Lankan curry powder, mustard, tamarind, vinegar pandan, curry leaves, garlic and ginger, all cooked in one pot. Bring it to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer. There's no coconut milk because the collagen in the chicken bones helps to thicken the sauce.
"It's the easiest dish and the dish all my friends are wowed by. My grandma made it, my mum made it and then I made it. It's so simple and just mouth-wateringly good," she says.
For something even quicker, she coats chicken thigh fillets with cumin powder, coriander powder, chilli, turmeric, and sometimes garlic and ginger, cooks them in a hot pan, slices them and serves them over rice with tomatoes.
"A thigh fillet is so versatile, but you need the skin on, always! It has so much flavour."
