Shankari Chandran summer cookbook recipe: Sri Lankan omelette
This is my favourite meal in the whole world. In particular, Sri Lankan omelette is my go-to comfort food. I can make it quickly and eat it three times a day.
Every day this summer, we’ll publish a favourite recipe from an Australian author, dishes made with affection for family, friends or someone special.
-
Sri Lankan Tamils are a talkative race. We talk about everything and everyone. (We are fully across the academic results, the career progression and the marital status of thousands of Tamils around the world. We’re all someone’s fifth cousin – everyone is family. It’s negligent not to know what people are up to and it’s plain rude not to talk about it.)
Within a very large family unit we feel entitled to ask direct questions and offer equally direct answers. We say everything to each other, except I love you. These three words, uttered regularly by other cultures and families, sit unspoken between us.
The first time I left home (aged 18, moving from Canberra to the mean streets of Sydney), my mother gave me hundreds of instructions on how to stay safe without her. Then she thrust a bottle of her home-made curry powder in my hands, hugged me briefly and left.
The first time I went backpacking, aged 23, she gave me a list of aunties around the world and instructed me to call them before I arrived. So I did. And sure enough, a network of strangers met me in countless airports and bus depots from Seattle to Oslo to Chennai, holding a sign with my name written on it. They’d greet me with, “You’re Rathy’s daughter? Come, she says, you must be hungry. Everything is ready.”
They’d take me to their homes and offer me puttu (steamed cylinders of rice flour infused with freshly grated coconut), thenkai sambal (more fresh coconut ground together with dried red chilli, salt, sugar and lime) and Sri Lankan omelette.
SUMMER COOKBOOK: THE WAY TO THE HEART
Minestrone (Mum’s vegetable soup)
This soup is a message of comfort via comfort food — delicious, nutritious, foolproof, cheap and feeds lots of people.
Tuna with pasta
Maybe I love this dish because it takes me back to when two pots and a black-and-white TV was enough, and there was nothing that could not fixed by a pint and a shared laugh.
Made-in-Minutes Goan Prawn Curry with Spinach
I love curries and this one is simple, with lots of flavour and a wonderful, creamy, coconut base.
Monster mash
My mash consistently makes women moan and gentlemen raise their eyebrows. The secret is simple muscularity.
Slow-cooked rabbit
A couple of decades ago I started to collect rabbit recipes from here and across the world, and ended up with hundreds.
Sri Lankan omelette
This is my favourite meal in the whole world. In particular, Sri Lankan omelette is my go-to comfort food. I can make it quickly and eat it three times a day.
My Humble Pie is the greatest to exit an oven
It may be humble in terms of cost, but it is bold, brash, punchy and delectable with a Stroganoffish zest. It will change your life. Humbly.
Raspberry and elderflower trifle
This dish tells a story of my life. I grew up eating custard, real custard made from cornflour and eggs and milk, along with fools and flummeries.
A roast chicken comfort dish
I love the way the roasting smell fills the house. It reminds me of so many wonderful family dinners.
Beef keema
What I love about keema is how forgiving it is and how easy it is to make. This is the homely dish that introduced my children to their Pakistani side.
Triple ginger bar cake
This is cooked in a loaf tin and is flexible; delicious naked, slathered with butter, or more traditionally iced with a loose glace to become a perfect tea cake.
Peter Craven’s Duck a l’orange
Any kind of duck is grand but duck as the French do it, and especially duck a l’orange, is a joy forever.
Selvie’s chicken curry with curry leaves
When our spice couriers managed to get their contraband through customs, there was much celebrating – usually in the form of Mum’s fragrant chicken curry.
Ice cream with caramel and cherries
And then the dessert comes... It slides into that part of our experience that is pre-politics, pre-speciality, pre-peculiarity and even pre-sophistication.
Lamb scrag end neck chops stew
This is the meal I constantly cook because my husband will live on it quite happily for a week, saving me a lot of bother ... he is not a modern man.
Creme brulee with candied rhubarb
More than 30 years ago, I gave a formal sit-down dinner party for 30 people. Dessert was the piece de resistance, individual creme brulees with candied rhubarb.
Borsch for the busy person
With the right mix of ingredients, borsch is a tangy but sweet and belly warming mouthful of delight.
Virginia Woolf Brittle
The impact of Virginia Woolf Brittle on a current partner or potential mate, particularly when fed by hand and in combination with a reading in the late sun, cannot be overstated.
Wakame beurre blanc
This sauce has become such a staple that I douse all grilled, poached, or pan-fried seafood in it at all times of the year.
Lemon Chicken
When our children were growing and my wife Steph was teaching evening classes, lemon chicken was the go to meal – simple and tasty.
Crispy Latkes
Creamy mashed, crispy smashed, jacket roasted and anointed with butter, pan fried with sliced onions, deep-fried to limpness, over-salted and wrapped in newsprint – however they come, I love potatoes.
Lamb Moussaka Therapy
Imagine a dish as therapeutic to eat as a lasagne, but instead of beef it’s made with lamb and has layers of potato and eggplant as the pasta sheets … Imagine no more, champions!
Odd couple share recipe for great summer reading
They’re one of the less likely duos to be found discussing the filleting of trout or basting of chicken – but Tom Keneally and Nat’s What I Reckon have all bases covered.
Summer Cookbook
Australia’s favourite authors share their most meaningful recipes.
This is my favourite meal in the whole world. In particular, Sri Lankan omelette is my go-to comfort food. I can make it quickly and eat it three times a day.
I am 48 years-old and my parents visit once a week to see their four grandchildren. My mother still frets that I don’t eat enough. She walks in the door bringing conversation about everything she’s done for the last week. Some words are said and some are unspoken. She carries a large cooler bag of curries. Inside it, there’s something for everyone, including a container of Sri Lankan omelette, just for me.
12 eggs
2 large brown onions, finely chopped
3 large green chillies, finely chopped – from an Indian/Sri Lankan store, if possible. I suspect these have been grown by thousands of Ammammas (grandmas) in Western Sydney and taste better than supermarket chillies.
1 generous handful of fresh curry leaves – from an Indian/Sri Lankan store or a tree, if possible.
The stuff in supermarkets is a shadow of the real thing.
1 heaped teaspoon of salt – don’t be shy. (Sri Lankans suffer from hypertension from a very early age but I think it’s the parental pressure to get into Medicine, not the salt. )
½ teaspoon of turmeric – it has healing properties according to my Ammamma so I add it to everything.
Olive oil for frying – Sri Lankans often use gingelly oil instead, but the flavour of gingelly (a sesame oil variant) is quite strong.
1. Fry the onions and green chillies (in olive oil) until soft, then add the fresh curry leaves, turmeric and fry more. I like my onions fried until singed brown on the edges.
2. Beat eggs well, then add salt and beat more.
3. Move ingredients from the pan into the bowl with the eggs and stir well. Make sure your non-stick pan is hot (and properly oiled) so that the surface of the egg cooks as soon as it hits the pan.
4. Ladle the omelette mix back into the pan, taking care to share the onions/chillies properly with the eggs. I cook the omelette in small portions so that it can be flipped easily while maintaining its structural integrity. I’m not very co-ordinated. Serves 6.
Eating instructions: The humble Sri Lankan omelette can be eaten for breakfast with fresh bread or roti and optional chilli sauce (mango chutney if you’re soft). Then for lunch in a jaffle maker with a side of optional chilli sauce. And then for dinner with rice (or rice substitutes such as puttu or string hoppers), alone or with any other Sri Lankan curries. I recommend you eat the omelette with your hands, not with cutlery. It tastes better.
-
Shankari Chandran is an Australian Tamil lawyer and the author of Song of the Sun God, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens and The Barrier. Song of the Sun God is being adapted for television, starring Bridgerton‘s Charithra Chandran (no relation). Her Ellie Ryder political thriller series will be published in 2024. Her short stories have been featured in Sweatshop anthologies, Another Australia and Sweatshop Women (Vol 2). Her eternally emerging literary career is cross-subsidised by a full-time career in corporate sustainability.
Song of the Sun God, Ultimo Press