Mas huni

Ingredients

• Smoked or tinned tuna400 g
• Grated coconut — fresh200 g
• Red onion2
• Chillies3
• Limes3
• Curry leaves10
• Flour for roshi300 g
• Water160 ml
• Vegetable oil30 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Knead a dough from the flour, water, a spoon of oil and salt and rest it twenty minutes.

   25 min

2. 2

   Chop the onion, chillies and curry leaves as fine as you can.

   10 min

3. 3

   Work the onion, chilli and salt with your hands until the onion releases its juice and softens.

   5 min

4. 4

   Add the grated coconut and the flaked tuna and keep working it with your fingers until even.

   6 min

5. 5

   Squeeze in the lime juice and mix again. Taste and adjust for salt and acidity.

   4 min

6. 6

   Roll the dough into thin flatbreads and cook them on a dry pan a minute a side.

   15 min

7. 7

   Serve the mas huni with the hot roshi and black tea.

   4 min

About the dish

Everything is worked together by hand rather than stirred with a spoon. The fingers press the juice from the onion and lime into the coconut and the mixture turns even — a spoon will not do it.

The tuna is smoked or tinned and is flaked into threads. Freshly boiled tuna works less well: it is drier and does not take up the dressing.

The coconut has to be freshly grated. Desiccated gives grit instead of a moist mass, and rehydrating it makes a different dish.

Worth knowing

• — Mas huni is made just before serving. After half an hour standing, the onion gives up all its water and the mixture goes wet.
• — The lime goes in last. It stops the onion releasing juice, and added earlier it leaves the onion firm.
• — Roshi are eaten hot only. Cooled, they stiffen within five minutes, and in a Maldivian house they are cooked as people eat.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

34 g

Fat

20 g

Carbs

52 g

More from Maldives

• Garudhiya — A clear broth of fresh tuna, cooked in water with salt and almost nothing else.