Sri Lanka 2 - foodie interlude

We have a favourite Sri Lankan restaurant in Melbourne, and Sam has bought us the O Tama Carey LANKA FOOD cook book, so we are not strangers to eating, or preparing our own, Sri Lankan food. We do tend to stick to a few tried and true favourites, and I was looking forward to expanding my experience, and learning more about how dishes are combined. It’s not a restaurant-oriented culture so some of the best food is home-cooked: our guesthouse in Anuradhapura had a wonderful cook. More touristy places have more restaurants, but they tend to have quite westernised menus. You can always find a little neighbourhood Sri Lankan joint if you look around though.

* a disclaimer – I am absolutely terrible at remembering to photograph food! Not a good instagrammer …

The best crab curry - Galle

KOTTU is something I never ate in Australia, it is a noodle-like dish made from chopped roti bread with vegetables, spices, meat, cheese, egg … It's a comfort food reminiscent of pad thai, and available everywhere. We ended up eating a lot of it – mainly because if you don’t want a rice-based meal, this is the most accessible alternative. It varies quite a lot in texture and flavour, from rich and creamy, to dry and spicy, to oily and salty … No photos sorry!

Family size crab curry! Colombo

CURRY For the most part, we found if we ordered a curry, it came as a small spicy dish of meat or fish with rice and multiple accompaniments. Inevitably a coconut sambol (spicy condiment) and a creamy coconut lentil dahl, and a range of vegetables – a tamarind based sweet/sour dish such as eggplant or mango, mild and coconutty starchy veg such as potato or pumpkin, and a green veg dish with mustard seed such as beans, okra or cabbage. Curry may be accomanied by roti instead of, or as well as, rice.

But on a few occasions we found the ‘curry’ came as a sizeable plate (sometimes large enough to share with a large group) and any additions had to be ordered separately. Problematic when only two of you eating … 

Coconut roti and stuffed string hoppers in Sigiriya

Hoppers and coconut pancakes in Sigiriya

BREAKFAST I was very keen to try Sri Lankan breakfast, but some of our accommodations followed the path of least resistance and provided western breakfast with maybe one Sri Lankan dish. The best breakfasts included:

• Hoppers – bowl shaped crepe with spongy bottom, may be eaten with curry, or sandwiched with sweet coconut cream (milk hopper). Egg hopper has an egg cooked in the base of it, and is apparently a popular breakfast food, though we didn’t easily find it …
• String hoppers – like a fine fresh noodle shaped into a small disc and served with curry sauce or dal. Or shaped into a roll and stuffed.
• Idli – steamed rice/coconut cake, also served with curry sauce or dal.
• Coconut pancakes – one of my favourites, a soft turmeric yellow crepe rolled and filled with a sweet cinnamony coconut mixture.
• Milk rice – squares of a cocnut milk rice pudding, unsweetened and served with a spicy sambol, or sweetened coconut cream.
• Always – lots of fresh fruit – bananas, papaya, pineapple, watermelon, mango.
• Very good tea (to be expected) and nice coffee too, usually drunk black and sweet.

Kandy food court biryani, with accompaniments

SNACKS Lots of bakeries selling hoppers (in the morning) and a range of bread rolls (egg rolls are popular) and pastries. Rolled up or folded filled roti, crumbed and fried or baked, are popular. The filling is usually veg – a mild potato-based curry similar to a samosa, or fish – mashed up spicy fish. Did not see much meat. We ate more of these than I would have preferred, as they are so convenient, but pretty stodgy …

Murruku – there are stalls with fresh murruku, but we mostly bought ours in packets from the supermarket. It’s a spiced chick pea dough extruded into small lengths and deep fried. It may then be mixed with nuts, spices and fried curry leaves. Like what you find in a bhuja mix, and delicious with a mango vodka or a Lion beer!

Home cooking in Jaffna

OTHER - The ubiquitous Southern Indian favourite of dosai is quite popular in Sri Lanka too, often in specialised restaurants.

Apart from curry, rice based dishes such as fried rice and biryani are ubiquitous. The biryani is flavoured with cinnamon, cloves and cardamom – very spicy!

A FEW FAVOURITES

• We had three crab curries, it is a Sri Lanka staple, and they were all terrific but different. So prepare to get messy …
• Milk hoppers and coconut pancakes for breakfast with fresh mango and banana.
• The astonishing amount of curry leaves in almost everything. Before cooking with them they are fried, so more edible than if added fresh to a sauce.
• The best curries had a thoughtful and interesting range of accompaniments.