{"id":15510,"date":"2013-01-28T14:35:08","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T19:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=15510"},"modified":"2013-01-28T14:35:08","modified_gmt":"2013-01-28T19:35:08","slug":"sri-lankan-food-savoured-by-a-north-indian-visitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=15510","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan Food Savoured by a North Indian Visitor"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Vasundhara Chauhan <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d heard that Sri Lankan food was a cross between that of our South, and of South East Asia; that ingredients, processes and spices (pepper, cinnamon, cloves, turmeric) were like ours. But that a twist of freshness came from a slightly different store of aromatics like lemon grass and pandanus. So choosing it as a holiday destination was easy, especially given the grey grimness that is Delhi in January.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unfair on a cuisine to have to confine comment to 900 words, so for now I\u2019ll focus on highlights of meals \u2014 curries, vegetables, rice and hoppers. I ate in Colombo, Bentota and Galle, with a few pit stops, but still just the southwest coast. I\u2019m told that the north has a slightly different cooking style, as does Kandy in the centre. Where we went, though, the cuisine was a celebration of rice, seafood, coconuts and other fruit.<\/p>\n

The first sign that the food was going to be a delight was at the Galle Face hotel in Colombo. Its beautiful location apart, the breakfast buffet was worth the stay. There were the expected \u2014 Continental and English breakfasts \u2014 but there were the local: hoppers (from appam\u2026 appa), string hoppers; and puttu (or pittu), the steamed cylinder of ground rice and coconut eaten with curries or palm sugar and sambol, a chutney-like accompaniment. Appams in India are round pancakes, thick and spongy in the centre and delicately lacy at the edges, with a golden rice-white inner side and a golden-edging-on-brown underside. In Sri Lanka they were less aerated, so less porous, and crisper and thinner. The hopper cook at the Club Bentota said that, unlike in Kerala, they didn\u2019t use toddy or yeast to leaven the batter; it was rice, coconut water, coconut cream and what she called \u201chopper soda\u201d.<\/p>\n

So that first breakfast at the Galle Face I had first some of a plain hopper, then some with prawn curry and finally an egg hopper. The egg yolk was orange, nestling prettily in the base of the hopper, and after a couple of mouthfuls I ladled some prawn curry on to the smashed yolk and that was paradise. The prawn curry was a pale golden orange, with flecks of red chilli and sweet with coconut milk, fresh pink succulent prawns and some green stuff. The spices were delicate and not totally familiar: pandan leaves, what in Sri Lanka they call rampe (it amazes me that the flower of pandanus, screwpine, gives us the completely different smelling kewra).<\/p>\n

The next good meal was at the universally recommended Raja Bhojun, an all-you-can-eat restaurant nearby. Most memorable was the crab, in a hot, generously peppered curry flavoured with curry leaves. There were about 20 other dishes, thick dal, vegetables and \u201cdevilled chicken\u201d, which we then went on to eat again at Bentota. Pork, beef, chicken are all \u201cdevilled\u201d and very popular. To me they were like a cheap Chinese \u201cchilli chicken sweet-and-sour\u201d, fried bites of meat with crunchy onions, tomatoes and capsicum, coated with tomato ketchup. Forgettable. The interesting dishes, which Chef Priyal cooked, were mallum, a saut\u00e9ed mix of finely chopped vegetables cooked with grated coconut; curries of prawn and pineapple. There are broadly two spice powders which are made \u2014 or bought \u2014 and stored: one for vegetarian, and the other for meat dishes.<\/p>\n

One completely spiceless dish I loved was a festive essential, kiri bath, milk rice. The milk isn\u2019t dairy, it\u2019s coconut. Soft, almost mashed white rice, barely salted, is cooked with coconut milk and set into soft squares. Chef Priyal suggested I eat it with lunu miris, a spicy sambol, which I did, but in the end I ate it with marmalade. It\u2019s so delicately seasoned that you can barely tell it\u2019s savoury, but with honey or marmalade, the salt and sugar sharpen and define each other.<\/p>\n

On our last evening in Sri Lanka we made a discovery, inadvertently, of something we were not in quest of, good Sri Lankan curry. I\u2019ve been trying my best to avoid clich\u00e9 and not use the word s*r*nd*p*ty. So, although we all know of the three princes of S*r*nd*p, the old name for Sri Lanka, I won\u2019t. By then we were done with curries, but since we were leaving the next day\u2026.<\/p>\n

In the charming little township that is Fort Galle, there are several caf\u00e9s and bistros serving Western food. And several who make Sinhalese curries and \u201cIndian buriyani\u201d. This one, Fort Dew, faced the ramparts of the fort, and had a fresh breeze coming in from the water beyond. We ordered two dishes: rice and curry and chicken and rice and curry and prawns. Curry meant many, many vegetable add-ons, so rice, chicken (or prawn) curry, dal, four veggies, papad. The chicken curry was fragrant with garam masala, in shiny orange gravy. Tender green beans were cut long, about two inches, in a mild pale creamy sauce. Carrots, cut into small diamonds, were yellow and coconutty. Potatoes in white gravy which smelt of fenugreek seeds, dry potatoes with browned caramelised onions and curry leaf. Prawns in spicy reddish chopped onion gravy. Chana dal fragrant with cinnamon, garlic and ginger, tempered with dry red chillies. Crisp brown papads. Freshly cut green lime and long green chillies on the side.<\/p>\n

Each thing we ate tasted different from the other and was Best in Class. When we\u2019d placed our order, we were told that it would take 40 minutes. Obviously everything was cooked fresh. We left wishing we had happened on this place sooner.COURTESY:THE HINDU<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Vasundhara Chauhan I\u2019d heard that Sri Lankan food was a cross between that of our South, and of South East Asia; that ingredients, processes and spices (pepper, cinnamon, cloves, turmeric) were like ours. But that a twist of freshness came from a slightly different store of aromatics like lemon grass and pandanus. So choosing …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Sri Lankan Food Savoured by a North Indian Visitor’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15511,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15510\/revisions\/15511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}