Very, Very Advanced Cooking Lessons With RD

Continuing along the food theme started yesterday I thought I'd pass on a complex and closely guarded recipe for your pleasure.

There are fellows like Skiz who give us regular tips, recipes and advice on food, that of the Sri Lankan variety, as well as other types. I like these people, but if I was to be brutally honest, the fact is they give us the easy recipes, the ones that management types would call low hanging fruit. I suspect people who work in management of restaurants or fruit producers wouldn't use the term too much. Can you imagine the chaos and confusion?

This recipe was invented by my grandmother and it's never been revealed to the public before. If you're new to cookery I'd suggest you work your way up to this, start on some easy rice and curry dishes first.

Sri Lankan Cheese Toast.

Ingredients:

White bread
Cheap cheese
Green chillies
One Suddha
Salad

The ingredients are all important here. In some parts of the world they use brown (aka healthy) bread and top quality cheese. Well don't. It's as simple as that. Get yourself a loaf of white bread and some regular run of the mill, but strong tasting, cheddar cheese.

Begin by slicing the cheese. Use an old, preferably blunt knife, never a cheese slicer, that's what's used in some of the more bohemian European countries. The rustic approach is crucial here, which isn't to do with Russia.

Once you've done that then throw however many slices of bread you require onto the grill.

Now we can start to slice the green chillies, perhaps the most important ingredient apart from the bread and cheese. As I tour the world giving my cookery lessons I'm often asked how many green chillies one should use and how hot they should be. That's where we use the Suddha.

Simply buy a variety of green chillies, slice them and take away the seeds. Then feed them to the aforementioned Suddha and wait until you get to what we call the biting point. This is the point at which the chap can't bite anything, the point at which he says something like

"aaah fuck, that's so hot, it's burning my lips, my tongue and the whole of my mouth, I need water."

Once you get there, though be careful as sometimes the language might be slightly different and it's important to use your skill in interpreting exactly what is said, you know that the amount of chilli heat will be at just below the minimum required level for the average Sri Lankan to even vaguely detect the presence of the stuff. You're finished with the Suddha so you can now throw him away.

It's best to double the quantity, add the seeds back in and then bung a few more just to make sure.

The toast on the grill should be burning now. Grab it and scrape the burnt bits off, then turn it over, put the cheese slices on the uncooked side and the sliced chillies, with maybe a few more for good measure. Let the toast grill just long enough for the cheese to bubble over enough to make washing and cleaning the grill a total nightmare afterwards.

Then cut the slices into shapes. I like squares, each one a quarter of the slice, they remind me of my childhood you know. At this point it's good to take the salad from earlier and throw it in the dustbin. There's no need for that with food like this. Don't throw the salad in the same bin as the Suddha as they tend to eat the stuff.

Now eat and enjoy.

Put a good nap afterwards.

Next week - Why every Sri Lankan suitcase should have a chilli sauce dispenser and maybe a maldive fish compartment.