Hoppers

Have you eaten a Hopper?

I saw and tasted them for the first time whilst travelling around Sri Lanka.
Their appearance resembles a lacy bowl. 
They usually have an egg sitting in the bottom which is added during the final minutes of cooking along with some some spicy coconut sambal, a tasty salsa, and caramelised onions. 

They can also be filled with a mildly spiced curry made using coconut milk, chicken, or cashew nuts together with green beans or peas. Sri Lankans always have lots of different curries available at every meal time catering for all tastes. There are no problems if you are a vegetarian, or a vegan, they make lots of dishes from their huge selection of locally grown vegetables and nuts. 
Hoppers are made from dried yeast, rice flour a pinch of golden caster sugar, both coconut milk and coconut water, and then after resting, cooked in sesame oil. They are similar to a pancake and, as luck would have it, a Sri Lankan street food restaurant has just opened in our local area, so of course we had to give it a try.

The hoppers we had locally were thicker and not quite so delicate and refined as the ones we ate in Sri Lanka, but they were tasty, we enjoyed them, and they bought back happy memories of Sri Lanka - we shall definitely return to this restaurant again soon. The dish at the back is a mildly spiced coconut milk, cashew nut, and pea curry.

The chef at one of the hotels in Sri Lanka showed us how to make a Coconut Sambal by kneading and working all of the ingredients well together by hand. I made some on my return home but admit that I placed all of the ingredients into my food processor and whizzed them up altogether. Definitely not prepared authentically, but it worked, and makes a useful side dish to any curry.

Coconut Sambal

1 cup of fresh coconut finely grated
(you can use desiccated coconut but sprinkle on a little hot water or hot coconut milk and leave for 10 mins)

1 large red onion chopped

1 - 2 tspns of chili powder

juice of 2 limes

2 chopped cloves garlic

pinch of natural salt crystals 
and a grinding of fresh black pepper.

Winter Vegetable Soup with a Difference

A glut of vegetables at this time of year equals soup to us, but to make it more interesting I delved into my hoard of 'eastern promises'.

Use whatever vegetables you have or fancy - I used 2 white potatoes, 1 sweet potato, and 1 large carrot - all of which I par cooked keeping back their cooking liquid to add to some vegetable bullion for stock. Whilst they were cooking I chopped 2 red onions and 3 shallots, crushed 3 cloves of garlic and then cooked them in a little rapeseed oil. Once they became translucent I added 1 chopped fresh green chili, some chopped red pepper, some freshly grated ginger root, and then topped it all off with 3 sticks of chopped celery. To this mix add a small teaspoon of turmeric, a generous grating of nutmeg, some ground black pepper, a small amount of crushed sea salt, a little chili powder, and the juice of 1 lime. 

Combine the root vegetables along with the stock to the onions and then add a 400g can of coconut milk. The thick creamed coconut tends to sit at the top of the can and it is best to spoon this out first letting it slowly melt and blend into the vegetables before finally adding the coconut liquid. All of this was then placed in my Slow cooker and left for several hours, but cook by whatever means you prefer. 

I wanted to keep some of the texture rather than making it completely smooth so before serving I used my potato crusher to gently reduce the large lumps of potato etc. 

Serve with chopped parsley and a spoonful of Crème Fraîche - suitable for vegetarians but omit Crème Fraîche for vegans.

The addition of the coconut milk, fresh root ginger, lime juice, fresh chilli and additional spices lifts the humble vegetable soup to another level.