Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.I am always excited when a new challenge is revealed, but I was especially excited when I saw this one. I have a connection with Sri Lanka because my father was born there and my grandparents lived there as tea-estate managers for many years. Also my sister lived in Colombo for a time in 2006 and I visited her there. I have many good memories of the food, but my absolute favorite thing was the egg hopper - also known as appam!
I made the appams, the beef curry and the carrot dish as suggested by the host. You can find all the recipes here. I also made a pol sambol from a recipe by Charmaine Solomon and a chilli sambol. This was one of the best meals I have had in a long time. The variety of flavours and textures was wonderful and everything tasted very authentic.
I saved some of the batter for next morning and made an egg hopper. I wouldn't usually go for chilli sambol at breakfast, but this was brilliant and also very satisfying.
And look - this is a picture from my trip to Sri Lanka in 2006. You can see an egg hopper with pol sambol and chilli sambol in the background, and I think probably a fish curry in the foreground. How good is it that I am able to recreate such amazing food at home? Thank you so much host Mary, this was my favourite challenge yet. 