I was assisting a food photographer on a photoshoot. We were styling a range of Indian curries and we needed some green garnish to scatter over the dishes to make them camera ready.
As the on-set food stylist it was my role to fetch the food and sort out the garnishes. I remember rummaging through their spice drawer and coming across a bag of dried morigna powder. Green powder, the kind you add to a smoothie to inject some additional goodness because presumably, you aren’t getting enough of you five-a-day.
Moringa or as we Sri Lankans like to call them, drumsticks, aren’t for drying and crushing pouring into smoothies. That’s a waste.
Drumsticks are for making curries, adding to dhal, picking them out of sambar. Basically, moringa or drumsticks are far too delicious consumed as a mere food supplement.
So, if you Google gotu kola and you’ll end up with a list of food supplements that claim to to promote longevity, help with varicose veins, Alzheimer’s disease, maybe even lower the risk of blood clots after an airplane trip.
You’ll find it sold in bottles as tinctures, in packs of dried herbs, in capsules to take as instructed on the bottle.
Most people may never come across a gotu kola leaf, they’re beautiful.
Gotu kola is native to Asia, growing in wetlands, and a member of the parsley family. It’s been know to be used in Ayurvedic, Chinese and Indonesian medicines, though I am neither practitioner nor recipient of either. Possibly prescribed as a powder, ticture or capsules. I couldn’t possibly say.
Walk into a Sri Lankan grocery store and you’ll find this miracle herb, bunches of fresh vivid green gotu kola, ready to be shredded and turned into a sambol.
Or if you’re like me, bulk it out into a salad to accompany a plate of curry or two. It’s in plentiful supply in my local go-to Sri Lankan grocers, Sharon’s in Tooting.
Sambols are a condiment, and come in many forms, gotu kola is one of the fresh varieties, often eaten with rice and curry.
Below is a recipe for gotu kola sambol, padded out with a few torn summer tomatoes.
If you can’t get hold of gotu kola - try parsley, then of course, you have made a parsley sambol.
A recipe for gotu kola sambol (or salad)
Prep time: 10 minutes
Yields: 4 portions (as a side)
Ingredients
One large bunch of gotu kola (or parsley)
1 red onion finely chopped
8 cherry tomatoes roughly torn
1 green chilli finely sliced
2 tablespoons of fresh grated coconut or desiccated coconut (unsweetened)
Juice of one lime
¼ tsp salt
Method
Wash your gotu kola and pat dry. Finely chop the leaves and partway down the stems, discard the rest. Put this into a large mixing bowl.
Add the finely chopped red onion, the roughly chopped or torn cherry tomatoes and the green chilli.
Sprinkle over the coconut and using your hands mix all the ingredients.
Add the lime juice and salt, mix again, and let the sambol rest, then serve with your favourite curries.
(First published on the Tooting Mama blog September 2023)
Photo credit Ranji Thangiah Photography
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They sure do! I’m curious about wasabi leaves now, I’ve just been reading about them fried in tempura batter!
I’m assuming I will be able to source those leaves here in Australia, we have a Sri Lankan or Indian shop just about on every corner where I live. They seem to combine for some reason. In fact the other day we came across a new one, we could smell it before we realised it was there. My first comment was, “oooh, something smells delicious”