Sri Lankan Recipes & Cookbooks

• ISBN13: 9780804841368
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The beautiful pearl island of Sri Lanka has an amazing variety of food and styles of cooking. The island has a rich heritage of indigenous dishes and its regional cooking is strongly individual and varied.

Like any other country, in Sri Lanka also the most typical food is cooked in the villages - getting precise recipes is almost impossible. They don't cook by a cookbook. A pinch of this, a handful of that, a good swirl of salty water; taste, consider, adjust seasoning. That's the way Sinhalese women cook, and no two women cook exactly alike. Even using the same ingredients, the interpretation of a recipe is completely individual. Ask a cook how much of a certain ingredient she uses and she'll say, 'This much', showing you with her hand. Spoon measures would be looked upon as an affectation. You watch, make notes and try to achieve the same results by trial and error. And when you arrive at the correct formula, write it down for posterity.

In addition to regional characteristics, some of the most popular dishes reflect influences from other lands. After a hundred years or so it does not matter that this or that style of cooking was introduced by foreigners who came and stayed, either as traders or conquerors - Indian, Arabs, Malays, Moors, Portuguese, Dutch and British. The dishes they contributed have been adapted to local ingredients, but retain their original character. They are not presented as Sinhalese dishes but accepted and enjoyed as part of the richly varied cuisine.

The influence of the Muslims and Malays is responsible for the use of certain flavorings such as saffron and rose water and the spicy korma, pilau and biriani which are Sri Lankan only by adoption. When the Portuguese ruled Sri Lanka for 150 years in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they left behind words which have worked into the language and customs which are very much a part of rural and urban life. Many recipes end with an instruction to 'temper' the dish. This comes from the Portuguese word, temperado, which means to fry and season. The Portuguese also contributed a number of sweetmeats which are popular to this day. These are served at celebrations (Sri Lankan are enthusiastic about celebrating every happy occasion) and people take enormous pride in old family recipes, which they guard with jealous care.

Then came the Dutch, and though their rule ended after a mere 138 years, their descendants stayed on in this prosperous land. They too brought with them recipes laden with butter and eggs in true Dutch tradition, but in the spice-rich land of their adoption they took on new flavor with the addition of cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and mace. The traditional Ceylon Christmas cake is a fine example of this, a fruit cake which stands above all others for flavor and richness.

In this book there are the recipes with pictures of the dishes of the most popular of the Sri Lankan cooking delights. Be your own chef and say good bye to restaurants and eating joints.

Raja Sharma

The chapters of Exotic Tastes of Sri Lanka are devoted to short eats (appetizers), salads, staples, vegetarian dishes, poultry, meat and egg recipes, seafood preparations, desserts, and sweetmeats (treats). An array of exotic ingredients that is key and integral to Sri Lankan cuisine enhances the dishes. For instance, gambooge, with its uniquely sour flavor, is often used in traditional seafood preparations like Fish Ambul Thiyal, while either grated coconut or coconut milk intensify most recipes, including Pumpkin Kalu Pol Curry. Local staples are delectable works of art, such as exquisite Stringhoppers, Hoppers, and Pittu.

Since the entrées revolve around the nation's favorite ingredient, rice, the loosely coined term "rice and curry" best describes Sri Lankan cuisine. Other staple ingredients include coconut (milk, oil, grated), as well as aromatic herbs and spices such as curry leaves, mint, coriander and fennel seeds, and cloves. Sri Lanka offers a particularly impressive repertoire of vegetarian and seafood preparations.

Sample menus, explanations of spice uses and availability, typical cooking techniques, and descriptions of traditional utensils complement the 157 recipes, all adapted for home cooks.