Sri Lankan · Salad
Gotu Kola Sambola
- Easy
- 15 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, a warm current of chile.
Ingredients
- 120 g gotu kola leaves, stalks pulled off
- 60 g freshly scraped coconut
- 1 small red onion, 50 g, very finely chopped
- 1 tomato, 80 g, seeded and diced
- 1 green chilli, finely chopped
- juice of 1 lime
- 0.5 tsp salt
- 0.25 tsp ground black pepper
The skills inside
Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Stack the gotu kola leaves a handful at a time, roll them into a tight cigar and shred across the roll with a sharp knife until the shreds are thread thin.
- Toss the shreds with the coconut, onion, tomato and chilli using fingertips only, keeping the pile loose and dry.
- At the table, add the lime, salt and pepper, turn it over twice and eat within five minutes, before the leaves darken and slump.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias 150 recipes
- Take any three pieces from anywhere in the pile: they match closely enough in every dimension that you would have to measure them to argue otherwise.
- The cut faces are flat and clean rather than ragged or crushed; leaves and herbs are cut through, not bruised, and the board carries no dark smear where they were.
- The stated size is the actual size, held against a rule or a known reference rather than called about right.
- Everything in the pile is the shape that was asked for: no wedges, no half pieces, and no offcuts swept in to avoid waste.
- They cook evenly, which is the entire point: at the end of cooking nothing is still raw and nothing has collapsed.
Where it goes wrong The knife was dull, or the vegetable was never squared off first, so the pieces vary: the small ones are mush by the time the large ones are cooked, and the dish has two textures where it wanted one.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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