A culinary tour of Sri Lanka

At some point throughout our adulting phase—when we were living alone, handling finances, and adjusting to the day-to-day grind—we have all missed our comfort food from home. Perhaps we attempted to make the meal ourselves, following our moms’ instructions or consulting a guidebook. But what happens if you don’t have enough ingredients to prepare your favorite dish? Your cookbook is written by you. With her book Jayaflava: A Celebration of Food, Flavour, and Recipes from Sri Lanka, London-based Tasha Marikkar has achieved just that.

 

The vibrant, hardcover book serves as an encyclopedia of our neighbor, providing the reader with information on the many towns and their culinary traditions. One thing that I want everyone to remember is that Sri Lanka is an ethnically diverse nation, and as such, the rich and varied cuisine has been influenced by the different cultures who call the country home. Food has always been our great unifier, despite our terrible publicity over the last several decades, according to Marikkar.

Here are some excerpts:

Your first book on a dish you really love…

Saying that I adore Sri Lankan cuisine would be an understatement; when I was living in London, it developed into a passion of mine, yet no cookbook I possessed had any real Sri Lankan recipes. I had a few cookbooks authored by renowned “Aunties,” but their proportions are quite difficult to follow; for example, some might call for a “mundu” of rice, which is really just an old can of condensed milk. Because these instructions are so ambiguous, it was challenging to get a consistent result.

In addition, I saw that many Sri Lankans my age and younger did not know how to prepare traditional foods, and I realized that if I did not make an effort to preserve these recipes, the techniques would eventually disappear. It turned into a personal quest for me to make sure I maintained our essential methods and emphasized what made each dish unique.

In London, I worked in advertising quite a bit. There was a time when my sole break from my late-night job was to come home and make a hearty Sri Lankan supper. When I was feeling down, it helped me feel a part of my hometown and culture. After a hard day, I realized while driving that I need to share all of the recipes I had been gathering.

Is the food of Sri Lanka less well-known than that of other South Asian nations?

Though not to the extent that it merits, some light has been shed on Sri Lankan cuisine throughout the last ten years. When compared to Southeast and East Asian cuisines, it is far less researched than other South Asian cuisines. Although it may be debatable, the island’s cuisine has enormous flavor, balance, and health advantages that the hospitality sector in Sri Lanka fails to recognize. The best places to get delicious Sri Lankan food are largely in Colombo and people’s homes. There are very few eateries that highlight our food. This is the methodical explanation for why a centuries-old cuisine has remained mostly unknown. It is time for Sri Lankans to stop being silent and start praising our cuisine. Making every Lankan feel proud of our national foods and giving them the confidence to introduce them throughout the globe is one of my book’s objectives.

Describe the research for us.

It took me almost four years to compose this book. I used to go watch other ladies cook and observe their methods over certain months. While writing the book, I discovered that much of our food heritage has been preserved as oral history, which presented a significant challenge. To understand when and where our food was impacted, I had to research Robert Knox’s work as well as our colonial history and the English interpretations of Mahvamsa. Our diet has been permanently altered by the introduction of new recipes by many populations, such the Europeans, the Javanese troops, and the Arab merchants, to mention a few. It was an intriguing investigation into the characteristics of Sri Lankan culture and people that made us who we are today.

What is your first recollection of Sri Lankan cuisine?

I think my mother hand-fed me the first Sri Lankan meal I ever remembered eating. She remembers giving me offal-like brain cutlets and rice and curries with plenty of healthy vegetables because it promoted brain growth. When I was eighteen, during my first year of university in London, I began preparing Sri Lankan cuisine seriously and realized at last how important it was to my nutrition. That kindled my interest in learning how to prepare Sri Lankan cuisine.

Have you discovered lost recipes or forgotten delicacies from the cuisine throughout your search?

I could talk for hours about this. Actually, I’m concentrating on the lost recipes in Sri Lanka for my second book. The cuisine in Puttalam, a town on the island’s western coast where many of my family members are from, is just incredible. I like going there simply for the food alone since they have the best bone marrow curry, catfish roe omelettes, and stingray curry in the nation!

One of the best meals I’ve ever eaten is beef curry, which is made just once a season in the southern town where my uncle is from! All he adds is raw onion, fluffy white rice, thin slices of daikon and daikon leaves, and a thick, slow-cooked curry. It can only be eaten with a cucumber salad and nothing else. It is unique to Sri Lanka and can only be made by the Muslim people there.

It’s a frightening fact to realize that there aren’t many individuals who know how to make these delicacies anymore, which means that the knowledge behind them may disappear.

Despite having different names, the dishes are similar to those found in South India’s coastal areas.

We are intrinsically related to one other since Sri Lankan and Southern Indian cuisines have so many commonalities. Southern Indian cuisine is the source of many of our most well-known meals; indiappam, stringhoppers, and appam & hoppers are just a few examples. Over time, Sri Lankans have transformed these recipes into their own. For example, our hopper is a crispy appam with a deep bowl, whereas its Indian equivalent is shallower, requiring a different method to get the same outcome. I see the parallels as advantageous. It symbolizes our shared past and the fact that we are all ultimately related.

Describe the ways you plan to combat hunger in Sri Lanka.

In Sri Lanka, there are two types of malnutrition that are prevalent: wasting and obesity. Agriculture is the foundation of it all, and we must methodically alter the way we produce. Our manufacturing techniques and the reasons for our growth are issues that the Government of Sri Lanka must confront and assist in resolving; this is a much larger problem that will take many years to settle across the island. Every season, an abundance of identical vegetables floods the market, which negatively impacts farmers’ earnings and spreads throughout the nation. Our nation’s backbone consists of these men and women, and one of my main goals is to empower and assist them.

Growing food in your garden and foraging is another habit that has fallen out of favor in Sri Lanka that I wish to bring back. Many Sri Lankans cultivated wholesome fruits, vegetables, flowers, and greens in their gardens or on a communal piece of land when I was a child. Every household in the neighborhood would split the extra produce. This is an art that needs to be revived; it doesn’t burden our earth and gives us free nourishment.

In addition, it seems that fast food is growing in popularity, and in my opinion, Sri Lanka is not the right location for it. Thus, I aim to establish eating freshly prepared meals at home as the hippest dining option.

In addition to the book, how do you want to popularize the dishes as an unofficial representative of Sri Lankan food?

The book is the primary vehicle, however I am not yet permitted to discuss a few initiatives that are in the works. I would want to concentrate on spending time with people and introducing showcase culinary events since I feel that they initiate conversations. I want to engage with women and men in smaller towns and villages to help them realize their culinary goals and invest in Sri Lanka’s hospitality sector to encourage them to begin developing the island’s cuisine. The more Sri Lankan cuisine prospers, the more prosperous Sri Lankans are.

Curry with Red Chicken

Components

Chicken marinade

500g of skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs (or chopped entire chicken pieces)

Two tsp of red curry powder

½ teaspoon turmeric powder, ½ teaspoon unroasted curry powder, and ½ teaspoon salt

1½ tspsp tamarind paste or 20g tamarind

360ml of thin coconut mylk (240ml of coconut mylk diluted with 120ml water if it is in a can)

Two tablespoons of coconut oil

One little red onion, chopped

ten curry leaves

One-third of a lemongrass stalk, gently crushed with a knife,

1/2 cinnamon quill, 1 tsp mustard seeds, a 5-cm piece of pandan leaf, and 1 tsp fenugreek seeds

Pinch 20g of fresh ginger and 20g of garlic to form a paste, then add 3 cloves.

Two mashed cardamom pods

Diced one fresh green chili and ½ tsp red chili powder

Thick coconut milk, 120ml

Technique

Combine the chicken, turmeric powder, curry powder, red chili powder, and salt in a bowl. After giving the chicken a good massage, let it marinade for ten minutes.

Stir the chunks of tamarind into the thick coconut mylk. After straining, put aside. If using tamarind paste, just stir it into the coconut mylk until it dissolves completely.

Heat the coconut oil in a Dutch oven or large pot with a cover over a medium heat. Incorporate the red onion, fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds, pandan leaf, lemongrass, curry leaves, and cinnamon quill. Add the cardamoms, cloves, ginger-garlic paste, and fresh green chillies and fry for another two minutes. Before adding the chicken, cook for a further two to three minutes.

The chicken pieces should be sautéed till golden brown. After adding the thin coconut mylk, simmer for 20 minutes with a lid on.

Toast the extra 1 ½ teaspoons of red chili powder in a small skillet for 1 minute, or until it begins to become slightly darker. Stir well after adding the roasted chilli powder to the chicken curry. This gives the chicken curry its signature “red” hue. Simmer for five minutes with a lid on.

Then pour in the thick coconut mylk and well stir. Simmer over low heat, covered, for a further 15 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and a gorgeous crimson gravy forms.

Advice: Add 1 teaspoon of tomato paste to the stew when you mix in the thick coconut mylk for a redder dish.

Curry with Jackfruit (Polos)

Components

Regarding the curry powder

Fifteen dried red chilies

15 cardamom pods and 6 cloves

One quill of cinnamon (5g)

One level teaspoon pepper

Two level teaspoons of coriander seeds

1 tablespoon leveled cumin seeds

For the remaining curry

1/2 tsp turmeric paste or powder

500g of fresh jackfruit, washed, and chopped into big, uniform pieces with 2 tsp salt

Two tablespoons of coconut oil

50g half-moon-sized red onions (½ onion), sliced

4 big (30g) cut garlic cloves, 8g goraka fruit

two recently picked, coarsely chopped green chilies

A 4-by-7-cm pandan leaf

Twenty curry leaves (5g)

1/4 teaspoon fenugreek seeds

One-half teaspoon of mustard seeds

500ml thin coconut mylk (250ml water mix, 250ml canned coconut mylk)

Thick coconut mylk in 530ml

Technique

For three to four minutes, toast the components for the curry powder in a frying skillet over high heat. As soon as the spices become brown, take them off the fire and put them aside. After letting it cool for a few minutes, powder it finely. Put aside.

In a dish, add the young jackfruit pieces, turmeric, and 1 teaspoon salt. Be careful to coat each piece well. Put aside.

Heat the coconut oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Fry for three to four minutes after adding the onion, chopped garlic, goraka, fresh green chilies, pandan leaves, and curry leaves. Add the mustard and fenugreek seeds, and continue to cook for an additional two minutes.

Add the seasoned young jackfruit and cook, stirring, for 4 minutes, until both sides are browned. Fry for a further three minutes after adding four heaping teaspoons of curry powder (save the extra for later). Add the thin coconut mylk and stir. After five minutes of cooking under cover, add ¾ of the thick coconut mylk and well mix.

After allowing the curry to boil for about five to seven minutes, reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for twenty minutes, stirring now and again. Add 180ml of thick coconut mylk, cover, and simmer on low for 30 minutes. Mix well after adding 2 heaping teaspoons of curry powder and 1 teaspoon of salt. Simmer on low for a further 10 minutes with a lid on, or until the curry is reduced, thick, and dark brown.