If there's one dish that really sorts me out if I've been having a bad week, it's my mum's tuna sambol. In fact, whenever I ask her for it a cheeky smile spreads across my face because I know she'll never say no. Because she knows how much I love it.
Like my mum, I too get enormous satisfaction from people asking for second helpings of my food, and when she makes this, it's rare that I will leave any leftovers.
Tuna sambol consists of just 5 key ingredients: tinned tuna fish, drained (in brine), chopped red onion (it must be red), chopped green chilli and chunks of fresh chopped tomato, all doused in loads of fresh lime juice and made to sing by the addition of plenty of crushed rock salt and black pepper.
Although it probably doesn't sound very special, when you mix these ingredients together (and this must be done by hand and with gusto to really unleash their flavour), what you are in fact creating is an acid trip for your tongue. And a great one at that.
It's essential that you mop up the sambol with a hunk of fresh crusty bread (tiger's good) smeared with butter and wash it all down with a mug of inguru thay (that's ginger tea to you non-Sri Lankans). You can prepare this by brewing some black tea in a pot with slices of fresh ginger and, ideally, lots of sugar. The cumulative effect of these 3 things is a sunday brunch that will really rattle your soul and shake loose any bad feelings you might have woken up with: magic.
