Sri Lankan Cuisine

Sri Lanka, the beautiful spice island once known as Ceylon, is a rich melting pot of cuisines.  It seems every nationality that has visited and traded over the years has left a mark on the cuisine—the Dutch, Portuguese, English, Arabs, Malays, Moors and Indians.

Sri Lankan cuisine mainly consists of boiled or steamed rice served with curry.  This usually consists of a "main curry" of fish, chicken, beef, pork or mutton), as well as several other curries made with vegetable, lentils and even fruit curries.

Side-dishes include pickles, chutneys and sambals.  The most famous of these is the coconut sambal, made of ground coconut mixed with chillies, dried Maldive fish and lime juice.  This is ground to a paste and eaten with rice, as it gives zest to the meal and is believed to increase appetite.

Another well-known rice dish is Kiribath, meaning "milk rice."  In addition to sambals, Sri Lankans eat mallung, chopped leaves mixed with grated coconut and red onions.  Coconut milk is found in most Sri Lankan dishes to give the cuisine its unique flavor.

Hoppers are another food native to Sri Lanka, served mainly for breakfast or dinner and often accompanied by Lunu miris, a mix of red onions and spices. Hoppers are made from a fermented batter of rice flour, coconut milk and a dash of palm toddy, which lends a sour flavor and fermentation ability. If toddy is not available, yeast is often used. The batter is left to rise, then cooked in a hemispherical wok-like pan. There are many types of hoppers including egg hoppers, milk hoppers,string hoppers, and sweeter varieties like vandu appa and pani appa.

Roti in Sri Lanka may be the Paratha or the chapati type of flatbread.  Kottu Roti is a Sri Lankan dish, made from a Sri Lankan type of bread called Godamba Roti, and vegetables, egg, or meat, and various spices. An optional spicy gravy is usually served with a kottu roti. A hot kottu is generally eaten as a dinner meal. The common varieties include beef and chicken as well as egg and vegetable kottus made for vegetarians.

Spices:

Sri Lankan people use spices liberally in their dishes and typically do not follow an exact recipe:  thus, every cook's curry will taste slightly different.  Furthermore, people from different regions of the island (for instance, hill-country dwellers versus coastal dwellers) traditionally cook in different ways while people of different ethnic and religious groups tend to prepare dishes according to their customs.  Although Sri Lankan food is similar to south Indian cuisine in its use of chilli, cardamom, cumin, coriander and other spices, it has a distinctive taste, and uses ingredients like dried Maldive fish which are local to the area.

The cuisine of Sri Lanka shares similarities with the cuisines of South India, however, Sri Lankan food is generally much spicier than most South Indian cuisine, and many spicy Sri Lankan preparations are believed to be among the world's hottest in terms of chilli content.  There is a liberal use of different varieties of scorching hot chillies such as amu miris, kochchi miris, and maalu miris (capsicum) among others.  While native Sri Lankans are born into this cuisine and develop a healthy tolerance to spicy food, many visitors and tourists to the country often find the spiciness excessive.  As a result, many local restaurants in developed and tourist areas offer special low-spice versions of local foods to cater to foreign palates.

Sweets:

Sri Lanka is one of the places in South Asia that is famous for its sweets and desserts, which are native to them.  Mostly the desserts are served after the main meals and sweets are specially for the tea time.  Most of these desserts and sweets have cultural background. A lot of desserts and sweets are rich in domestic spices, jaggery and kithul (Caryota urens) treacle. Traditionally, usage of sugar is minimum due to the availability of locally made alternatives such as treacle and jaggery.  

A well-known sweet is Kavun or oil cakes, a cake made with rice flour and treacle and deep-fried to a golden brown.  A variety of Kavun, called Moong Kavun is made from green gram (mung bean) which is then ground to a paste and shaped like diamonds before frying.  Athirasa is yet another type of Kavun.  It is a sweet-cake of jaggery and rice flour made into a paste flattened into circles and fried.   

Beverages:

A very popular drink is Faluda, a mixed cold drink with syrup, ice cream, jelly pieces and basil seeds.  Fruit juices are also popular in Sri Lanka, especially passionfruit juice.

A very popular alcoholic drink is the toddy, made from palm tree sap.  Arrack is the de-facto distilled national drink.