Home-made KOTTU...

30/10/2009

The five young Sri Lankans at the Shokugyou Nouryoku Kaihatsu Sougou Daigakkuo planned to throw a Sri Lankan food stall for the University Festival 2009. What they were going to sell was the next problem and the final answer ended up with Kottu and Cutlets. Kottu of  all?? Nobody had any idea to make Kottu except for this one brilliant guy, who is called "The Chef".We went shopping a week early and started making the Kottu from 8 o`clock in the early morning after a long night of the earlier day spent on preparing the cutlets.

 First we started with making the flour rotti. First put some flour in to salty water and make a batter. then make little flour balls and later flatten them very thin on a oily heated pan. This will result in a rotti. Make rotti using 1.5 kilo of flour to make kottu for 70 people or more. That`s what we just did. Then cut them in to small pieces with the maximum length of one inch. This is the hardest part of the whole Kottu business.

図1 making rotti and then cutting them in to maximum 1 inch long slices

While this was going on, one was chopping the vegetables in to very small thin pieces. The vegetables stands for carrot, leeks, onion. Th most important thing was to keep the vegetables bitable, at the same time, thin. Too much thickness might  kill the  taste and too much thinness might kill the gourmet.　Then moving to the meat, the meat was first roasted and then cut in to the smallest pieces as possible. Remember to remove the bones of the chicken before chopping it.

図2 　Thinly sliced carrot, meat and leeks

Next step is to mix the meat and the vegetables in a oily heated pan. But this time the oil must be lightly heated,  just the heat for tempering. you put the vegetables first and temper it  for about 1 minute.Then the meat is added. Carry on tempering for about another half a minute and pile up the mixture to one end of the pan. Take an egg an crack it on to the open half of the pan and add curry powder, salt and pepper. Then make an omelette out of it and mix it with the vegetables. Then add the thinly sliced  rotti pieces and simmer until the mixture turns golden.

図 3 Tempering the mixture

Then Finally ad some garlic paste and Soy sauce to a pan with a lilttle heated oil and carry on tempering till it  turns in to a golden brown.That is how the Simple Kottu was made on 31/10/2009. No noice, No high prices. It was a beautiful and a tasty Kottuwa after all.

図4　Kottu

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