Dried Lemongrass (Sera)

Description

Lemongrass stalks, sliced into short pieces and dried. Sera turns up twice in a Sri Lankan kitchen: bruised into a coconut milk curry alongside pandan and curry leaf, and steeped on its own as a clean, citrusy herbal tea. Dried, it does both jobs and keeps for a year.

Fresh lemongrass is a fibrous, unfriendly thing. You bruise the stalk, throw it in whole, and fish it out at the end because nobody wants to chew it. Dried and cut, it is far easier to handle and much easier to measure.

In curry it belongs with rampe and karapincha, the three aromatics that go into the pot early and do their work quietly under everything else. Leave all three out and a Sri Lankan curry tastes oddly bare, even when the spices are right.

As a tea it stands entirely on its own: sharp, clean, citrus without any sourness, and good hot or over ice.

How to Use

• Add a spoonful to a coconut milk curry with pandan and curry leaf
• Steep as a clean citrus tea, hot or iced
• Simmer with ginger and honey
• Tie into a muslin bag for a stock or a broth

Cook with It

• dried pandan leaves, the aromatic it usually sits beside
• lemongrass tea, if you want it in tea bag form
• Sri Lankan fish curry

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