Everyone loves an omelet and it can easily converted into a full meal. It can be stuffed with a variety of things and I’m posting this for first-time cooks.

Ingredients:

4 eggs

1 onion

25g margarine

1 bell pepper (small)

100g mushrooms

100g meatballs

50g leeks or lunu kola

50g mozerella cheese

1 tomato

Method:

Crack the four eggs into a bowl. Add salt and pepper and whisk till light and frothy. Set aside. Take a pan, melt margarine toss in chopped onions, bell pepper and when lightly fried add cubed meatballs, mushrooms and stir well. When it is cooked add the cheese, bell pepper, tomato and leeks.

Now you can either mix in the egg mixture or take the mixture into a bowl and pour the egg into the frying pan, wait for a few minutes and when it is half done, spoon the mixture into one half of the egg and fold the other half over it-creating a stuffed omelette.

Note: This can be done with just about any type of vegetable or meat so feel free to experiment.   

Serving ideas: To make into a full meal present with a side of rice, pasta, garlic bread or even just plain bread. The combinations are endless.

Prawns are a favourite of all seafood lovers. Since its expensive its an ideal treat. Here is an easy way to make prawn fried rice… in one pot of course.

Ingrediants:

200g of shelled prawns

Dash of chilli, salt and pepper

Dash of Soy sauce, Oyster sauce

1 egg

50g of flour

300g Jasmine rice

50g carrots

20g beans

20g cabbage

1 bell pepper or capcicum   

1 onion

handful of peanuts or cashew

Method:

Take a bowl and mix the prawns with salt, pepper, chilli, Oyster and Soy sauce. Leave to marinate for half an hour. In a wok melt half the margarine toss in chopped onions, capcicum/bell pepper and the marinated prawns and cook well. In a seperate bowl mix the egg and flour into a batter and pour the mixture into the prawns. Mix well untill the prawns are coated in the batter and and fried to a golden brown shade. Put aside.  

Add the rest of the margarine, onions and bell pepper and stir well until lightly fried. Add the vegetables and cover. Take the Jasmine rice wash well, strain and add hot water. Cover and leave to cook for five minutes. When the grains are half cooked strain and add to the vegetable mixture. Mix well with the peanuts/ cashews and leave to cook. When done add the prawns for a complete meal.           

If you are a born foodie but hate to spend hours in the kitchen then I offer a solution- One pot dishes. I firmly fall into this category and while I love to cook for family and friends there is a deeply embedded psychotic need to get out of the kitchen within an hour, especially when its a working day and you have spent hours in office and now have to make dinner. So here is my offer to all independent women.

Ingrediants:

50g of carrot

1 peeled onion

50g of cauliflower

50g of beans

50g of leeks or lunu kola

100g of meatballs

20g of margarine

1/2 glass of white wine (optional)

200g of pasta (any kind you like)

One packet Knorr Chinese mix

1 bell pepper (red if possible)

Salt and pepper to taste

Dash of chillie powder (optional)   

Curry leaves and rampe (optional)

Method:

Take a pot and put the pasta to boil, add a dash of salt. Once cooked toss with butter so that it won’t congeal and keep aside. Take another pot and put the margarine into melt. Toss in the chopped onion and curry leaves and fry lightly. Add the chopped vegetables (carrots, beans, cauliflower) and stir untill lightly fried. Add the Knorr mix, meatballs and white wine (use water if preferred) and cook untill the vegetables are cooked but slightly hard (same texture as chop suey). Add the pasta and stir well. Toss in the bell pepper and leeks. Add pepper and chilli powder to taste. Done.

Note: For those that can’t use the Knor mix try some spaghetti sauce instead. But make sure that the veggies are well fried before mixing with pasta. Of course you can use any vegetable or pasta of your choice. The mixes are endless and each time the dish tastes different.            

If you want to make a friend feel special then whip up this easy snack.

Ingrediants:

225g flour

150g margarine (I used Astra)

100g sugar

1/2 tin of milkmaid

50g of margarine 

50g chopped cooking chocolate (my choice is Ritsbury dark chocolate)

100g chopped cashew nuts

Method:

Mix together sugar and margarine untill the sugar is semi-melted. Add the flour and cream together. Take a cake tray, lay a piece of oil paper and press the mixture into the base of the pan to make the first layer. leave aside a quarter of the mixture and but in the fridge

Take a pan melt the margarine. Take off the fire and mix in the milkmaid, pour over the first layer. Mix the chocolate and cashew nuts and sprinkle over the milkmaid layer. Finally take the remaining mixture out of the fridge crumble it with your hands and sprinkle over the chocolate and cashews.

Put in a 300 Celcius oven for 20-30 minutes. cut into squares and serve. It’s as easy as that.    

A few weeks ago my fridge broke and this couldn’t have come at a worse time because it was on the eve of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. As everyone knows this is the best time to start gorging and after piling the house full of food I had to sit by and watch it all go rotten. So being the industrial person that I am I whipped up a pudding with all the fresh fruit at home and delivered it to my best friend. This is what I came up with.

Fruit caramel pudding:

Ingrediants:

Three 100g packets of marie biscuits

200g of melted butter or Astra margarine

One tin of condensed milk

2 tea spoons of gelatine

Any fruit around the house

100g sugar and 2 table spoons of treacle

Method: Crush the biscuits (with your fingers or the grinder) untill they are a fine powder. Melt the butter and spoon in the biscuit crumbs. Take a wide-based dish and press down the biscuit mixture into a base layer. Put inside the fridge. Take the condensed milk and stir in the gelatine that has been dissolved in hot water. Make sure that the geltine is as smooth as possible without any chunks. Pour it over the biscuit layer and return to freeze. Lastly cube the fruits into medium sized blocks (I used bananna, water melon, mango, apple and strawberries) and mix in a bit of lemon juice. Take the sugar and place in a plan and wait for it to melt. Then add the fruits and mix gently. Take off fire before it hardens and add treacle. If you find the brownish mixture distasteful put the fresh fruit on the pudding. a sprinkling of cashews adds a finishing touch to the dish.      

After contemplating over a dinner for a friend there was a host of goodies that I could think of but the easiest by far was the sudden concoction of this easy dip that is ideal for just about anything. You can have it with chips, nachos, vegetable sticks, savoury biscuits  or just eat it clean out of the bowl. Feel free to add to it. Its an ideal base for a range of dips… I guess you can call it the building block of all dip mixtures.

UJ dip

Ingrediants:

Two table spoons of Astra margarine (obviously you can use others but the base for most of my dishes is Astra)

One table spoon garlic paste

Two table spoons of cheese spread 

Method: Mix together Astra and garlic paste. Make sure that the garlic aftertaste blends with the margarine taste and then dump in the cheese and mix well. The predominating tastes should be garlic and cheese but this can be adjusted to your taste.

Addittional twists: use bell pepper, cillantro, onions, a dash of curd (for arabic bread and naan’s), tomatoes or even shrimp if you wish to jazz it up a bit.

My suggestion: Warm some Arabic bread in the microwave and spread the dip on it. You can cut it up and serve to guests as an appetiser or as a first course pair it with a vegetable fry and serve.   

The greatest of achievements can begin with one word and end in a blog. This was what happened to me today when a group of office friends were discussing food (the obsession of many waking hours) and before I knew it a link was sent and you are now reading the result. My husband and I have been throwing around the idea of starting up a blog about food for the simple reason that it is a passion that we both share with the hope of mixing our recipes with those of his grandmother, who was a great cook, along with other interesting food ideas that we come across for the sake of sheer entertainment of other foodies.

The other source of inspiration was a friend who has recently moved to Aussie to pursue her higher studies with the ability to boil water but little else. Since I run the danger of being hunted down and killed by her let me state that since this ambiguous start she has mastered the art of Sri Lankan cooking to the point of keeping body and soul connected. After putting together several recipes to aid this endeavour, which included explaining what a spatula is, I realised that writing about food would not only be fun but a life saving task and a great calling that would be much better aided if I was inspired to be consistent. So with these lofty goals in mind jayasinghekema was created. Enjoy!