Sri Lanka – Eating Sri Lanka

Kathy Hornbach
July 31, 2013
Eating Sri Lanka
Rice & Curry, String Hoppers, and “Rotty”. Sound appealing?
With a generic name like “Rice and Curry”, Sri Lanka’s national dish may seem simple, but in no way is it plain. Rice and Curry is the main event here, but there are some other South Asian staples available as well: fried noodles (bee hoon — the skinny ones), fried rice, and deviled chicken/beef/etc — which is more “sweet an sour” than “devilish”. These are pretty much what we ate during three weeks in Sri Lanka, with rice & curry predominating.
The root of the dish, as you might guess, is rice. Lots of it. The diners are served from a communal plate of rice which is CurryPixabout twice their collective ability to consume. Diners (or servers) place a big mound of rice in the center of the plate, then take the curries (more on this later) and surround the rice with them, leaving a spot toward the diner to mix them. Click on the photo to the left, and our guide Bruno will explain the dishes served in a typical rice-curry.
Rice and Curry is traditionally eaten with just the fingers of the right hand. There’s a bit of art to it; you mix bits of all the curries together on a patch of rice. Form your fingers into a shovel sort of thing. Squeeze the bundle together in your hand, and pop! it into your mouth, using your thumbnail as a launcher. Yes, you end up with curry-colored, curry-flavored fingers. Thoughtfully, a water bowl appears as if by magic to rinse off the hand, and a towel (also shared) to dry off — or newspaper in bargain places. You might get a napkin, but they’re always small, and the mess is way too much to clean with a little bit of paper.
A typical rice & curry meal (example above):

  • Rice (either white or “red” — what we’d call brown rice or whole grain)
  • Dal — a curry made from lentils — like a thick soup
  • Two or three vegetable dishes
  • One or more meat or fish dishes
  • Almost everything is cooked with coconut milk or features grated coconut
  • Various levels of spiciness and textures. Some ordinary, some quite potent.
  • Beer. Lots of beer, in 600ml (about 1 1/2 pints) bottles. Beer drinking demonstration photo below.

Almost everything is cooked with coconut milk and/or features grated coconut. The dishes have various levels of spiciness and textures. Some ordinary, some quite pungent. You order by specifying if you want veg or non-veg rice & curry—if non-veg, you get to specify the type of meat. Whatever they have in the kitchen is what you get for the veg dishes. Sri Lankans eat rice & curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So did we (usually).
Food is typically completely prepared just before service — it took so long that typically, we’d place our orders well in advance (an hour and a half, or the previous night for breakfast), and specify when we’d be back for the meal. This is a great idea for freshness and food safety in such a hot climate — but it does take some getting used to.
It was challenging as Westerners, to get a decent level of spiciness in the food. I’d guess this has a bit to do with most light skinned people here being European and not accustomed to “fiery” food . Erik and I (Scott), who both enjoy some kick in their food, had a lot of trouble convincing the locals that yes, indeed we wanted our food spicy. Then we learned about kata sambol, a paste-like preparation of shallot, red chilies, fermented fish, and a bit of lime juice; “sure to liven any party”. When we would ask for it, waiters seemed astonished that we’d eat it, and would ask us “whether that was really what we wanted”. It wasn’t that hot. One brought “chili sauce” (ketchup) instead.
Rice and curry is also available on practically any city street in the form of lunch packets (see picture to the left), selling for 40 or 50 cents. Since you’re eating it with your hand — no utensils required!
Hoppers are a bit like soft-shell tacos (you fill them with various tasty bits, roll them up and eat them) made from rice flour. String hoppers are just strange. They’re also made from rice flour, but extruded into vermicelli-thin disks maybe a half-inch (1cm) high and 3″ (10cm) round. They’re boiled briefly, cooled and served in piles (like the mounds of rice). You top the vermicelli disk with dahl or what-have-you, and pop it into your mouth. It is certainly efficient. Our guide couldn’t come up with any explanation for the term “Hopper”, but later in India we found a similiar thing called, eponymously, appam. That mystery might be solved.
That leaves us with rotty. While “hopper” sort of evokes a feeling of grasshoppers (which I’ve also eaten…), rotty just does not sound that appealing. Actually, it comes from the Indian word “roti” — which refers to about any bread. Some are plain, some stuffed, and served with the same variety of dishes.
There was plenty of western food to be had in Sri Lanka — but it invariably disappointed. Besides, if you want to just eat “like home” — why not stay there… it’s cheaper!

Learning to Cook, Sri Lankan Style

eating managerEverybody helped prep
…Guided by Woodlands’ Manager
One of our more “interactive” tours (where we actually did something rather than simply be told about it) was a visit to Woodlands Network. Woodlands is a small, women-operated non-profit organization in Sri Lanka, our Intrepid Leader Bruno (photo top-left) effectively is employed by them and “sublet” to Intrepid. 
Bruno’s mananager (above, right), also does Sri Lankan cooking lessons at their HQ in Bandarawella. So one evening stayed in the town, walked over to the Woodlands office, prepared (and ate) a complete Sri Lankan rice/curry dinner. We started out with the basic Sri Lankan spices (shown on left), which include tumeric, chili, curry leaf, fenugreek, shallots, garlic, cumin, cinnamon, tamarind paste, pepper (white & black), ginger, cloves, cardamon, salt, and others I can’t remember now…. We ate in the traditional fashion (with our hands; banana leaves served as plates)… and stuffed ourselves.

Sri Lanka is certainly one of the spice islands – we saw virtually every one of these spices being grown somewhere on the island. And a bunch more besides.

I get the feeling we’re going to be pining for a good local rice/curry shop once we get home…

Next Page — Trekking

 

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