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One Land, Many Cuisines

Sri Lanka’s multi-ethnic population ensures culinary variety

Sri Lanka boasts a vast array of tropical fruits, vegetables and spices, as well as an abundance of fish and other seafood in its lakes, rivers and seas, and wild game in its forests. The way Sri Lankans put this bounty together in the kitchen depends to some extent on where they live, and even more upon their ethnic and religious background.

The multi-ethnic mix of people living on this small island comprises Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors (Muslims), Burghers and Eurasians, Malays and Veddhas.

The majority of the population are Sinhalese, believed to be descended from Indo-Aryans who arrived from northern India more than 2,000 years ago and intermarried with scattered groups of tribal Veddhas. Over the centuries, the cooking of the Sinhalese has evolved into two slightly different styles: coastal

or “low country” Sinhalese, and Kandy or “upcountry” Sinhalese.

Regardless of where they live, the staple food for Sinhalese (and indeed, for all Sri Lankans) is rice. This is usually accompanied by a range of spiced vegetables, fish, poultry, meat or game dishes. Most Sinhalese are Buddhist and although the taking of life is against Buddhist teachings, most Sinhalese don’t mind eating food which has been killed by others. Strict Buddhists, however, are vegetarians (something they share with a number of Hindu Tamils).

In coastal Sinhalese cuisine, fish and other seafood feature far more widely than poultry or meat, and coconut milk is the preferred base for curries. Towns such as Bentota, Chilaw and Batticaloa are noted for excellent seafood but most famous of all is Negombo. The crab and prawn dishes from this west coast town are well-known throughout Sri Lanka. Negombo is also the site of one of the island’s busiest and most colourful fish markets.

Another Sinhalese specialty from the coast is Tamarind Claypot Fish or ambulthiyal. At its best in the Southern town of Ambalangoda, ambulthiyal is a dish of balaya (bonito) which uses tamarind as both a flavouring and a preservative—even in Sri Lanka’s heat and humidity, this dish can keep for up to a week.

An ingredient known as Maldive fish is widely used as

a seasoning throughout Sri Lanka, but especially in coastal regions. It is made from a type of bonito (also known as skipjack) which is boiled, smoked and sun-dried until it is rock hard.

Kandy, the heart of upcountry Sri Lanka, remained an independent Sinhalese kingdom until the British finally took over in 1815, thus it largely escaped the social and culinary influences of the Portuguese and Dutch. Thanks to the higher altitude and cooler climate, a wide range of vegetables and fruits flourish around Kandy and other upcountry regions, which are renowned for their range of delicious vegetable dishes.

Many Kandian curries are made with unusual ingredients such as young jackfruit, jackfruit seeds, cashews, breadfruit and green papaya, while various edible flowers such as turmeric, hibiscus and sesbania may end up in an omelette or curry. Game, including deer and wild birds, was also an upcountry favourite, although dwindling forests and restrictions on hunting in protected areas have diminished the amount of game now being cooked in upcountry kitchens.

Sinhalese refer to their main meal as “rice and curry,” and normally serve several types of spiced or “curried” dishes of vegetables, fish, meat or poultry. Curries are classified by their spicing and method of cooking rather than by their main ingredient. Thus, there are “red” curries which contain an often incendiary amount of chilli and usually a limited number of spices. There are also the distinctively Sinhalese “black” curries which develop a wonderfully rich aroma and flavour, thanks to the technique of roasting whole spices (primarily coriander, cumin and fennel) to a rich brown colour before grinding them. “Brown” curries are made from unroasted spices, while “white” curries, which contain plenty of coconut milk and very little chilli, are generally quite mild.

When choosing which curries to serve with the rice, Sinhalese cooks ensure that there is a variety of textures as well as flavours, with at least one fairly liquid, or soupy, curry to help moisten the rice, and usually a relatively dry curry with a thick gravy. One of the curries will most likely be a spiced lentil dish, and there is sure to be at least one pungent side dish or condiment known as a sambol (from the Malay sambal). These sambol, also know as “rice pullers,” are guaranteed to whet the appetite with their basic ingredient—anything from onion to bitter gourd, dried prawns to salted lime—heightened by the flavours of chilli, onion, salt and Maldive fish.

Stilt fishermen wedge wooden poles into rock crevices to use as a perch while fishing.

One of the most popular sambol, Fresh Coconut Sambol (pol sambol), is made with freshly grated coconut; a simple meal of rice, lentils, Fresh Coconut Sambol and mallung is inexpensive, nutritious, and utterly satisfying. Mallung, which provides an unmistakable Sinhalese accent to every meal, is a vitamin- and mineral-packed mixture of leafy greens, freshly grated coconut, lime juice, chilli and powdered Maldive fish. Many of the greens used in a mallung are plucked from the kitchen garden, including young passionfruit leaves, gotu kala (Asian pennywort), young chilli leaves, young leaves from the drumstick tree and the leaves of the flowering cassia tree.

The first Tamils are believed to have arrived at about the same time as the Indo-Ayrans, around 2,000 years ago. Successive waves of Tamils from southern India established themselves in Sri Lanka, mostly in the north, on the Jaffna peninsula. In the mid to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tamil labourers were brought in by the British to work on the tea estates in the cooler hilly areas of Sri Lanka. These later arrivals are generally referred to as Indian Tamils, to distinguish them from the long-established Jaffna Tamils.

The majority of Sri Lanka’s Tamils are Hindu, therefore they do not eat beef. Indeed, most Jaffna Tamils are strict vegetarians. Vegetables are grown in the gardens of countless families in Jaffna, irrigated by deep wells; anyone who has tasted fresh home-grown vegetables cooked Tamil style is indeed fortunate.

The Tamil dishes found in Sri Lanka are similar to those of southeast India, where the vegetarian cuisine is among the world’s finest. As with Sinhalese food, the basis of Tamil food is influenced by the teachings of the Ayurveda, ancient texts on the “wisdom of life and longevity.” Seasonings such as curry leaves, brown mustard seed and dried chillies are widely used, while freshly grated coconut, coconut milk and yoghurt appear in many vegetable dishes.

Popular Tamil dishes found in Sri Lanka include rasam, a spicy sour soup that is an aid to digestion; kool, a thick seafood soup originating from Jaffna fisherfolk; vadai or deep-fried savouries made with black gram flour; and many types of vegetable pachadi, where cooked vegetables are tossed with curd or yoghurt and freshly grated coconut. Dosai, slightly sour pancakes made with black gram and rice flours, constitute another delicious Tamil contribution to the culinary scene. Some Tamil dishes, such as the steamed rice-flour rolls known as pittu, have been adopted by Sinhalese and are now regarded as Sri Lankan.

Sri Lanka’s Muslims are believed to be descended from Arab traders who settled in and around Galle, Beruwala and Puttalam from as early as the eighth century, and from Indian Muslims who migrated from southwest India.

Ingredients such as rose water, saffron (not to be confused with turmeric, which is often called “saffron” or “Indian saffron” in Sri Lanka), cashews and mint, as well as dishes like biryani rice, korma curries and faluda (a dessert of cornflour and water) all reflect Arab or Indian Muslim influence on Sri Lanka’s cuisine. Arabs are also credited with planting the first coffee trees— native to the Arabian peninsula—in Sri Lanka.

In general, Muslim food is slightly sweeter than Sinhalese and Tamil food, but it certainly isn’t lacking in spice. In fact, Arab traders are said to have been responsible for bringing spices such as cloves and nutmeg from the Moluccan islands to Sri Lanka long before the Dutch colonised what they called the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Muslim dishes in Sri Lanka never contain pork, which is forbidden by Islam, and pork is only occasionally eaten by the Christian Tamils and Sinhalese.

In more recent times, Malays, who were brought by the Dutch, have intermarried with the Muslim community and brought with them several dishes which have since become part of the Sri Lankan kitchen. Sathe is the Sri Lankan equivalent of satay or cubes of meat threaded on skewers and served with a peanut and chilli sauce. Other Malay dishes include gula melaka (sago pudding with jaggery), nasi kuning (turmeric rice), barbuth (honeycomb tripe curry), seenakku and parsong (two types of rice flour cakes).

The multi-ethnic mix of people living on this small island has resulted in a varied and fascinating cuisine that is delicious regardless of the geographic, ethnic or religious origin.

Spice and Other Things Nice

Spices, so important to the Sri Lankan kitchen, actually helped shape the history of the island. The Portuguese arrived at the beginning of the sixteenth century and it was Sri Lanka’s famous cinnamon—the delicately fragrant bark of the Cinnamomum zeylanicum tree native to the island —which became the prime source of revenue for the Europeans.

Cinnamon sticks are in fact dried curls of bark which are removed in thin slivers from the Cinnamomum zeylanicum tree. Cassia, which is often sold as cinnamon, comes from a related species and is darker brown in colour with a stronger flavour.

Sri Lanka’s cinnamon trees, which grew wild on the southern and western coasts of the island, were said to produce the finest cinnamon in the world—and sold for three times the price of cinnamon from other regions. It was said that “it healeth, it openeth and strengtheneth the mawe and digesteth the meat;

it is also used against all kinde of pyson that may hurt the hart.”

Cinnamon was still the most important source of revenue by the time the Dutch seized control of the island. They introduced penalties to protect it, making it a capital offence to damage a plant, and to sell or to export the quills or their oil. The Dutch did eventually succeed in cultivating cinnamon, but still relied largely on the wild supply. By the nineteenth century, however, the supremacy of cinnamon was challenged by the cheaper cassia bark grown elsewhere in Asia. The flavour is far less refined, and cassia bark lacks the faint sweetness of true cinnamon, but as the price was so competitive, Sri Lankan cinnamon eventually lost its dominance.

Cloves and nutmeg, indigenous to the Moluccas in eastern Indonesia, were planted in Sri Lanka by the Dutch who controlled most of the Dutch East Indies. Cardamom, indigenous to both Sri Lanka and southern India, was another valuable spice which flourished in the wetter regions of the country.

All of Sri Lanka’s spices are used to flavour savoury dishes such as curries; some also add their fragrance and flavour to desserts and cakes. Spices such as cinnamon therefore command a very important position in Sri Lankan culture, not only as culinary flavourings but also by virtue of their having played such a major role in the country’s history.

— Wendy Hutton