Deep-Fried Eggs in a Tomato & Coconut Milk Curry

I have an abundance of fresh eggs at the moment so decided to use some up by making this Sri Lankan curry. The eggs were soft boiled, peeled, rolled in turmeric powder and shallow fried in vegetable oil before being combined with a tomato and coconut milk curry.
The first step in making the curry sauce was to make a Sri Lankan curry powder which forms the base of many of the Sri Lankan dishes. This powder can be roasted (ie the spices are dry roasted before being ground) or unroasted. In this recipe I needed the unroasted curry powder which was made by grinding rice which had been dry roasted for a few seconds, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds, cinnamon stick, fenugreek seeds, cardamom seeds, black mustard seeds, black peppercorns, dried kashmiri chillies and turmeric powder. After preparing all this wonderful curry powder I only needed 1 teaspoon for this recipe so will have to make some more Sri Lankan recipes to use it while it is fresh!
The curry sauce is then made by frying a crushed cinnamon stick, cumin seeds, yellow mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds and fresh curry leaves for a few seconds and then adding some red onions. Next you add in green chillies, turmeric powder, chilli powder, the curry powder and chopped fresh tomatoes. Finally you add in coconut milk and season to taste.
Despite all the "hot" ingredients in this sauce it was quite mild in flavour. It had interesting textures with the soft egg yolks and the slight crunch of the crushed cinnamon stick and the whole seeds. Using the whole bark of the cinnamon is common in Sri Lankan cooking. I served the eggs with basmati rice. This dish had a comforting Sunday TV dinner feel to it. Like most of Rick Steins recipes it was not difficult but took time to get all the ingredients together.

Rating 8 out of 10.