Wattaka

Back from vacation and a long birthday week-end. What a thrill to read that Blogger allows to post videos, without delay I made my debut as a film director : the story led to a small gathering of neighbours all willing to participate, the main character : a potato plant.

Sadly, I managed to erase the end product. Despondent, I sulked for several days, you will get the potato story as soon as I have overcome my disappointment.

I love lists; lists are good for all sorts of reasons, I even have a list of lists in which figures "the list of magical names": mostly places to visit because the ring to their name is so evocative ie: Katmandu, Tumbuktu.

So as I was contemplating a lonely butter-squash and what to do with it, I came across "wattaka", that is a good word to put on the list of recipes. I had to cook that dish. I had to find a recipe. "A taste of Sri Lanka" by Indra Jayasekera came to my rescue, so here is a slightly doctored Wattaka, or curried pumpkin in our case curried butter-squash. It is just gorgeous.

WATTAKA

Ingredients:

450 g Butter-squash

25 g Onion

2 Fresh chillies (these were fresh from the chillies festival plant)

4 Cloves garlic

50 ml Oil (ghee is an alternative

2 ts of curry powder

Salt Black pepper

1/4 ts Turmeric

450 ml Coconut milk

1 ts Ground mustard (to be honest, I misread and added mustard from the pot)

1/2 ts Lime juice (that I forgot)

Method:

• Peel and de-seed the buttersquash cut the flesh is smallish dices (2cms)
• Slice the onion and chilli and crush the garlic.
• Heat the oil (ghee) and fry the curry powder, the onion, the garlic and chilli together. When the onion is soft add the butter-squash, salt, pepper, turmeric and coconut milk, cook until the buttersquash is done.
• Add mustard to the pumpkin mixture, stirring as it thickens. Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes. Remove from heat springle lime juice.

The original recipe presents the wattaka in the shell, if you want to do so, don't peel the vegetable, wash it and scoop the flesh out, when the mixture is ready pour it back in the shell to serve.

For a little game before I go and sulk some more what are thiese?

answer on Wednesday