Want to know about Srilankan Cooking. What is Puzhukodiyal, sambal and odiyan kizhangu? How to make sodhi Puzhukodiyal and sambal? I don’t know whether these pronunciations are correct. I read these things from a Srilankan story. Regards Uma
Hi Uma! I have a few cookbooks which include Sri Lankan recipes, but I am not sure if they are available for purchase in India (they were published for distribution in North America). If you are interested, I can post their titles, though - you can certainly have books shipped from anywhere to everywhere nowadays. In the meanwhile, I have an article for you. It was from the New York Times. Normally, I would not post an entire article, as it could be construed as copyright infringement or something akin to that, but the article is old enough that you'd have to pay to get it from their archives. I also have some recipes I can post for you. I will start with the article, which is wonderful - just don't tell anyone I posted it here, hahaha! Just Off India, Kissed by Europe October 13, 2004 By AMANDA HESSER GALLE, Sri Lanka THE owner of a cinnamon plantation near here, R. K. Ariyasena, greeted me with a wide smile and a handshake that felt like gravel. A farmer's handshake. It was very hot, and he was wearing the standard summer attire of Sri Lankans: not much. While my husband, Tad, and I stood in the dirt courtyard between Mr. Ariyasena's home and his cinnamon peeling workshop, he and a worker braided a coconut-husk rope into a loop. The worker put his feet inside the loop and used it for leverage as he shinnied up a coconut tree like a squirrel. Soon golden-orange King coconuts were dropping from above. Mr. Ariyasena caught one and chopped the husk until he broke through, then, using the point of his machete, he poked a delicate hole in the top and inserted a straw. He handed it to me. King coconut juice has a slightly sweet, slightly acidic tenor that never weighs on your tongue long enough for you to decide whether it's a fruit or vegetable. When the coconut was drained, Mr. Ariyasena cracked it in half and cut off a wedge of the yellow husk for scooping out the sweet, custardlike flesh. Aperitif and amuse-bouche in one. We'd come to see cinnamon, but it's easy to get distracted by the unexpected here. An island suspended between the 5th and 10th parallels, Sri Lanka is shaped like a fat tear rolling off the chin of India. The country is largely a dense and steamy jungle, and it takes forever to drive even a few miles. But it is hard not to be won over by a land where more than 30 varieties of banana grow, where jackfruit weighing 40 pounds dangle impossibly from the trunks of trees, where pepper vines crawl, mangoes hang in abundance, where trucks tilt and sway under the weight of pumpkins and bitter gourds as they scream down narrow roads - where everywhere you look is something strange and edible. The reason Western chefs haven't discovered Sri Lankan food is that, until recently, the island has been roiled by violence between the Tamils in the north of the island and Sri Lanka's Sinhalese-run government. When we were there, the threat of suicide bombings by the Tamil separatists was not sufficiently worrisome to keep the checkpoint guards from napping behind barriers covered with brightly colored advertisements for products like Singer sewing machines. Sri Lanka, which means "resplendent land" has never had much patience for peace. The first outsiders to land there were from India; they were followed by Arab traders. Michael Ondaatje, in his memoir "Running in the Family," writes: "The island seduced all of Europe. The Portuguese. The Dutch. The English. And so its name changed, as well as its shape - Serendip, Ranapida ("island of gems"), Taprobane, Zeloan, Zeilan, Seyllan, Ceilon, and Ceylon - the wife of many marriages, courted by invaders who stepped ashore and claimed everything with the power of their sword or bible or language." Along the roadside people sell boiled corn, brought by the Portuguese and chickpea fritters spiced with chilies, called vadai, from India. Every village has a bakery that offers white sandwich bread, brought by the Portuguese, and tea, a vestige of the British, the last colonists to leave. Odd English names persist. The bowl-shaped coconut crepes known as "appa" in India are usually called "hoppers" here. A betting chain is named Sporting Times Turf Accountants, and many villages have small restaurants called "bakery hotels." But the cuisine is the very opposite of bangers and mash. Nor is it exactly Indian. Sri Lankan cooks use coconut milk where most Indians use yogurt, coconut oil rather than ghee, and they cook with more fish and more chilies. The cuisine is closest in spirit to that of Kerala, the southwestern sliver of India. Both cuisines are largely dependent on fish, fruit, coconut and herbs like curry leaf rather than the dried spices so familiar in northern Indian cooking. Sri Lankan cooking is less polished, more wild and rustic: a profusion of densely perfumed curries, shredded salads, herbal broths and countless configurations of rice. Curries here are textured with large shards of cinnamon, coarsely cut slices of onion and whole chilies, as if it were too hot to cut anything more finely. The dal is looser than it is in India, the salads drier and spicier. Cooks rely heavily on aromatics like fresh curry leaves and rampe (or pandan leaf), a long bladelike leaf from the screwpine tree that smells like fresh corn and onion. Tamarind and its frequent substitute, goraka, add tang to curries, and Maldives fish, a smoked and sun-dried skipjack tuna that is shaved, is used for salt and depth in condiments and broths. Most curries divide into three types: black, red and white. Black curries are made with a base of roasted spices like coriander, cumin and fennel. Red curries have fewer spices but lots of chilies. White curries, made with coconut milk, tend to have more liquid and are mild. An important distinction exists between "first coconut milk" and "second coconut milk." Coconut milk is made by swishing freshly grated coconut with hot water (a half-cup coconut to one cup water) and straining out the rich, thick milk - the first coconut milk. The same coconut is blended with a second batch of water, to make a thinner second coconut milk. For simmered dishes, the second coconut milk is used as the cooking liquid, and the first coconut milk is stirred in at the end as a finishing touch. More than one cook made a point to tell me that lesser cooks use canned coconut milk and coconut milk powder, the Sri Lankan equivalent of Betty Crocker Potato Buds. Some cooks may now use safflower oil rather than coconut oil and aluminum pots instead of clay, but very little else about the cooking - or the culture for that matter - feels modernized. It is still common to see women carrying jugs of water from community wells and Tamil children whose parents have painted their foreheads with a round black "pottu," made of charcoal, to deflect the evil eye. Agriculture is a source of great pride in Sri Lanka. In the Sinhalese caste system, which is fading, farmers traditionally rank highly, as do fishermen. (Laundry workers, by contrast, are in a low caste.) The colonists developed Sri Lanka's main agricultural exports (coconut, tea and rubber), but there is a tremendous internal trade in food. Nearly seven million pounds of produce is traded every day at the open-air market known, rather officiously, as the Dambulla Dedicated Economic Center. Dambulla is near the island's geographic center, and the market, which opened in 1999, attracts farmers from all over to stock and man its 144 stalls. They arrive early in the evening on trucks weighed down with snake gourds; manioc leaves; bitter gourd; fat carrots; leeks; curry bananas; gotu kola (a salad leaf); ginger; tiny, bitter eggplants and cucumbers the color of mangoes. Hundreds of traders and farmers in sarongs and flip-flops tote vegetables in gunny sacks flung over their shoulders. A bearded old man walks through pushing a bicycle with a box on the back and bag of ice cream cones, tooting a silver horn. At a stall near the entrance, a young boy fries vadai next to a woman selling betel leaves, areca nuts, tobacco and lime: the components of the unmistakable red chew that stains the mouths of so many Sri Lankans. (It's bitter and mouth-numbing though Sri Lankans insist it cleans your teeth.) Shalitha Presad Warnasuriya, the market's manager, said his staff had been trying to get farmers to use plastic crates instead of gunny sacks to cut down on waste. In India, he said, 4.5 rupees, or about 4 cents, are spent to produce two pounds of onions. Here it is closer to 16 rupees, or 15 cents, because so much produce rots on the way to the market. The concept of refrigerating produce to increase its shelf life is still an alien notion. "People won't buy vegetables that were stored in the fridge," he said. One happy result of old fashioned distribution methods is that you know the food hasn't traveled far. Simple, traditional Sri Lankan cooking can be had at most roadside "hotels" or "bath kaddes" (rice boutiques). On the drive from Kandy to Jaffna, we stopped at Matara Anuradisi Hotel & Bakery, an open-air general store selling Munchee Biscuits and Bingo Cream Wafers as well as nail polish and soap. We took a table in back and ordered the one thing on the menu: "lunch." Our waiter scuffed back to the cement kitchen and returned with four plates and a bowl of hot water. He poured the hot water on the top plate, then poured it onto the plate beneath, and so on. Our dishes were now "sterilized." He then opened the wire mesh doors on a wood cabinet and dished out our food, which had been sitting in the 90-degree heat for hours. Rather than think about it, we tucked into the fiery fish curry, yellow dal made with coconut milk and flecked with onions, cucumber curry and a fragrant local salad called gova mallung, which is made with finely shredded cabbage, onion, turmeric and freshly grated coconut. A mound of rice was placed on the table along with a few scraps of newspaper that were to serve as napkins. Lunch for four cost 75 cents. SRI LANKANS eat both samba rice, a fat round grain that is cooked soft, and red rice. Sometimes they eat curry on a large slab of white sandwich loaf. But it is unclear why these haven't been put out of business by the hopper, a sublime crepe made with rice flour and coconut milk, and fermented with toddy, a milk-white spirit made from kithul palm sap. The ubiquitous hopper shops are identified by glass cases out front for hopper pans, which resemble miniature woks. Around 5 p.m. the hopper makers gear up for the evening. A ladleful of batter is poured into the pans, swirled around the edges and cooked until crisp and dimpled on the surface. Savory hoppers are eaten with curries and, as with all curries, they are served with sambols, a class of uncooked condiments whose chili levels range from excruciatingly hot to inferno. Katta sambol is made by grinding onions (which look more like American shallots) with chilies and Maldives fish. (I used dried shrimp as a substitute in the recipes.) Pol sambol is the easiest to like: a mound of shredded coconut that mildly tempers a blend of chili, onion, Maldives fish and lime juice. For breakfast Sri Lankans make string hoppers, a steamed nest of vermicellilike rice noodles, and soak them with kiri hodi, a coconut broth infused with cinnamon stick, curry leaves, rampe, fenugreek, turmeric, onion and green chili: all the essential flavors of Sri Lankan cooking. Breakfast here puts you in the mood for a good long nap. Some Sri Lankans also eat savory herbal broths called kola kanda with a nugget of jaggery for breakfast. Charmaine Solomon, the author of "The Complete Asian Cookbook" (Tuttle, 2002), who grew up in a Dutch burgher family in Sri Lanka, said she had a Sinhalese friend whose family ate herbal broths in the morning. Her family, she said, "had hoppers and string hoppers, and we had bacon and eggs on Sundays." On our last day in Sri Lanka, luck was on our side. Manuja Illangasariya, our young driver (having a local driver is a necessity on Sri Lanka's demolition-derby-style roadways; write your will before you go), invited us to his parents' home for pittu, the Sri Lankan equivalent of couscous - a steamed roll made with rice flour and freshly grated coconut - and curry. Mr. Illangasariya's parents live in Panadura, an upper-middle-class suburb of Colombo, the capital. We were welcomed into a new two-story home with white tile floors. In the kitchen was a single countertop holding two portable gas burners. There was a sink in the corner and a small refrigerator, but no shelves or drawers. Outside was a coconut scraper attached to a table, a screwpine tree and curry leaf bush, and a well. Mr. Illangasariya's mother, Geetha, was finishing up a fish curry. In a clay pot, she had simmered tuna in a turmeric-scented water and was combining the fish with garlic, ginger, goraka, large slices of tomato and onion, halved chilies and coconut milk. Kiri, the family's cat, paced the kitchen complaining. Mrs. Illangasariya then began filling the pittu maker. Pittu pots are built like stove-top espresso makers: they have a base for water and a tall cylindrical top, into which the pittu mixture - rice flour, grated coconut, salt and a dash of water - is tamped. The cylinder is then attached to the base and steamed for about 10 minutes. Mrs. Illangasariya pushed the pittu log out of the cylinder onto a plate and, using a fiber from a coconut husk, sliced it into hockey-puck-size pieces. "If you use a knife, the pittu breaks," she said. "No knife." WE sat down at a table set with brown glass plates turned upside down. "So the flies don't land on them," Mr. Illangasariya said as I turned mine over. The pittu pucks were set on our plates, and we used our fingers to break them up into pebbly bits. Following Mr. Illangasariya's lead, I ladled a spoonful of warm coconut milk on top. "It's first coconut milk," Mrs. Illangasariya said. On top of our moistened pittu went the fish curry and katta sambol. The food felt good to the touch: warm, oily, hot, the chilies stinging your fingertips. Mrs. Illangasariya and her husband, Sunil, circled the table as we ate, inspecting our plates, insisting we have more; they had prepared mounds of food. Hosts in Sri Lanka, they told me, do not sit down with their dinner guests, and people rarely speak while eating. (This is not always true of wealthier Sri Lankans, who have servants.) We had brought the Illangasariyas a bottle of toddy, the palm spirit, which they received with some amusement. They poured us each a glass. When we gestured for them to join us, they politely refused. We tipped back our glasses and discovered why. Toddy tastes like sour swill. Not everything from nature here is splendid. Better to stick to King coconut juice, or Three Coins Beer, a good local lager, whose earnestly written label reads "When consumed in moderation, Three Coins is an ideal thirst quencher, a mild relaxant or an excellent lubricant for social intercourse." Of course, in Sri Lanka, it's hard to consume anything in moderation. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/dining/13SRIL.html?ex=1098983023&ei=1&en=870d2d7537bd4d42
Links to Sri Lankan Recipes Uma, here are some links to sites with Sri Lankan recipes and information. I hope they are helpful to you! Sri Lankan Recipies Sri lanka Recipes - Malini's Kitchen Recipes - Sri Lankan Recipes (Sri Lanka) Sri lankan Recipes at Food Down Under Recipe Database Sri Lankan Cooking Sri Lankan Curry Powder - miLagaai thooL. « V I R U N D H U Enjoy!
Thosai I hope this formats nicely here: THOSAI </PRE> </PRE> Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method</PRE> -------- ------------ --------------------------------</PRE> 250 g Black gram</PRE> 1/4 ts Fenugreek</PRE> 2 5 g onion</PRE> 1 Fresh chilli</PRE> 100 g Rice flour</PRE> 250 g Parboiled rice</PRE> 1 t Salt</PRE> -pinch turmeric</PRE> 50 ml Oil</PRE> -sprig curry leaves</PRE> 1 t Cumin</PRE> </PRE> Soak the black gram and tenugreek in water until soft.</PRE> Chop the onion and chilli. Drain the gram and</PRE> fenugreek and liquidise with the rice flour, rice and</PRE> sufficient water to make a batter. Add the salt and</PRE> turmeric. Heat 25 ml oil and fry onion, chilli, curry</PRE> leaves and cumin, then add to the batter. Reheat the</PRE> pan, add a little oil and pour in batter to make a</PRE> thin pancake. When little holes appear on the thosai</PRE> turn it over and cook on the other side for a minute</PRE> or two. Repeat process until all the batter is used</PRE> up. From "A taste of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Sri Lanka</st1lace></st1:country-region>" by Indra Jayasekera,</PRE> ISBN #962 224 010 0</PRE>
Sri Lankan Curry Powder (<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Sri Lanka</st1lace></st1:country-region>) Curry Powder 75 g/2 1/2 oz/1 cup coriander seeds 60 g/2 oz/1/2 cup cumin seeds 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds 1 cinnamon stick 1 teaspoon whole cloves 1 teaspoon cardamom seeds 2 tablespoons dried curry leaves 2 teaspoons chilli powder (optional) 2 tablespoons ground rice (optional) In a dry pan over low heat, roast separately the coriander, cumin, fennel and fenugreek, stirring constantly until each one becomes fairly dark brown. Do not let them burn. Put into a blender container together with cinnamon stick broken in pieces, cloves, cardamom and curry leaves. Blend on high speed until finely powdered. Combine with chilli powder and ground rice if used. Store in an airtight jar.