So how many cakes did you bake during lockdown?
Remember 2020? Did you rediscover bread making, cake baking or gardening whilst being locked up at home? It does not seem to matter where you were living in the world, everywhere people were finding comfort in food. Be it home grown or home made.
Here on our little island we did just the same...
Made, Marco and Ating
We started out, clearing part of the jungle in the back, we ordered a bunch of seeds online and we started to look forward to our very own home grown tomatoes and zucchini. Only to discover after a mere few weeks none of us has green fingers...
Luckily our staff had seen this coming and put the new garden to use in their own way, and so we ended up with a garden full of chilli.
Then as we were experimenting in the kitchen to improve our menu and baking loads of cake with the excuse to improve our menu, we asked our kitchen staff to come up with their own home recipes.
Following Manado tradition, there is a sambal (chilli sauce) for every dish and every family has their own recipes. With a garden full of chilli we tasted loads of delicious and particular sambals in the last 2 years. But by far our favourite is the “sambal kampung” made by Marlina (or simply “sambal Marlina” now).
Marlina uses her own mix of fresh spices including 2 different kinds of chilli, ginger, onion, garlic and salt. She grinds everything together in the mortar and then adds a glowing piece of coconut shell to cook and smoke the mixture. The result is quite addictive.
Marlina
The “sambal Marlina” will be one of the many new details to discover on the Coral Eye menu and if you like it as much as we do, ask Marlina and she will happily teach you ;-)