In the UK cucumbers are predominantly eaten raw or pickled. A backbone of British salads, or dainty finger sandwiches, or combined with yoghurt in dishes such as raita, tzatziki and cacik. But they are also fabulous to cook with, as evidenced by this very quick and easy Sri Lankan cucumber curry from Karan Gokani’s Hoppers The Cookbook.
Once you have your ingredients measured and prepped, this curry takes less time to cook than boiling a pan of rice or reheating a pile of rotis.
Read my full review of Hoppers: The Cookbook by Karan Gokani.
Leena’s Sri Lankan Cucumber Curry
Ingredients
- 700 g (1 lb 9 oz) cucumbers
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 tbsp coconut oil
- 1½ tsp black mustard seeds
- 1½ tsp dill seeds or caraway
- ½ tsp fenugreek seeds
- 120 g (4¼ oz) red onions, finely chopped
- ¾ tsp minced garlic
- 10 cm (4 in) piece pandan leaf
- 10-12 curry leaves
- ¾ tsp black peppercorns, crushed
- ¾ tsp ground turmeric
- 1½ tsp Unroasted Curry Powder (see link to recipe, below)
- 300 ml (10½ fl oz) coconut milk
- 1 green chilli, halved lengthways
Notes
Instructions
- Peel the cucumbers and slice in half lengthways. Then remove any seeds by scraping the core with a teaspoon and cut into 1cm (½in) pieces. Place these in a bowl and sprinkle over ½ tsp of the salt.
- Heat the oil in a saucepan over a medium heat. Add the mustard seeds, dill seeds and fenugreek seeds. Once the mustard seeds begin to splutter, add the onions, garlic, pandan leaf and curry leaves and cook for 3 minutes until everything has softened. You don’t need to brown the onions.
- Add the black pepper, turmeric and unroasted curry powder and continue to cook for 30 seconds. Stir in the cut cucumber pieces, mix well, cover and cook for 4 minutes over a low heat. Remove the lid and cook for a further minute until the cucumbers have softened just slightly but still have bite. Now add the coconut milk, green chilli and remaining salt and cook uncovered for a final 4 minutes. Serve immediately.
Find Karan Gokani’s recipe for the Unroasted Curry Powder, here.
Made the recipe? Let us know how you got on in the comments.
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Kavey Eats received a review copy of Hoppers The Cookbook by Karan Gokani from publishers Quadrille. Book photography by Ryan Wijayaratne. Home photography by Kavita Favelle.
Please leave a comment - I love hearing from you!5 Comments to "Leena’s Sri Lankan Cucumber Curry"
Well this was different! I couldn’t get hold of the pandan leaf but I do have some extract for emergencies so I used that instead and I think it worked really well!
Makes sense to me! We bought dried pandan leaf online but I think extract makes complete sense!
I can’t get hold of fresh pandan leaf but managed to get some dried. How do I use it please?
Regards,
Anna
Hello Anna
Dried isn’t as strong as fresh so use double or even triple the amount of dried compared to fresh.
Thank you for your reply 😊