Featured recipe

Ala thel dala

Devilled potatoes

Ala thel dala means 'potato tempered in oil', and it's the quick, fiery potato fry that Sri Lankan mothers make when there's no time for a full curry, served with rice, packed into a lunch box with parippu, or eaten with bread at breakfast. Boiled potato cubes are tossed in hot oil with mustard seeds, plenty of red onion, curry leaves, turmeric and roughly crushed dried chilli until the edges turn golden and the onion goes soft and sweet. Unlike an Indian aloo sabzi there are no ground cumin or coriander, just chilli heat, onion and curry leaf. The usual mistake is boiling the potatoes until they're soft right through; they then break up in the pan. Chef's tip: stop boiling when a knife still meets a little resistance in the middle; the potatoes finish cooking in the pan and keep their shape.

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