It was at ‘Sri Lankan’, the ethnic restaurant at The Grand Oriental hotel in Colombo that we first tasted it. This restaurant lays out an authentic buffet of local food, cooked in a homely manner. At the live appam counter I remember how we watched in fascination as the chef poured a ladleful of batter in the heated chatti, twirling it deftly to give the appam its unique shape and texture – soft and fluffy in the centre and crisp and lacy around the sides. Now before I get carried away by the divine and delightful appams, let me go back to where I began.
Ever imagined eating RAW snake gourd? At least I hadn't until that day, and it wasn’t at all difficult to single out the ingredients that comprised this wonderful salad, the zing provided by the combination of black pepper, coconut, lime juice, salt and sugar. Try it once and decide for yourself if you're going to add it to your repertoire of salads like I did. For this salad, I normally choose the short variety of snake gourd. And it should be tender.
For one small snake gourd
you will need:
Half a green capsicum, sliced thin
1 small onion, sliced thin
1 green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
Juice of a quarter of a lime
A large pinch of sugar
A dash of freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons of fresh, grated coconut
1 tablespoon of fresh green coriander, chopped
Salt to taste
After scraping the thin skin off the snake gourd, slice it in half lengthwise and clean it of all the pith and seeds. Wash, wipe dry and then slice thinly across. Toss it with the rest of the ingredients and lo and behold your salad is ready.
To break the salad’s green monotony, I also added one small red tomato, halved lengthwise, deseeded and sliced thin.
PS: In the salad pictured here there’s no green coriander because I ran out of it and it was too late to step out to get it. These things happen sometimes, don’t they? What's life without a little bit of imperfection?
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