Scurrying for curry – Indian’s take on Lankan food
A delicately seasoned dish suddenly turns savoury and a totally
spiceless one becomes a festive essential in Sri Lankan cuisine.
I’d heard that Sri Lankan food was a cross between that of our South,
and of South East Asia; that ingredients, processes and spices (pepper,
cinnamon, cloves, turmeric) were like ours. But that a twist of
freshness came from a slightly different store of aromatics like lemon
grass and pandanus.
So choosing it as a holiday destination was easy, especially given
the grey grimness that is Delhi in January.
It’s unfair on a cuisine to have to confine comment to 900 words, so
for now I’ll focus on highlights of meals — curries, vegetables, rice
and hoppers.
I ate in Colombo, Bentota and Galle, with a few pit stops, but still
just the southwest coast. I’m told that the north has a slightly
different cooking style, as does Kandy in the centre. Where ever we
went, though, the cuisine was a celebration of rice, seafood, coconuts
and other fruit.
The first sign that the food was going to be a delight was at the
Galle Face hotel in Colombo. Its beautiful location apart, the breakfast
buffet was worth the stay.
There were the expected — Continental and English breakfasts — but
there were the local: hoppers (from appam… appa), string hoppers; and
puttu (or pittu), the steamed cylinder of ground rice and coconut eaten
with curries or palm sugar and sambol, a chutney-like accompaniment.
Appams in India are round pancakes, thick and spongy in the centre
and delicately lacy at the edges, with a golden rice-white inner side
and a golden-edging-on-brown underside.
In Sri Lanka they were less aerated, so less porous, and crisper and
thinner.
The hopper cook at the Club Bentota said that, unlike in Kerala, they
didn’t use toddy or yeast to leaven the batter; it was rice, coconut
water, coconut cream and what she called “hopper soda”.
So that first breakfast at the Galle Face I had first some of a plain
hopper, then some with prawn curry and finally an egg hopper. The egg
yolk was orange, nestling prettily in the base of the hopper, and after
a couple of mouthfuls I ladled some prawn curry on to the smashed yolk
and that was paradise.
The prawn curry was a pale golden orange, with flecks of red chilli
and sweet with coconut milk, fresh pink succulent prawns and some green
stuff. The spices were delicate and not totally familiar: pandan leaves,
what in Sri Lanka they call rampe (it amazes me that the flower of
pandanus, screwpine, gives us the completely different smelling kewra).
The next good meal was at the universally recommended Raja Bhojun, an
all-you-can-eat restaurant nearby. Most memorable was the crab, in a
hot, generously peppered curry flavoured with curry leaves.
There were about 20 other dishes, thick dal, vegetables and “devilled
chicken”, which we then went on to eat again at Bentota. Pork, beef,
chicken are all “devilled” and very popular. To me they were like a
cheap Chinese “chilli chicken sweet-and-sour”, fried bites of meat with
crunchy onions, tomatoes and capsicum, coated with tomato ketchup. The
interesting dishes, which Chef Priyal cooked, were mallum, a sautéed mix
of finely chopped vegetables cooked with grated coconut; curries of
prawn and pineapple. There are broadly two spice powders which are made
— or bought — and stored: one for vegetarian, and the other for meat
dishes.
One completely spiceless dish I loved was a festive essential, kiri
bath, milk rice.
The milk isn’t dairy, it’s coconut.
Soft, almost mashed white rice, barely salted, is cooked with coconut
milk and set into soft squares. Chef Priyal suggested I eat it with lunu
miris, a spicy sambol, which I did, but in the end I ate it with
marmalade.
It’s so delicately seasoned that you can barely tell it’s savoury,
but with honey or marmalade, the salt and sugar sharpen and define each
other.
In the charming little township that is Fort Galle, there are several
cafés and bistros serving Western food. And several who make Sinhalese
curries and “Indian buriyani”.
This one, Fort Dew, faced the ramparts of the fort, and had a fresh
breeze coming in from the water beyond. We ordered two dishes: rice and
curry and chicken and rice and curry and prawns. Curry meant many, many
vegetable add-ons, so rice, chicken (or prawn) curry, dal, four veggies,
papad.
The chicken curry was fragrant with garam masala, in shiny orange
gravy. Tender green beans were cut long, about two inches, in a mild
pale creamy sauce. Carrots, cut into small diamonds, were yellow and
coconutty.
Potatoes in white gravy which smelt of fenugreek seeds, dry potatoes
with browned caramelised onions and curry leaf. Prawns in spicy reddish
chopped onion gravy.
Chana dal fragrant with cinnamon, garlic and ginger, tempered with
dry red chillies. Crisp brown papads. Freshly cut green lime and long
green chillies on the side.
Each thing we ate tasted different from the other and was Best in
Class.
When we’d placed our order, we were told that it would take 40
minutes. Obviously everything was cooked fresh. We left wishing we had
happened on this place sooner.
Courtesy: The Hindu
|