cooking

My feelings about spaghetti are well known to my readers (you three...) But we are fortunate enough to share our home with a small Sri Lankan superhero who is faster than a speeding toddler, more powerful than a door-to-door rug salesman and able to navigate bur Dubai in a single bound! And she makes spaghetti. The Sri Lankan version.

She does not like sharing her recipes with me, she just laughs at the depths of my ignorance on vegetables, spices, masala etc. etc. She shakes her head wondering how it can be possible that I write this website on food, when I do not even know how to properly gut a fish. She's right, of course, but by careful observation I can tell you how to make the spaghetti...

4 red indian onions (price of onions going up every day!)
4 large carrots grated
2 sri lankan green chili peppers (they are short and pointy - thai pepper ok here too...)
2 tomato
1 clove garlic
1 thumb of ginger (Sri Lankan food doesn't really use ginger but she has lived in the non-melting pot a long time and likes to use "ingredient from other people food"...)
1 pinch of indian chili flakes
a bit of asafoetida and some fenugrek seeds
2 or 3 tsp. turmeric
2 eggs
1 lb of spaghetti

Cut up and in about 1-2 tbsp. safflower or other neutral oil fry fry fry (she always says this) your onions, garlic, tomato, chili pepper, and ginger until onions are around 1/3 the volume you started with. Ok if onions get a little brown, if you are worried about the garlic burning, you can add it at the end.
In a large bowl toss the carrots, turmeric, asafoetida and fenugreek (you could skip these and use some shaved fennel with your carrots if you cant find them). Scramble and fry up your eggs. When cool, mix these, and the onion mixture with the carrot mixture.
When the spaghetti is cooked, toss it all together. Now you can eat it like this (cut coriander & green onion over it to serve) or you can refrigerate it for a day (making it good party food...).
On day two, place the spaghetti in a frying pan. Top it with some fresh coriander and green onions and any leftover vegetables you have around. Tonight we had broccoli, string beans and a bit of yellow pepper. Cook the pasta covered in the pan until the veggies wilt a bit and you hear it crackle, be patient. The idea is to let it get a little brown and crispy on the bottom.
Voila! acceptable spaghetti.