Читать книгу Food of Sri Lanka - Wendy Hutton - Страница 8

Part One: Food in Sri Lanka

Cinnamon, cloves; and other spices are the island’s culinary gemstones

Douglas Bullis

Sri Lanka, the fabled island of sapphires, rubies, and other precious stones, is home to one of the least known Asian cuisines. Rarely found in restaurants outside the island itself, Sri Lankan fare is often mistaken for yet another Indian regional cuisine. To the culinary explorer, however, Sri Lankan food is as intriguing and unique as the many other customs of this island paradise.

Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is located off India's southeast coast. The rugged terrain of the central highlands—characterized by high mountains and plateaus, steep river gorges, and swathes of tea plantations—dominates much of the island. This falls away to sandy lowlands, rice paddies, and long stretches of palm-fringed beaches.

The ancestors of today's Sinhalese peoples arrived some 2,500 years ago from Northern India. They named themselves after a mythic ancestor who was born of a sinha (lion) and a princess. After conquering the local Yakshas, a succession of kingdoms—Sinhalese in the center and south, and Tamil in the Jaffna Peninsula—rose and fell over the centuries. The first Portuguese ships chanced upon Sri Lanka in the early sixteenth century and set about trading in cinnamon and other spices. There followed four hundred years of Western presence in the form of Portuguese, Dutch, and finally the British before Sri Lanka regained her independence in 1948.

Such diverse influences may be tasted in dishes of Arab biryani (yellow rice with meat and nuts), Malay nasi kuning (turmeric rice), Portuguese love cakes, and Dutch breuders (dough cakes) and lampries (savory rice and meat packets).

Sri Lankan cuisine, which is based upon rice with vegetable, fish, or meat curries, and a variety of side dishes and condiments, reflects the geographical and ethnic differences of the land. Seafood dishes, such as seer fish stew, ambulthiyal (sour claypot fish), crab curry, and Jaffna kool (Tamil seafood soup), are common to coastal and, increasingly, inland areas. The eating of large animals, such as cows and deer, is less popular due to the predominantly Buddhist and Hindu population; chicken and freshwater fish are usually preferred instead.

Sri Lanka is also blessed with an abundant harvest of fruits and vegetables. Jackffuit, breadfruit, okra, gourds, plantains, and drumsticks are but some of the vegetables, tubers, and leaves that feature in one or other Sri Lankan dish.

It is a cuisine expressed in spices—cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, coriander, mace, pepper, cardamom, red chiles, mustard seeds, cumin, fenugreek, and turmeric are all used to flavor curries, while some add flavor to desserts and cakes. The spices of Sri Lanka, which helped to shape the history of the island, are truly its culinary gemstones.

Up to fifty fishers start at dawn and take four to six hours to bring in a purse net with its rich harvest of reef fish.

Gustatory Geography

The fruits of land and sea are in equal abundance on this paradise isle

Douglas Bullis

Sri Lanka's dry and wet seasons are reversed from one side of the island to the other by two monsoons. From May to August, the southwest monsoon, Yala, brings heavy rain to the southern, western, and central highland regions, leaving the other side dry. From October to January, the gentler northeast monsoon, Maha, brings rain to the north of the island. The coastal regions are hot and humid year round, while the hill country feels like perpetual spring.

When Sri Lanka's first settlers arrived from India in about 500 BC, the coastal lowlands they found were no paradise. Undaunted, they set to work making them one. They had brought with them the techniques of turning a stream into a small pond, and of digging sluices with gates to let water into small fields on demand. What happened over the next ten centuries is one of the greatest irrigation feats in world history: Sri Lanka's system of reservoir “tanks" feeding a latticework of watercourses produced a rice surplus so large that it financed the island's architectural and sculptural splendors.

The simple brown rice of those early times became the twenty-odd varieties grown today. The two monsoons translate to two harvests a year over much of the island. Low-country rice is mostly plain white rice that cooks easily and has no strong taste to distract from the curries. Somewhat upscale is a red rice that bursts as it cooks, yielding a fluffy white interior with reddish flecks on the surface—this is the festive suduru samba served when entertaining guests. The highest grade of rice is long-grained basmati, often used when aromatic dishes are desired. In between, many lesser varieties are grown, usually in small quantities for local use.

However, paddy agriculture is far from the only kind of farming. Slash-and-burn, or chena farming, is the bane of the back country, as it produces only two or three harvests of millet and root vegetables before depleting the soils and forcing the farmer to move on. But for many poor people, it is the only choice.

In a category all of its own is the island's enormous production of tea. The nuances of Sri Lankan tea are as complex and sophisticated as the nuances of fine wine. Small family plantations can be found even a few miles inland from the coast, but the higher the plantation the better the tea. The premium Dambula and other highland teas grow on tidily pruned plantations that undulate over the landscape as gracefully as slow-flowing water. The teas are processed in multi-story factories painted white or silver that stand out amid the landscape like ghosts on a green sea.

A tapper collects sap from a kitul palm tree to he made into jaggery, the kitul palm sugar that sweetens so many Sri Lankan dishes.

And of course one can't overlook the island's spice gardens. The gaily proclaimed ones along the highways to Kandy are for tourists. The serious spice plantations growing for export are found in moist valleys or hilly areas. Be they for tourist or export, the goods are the same: over here spindly, weedy bushes whose flower yields a darkish nubbin that dries into clove; over there bushy nutmeg trees with bright tan fruit.

The delicate seed pods of the cardamom grow symbiotically under clove plants. Gangly peppercorns cluster under the long leaves of their plant, looking rather like grape bunches that took their diet too seriously. Visitors to these professional spiceries are treated to a fabulous bouquet of odors as they learn all about how spices are grown and prepared for consumers the world over.

A final glance at the country's agriculture focuses on the men who walk ropeways high in the sky doing the dangerous job of harvesting drippings from the flowers of the kitul palm. Treading gingerly along a single rope and guyline fifty feet or more above the ground, they tie shut the tips of the kitul's flowers with cord so they cannot open. The sap, which ordinarily would go into swelling the flower and then filling its fruit, instead oozes into clay pots tied to the flower's stem. Every few days these are visited by the tappers, who empty the juice into a pot slung around their waists.

The resulting treacle has a unique flavor which matches superbly with Sri Lanka's high-butterfat but bland curd or buffalo-milk yoghurt. When the treacle is hardened by boiling and then cooled, it becomes jaggery, the most popular sweetener on the island and an essential ingredient in most Sri Lankan desserts and sweetmeats.

A close cousin of this process does the same with coconut flowers. The frothy white sap ferments into toddy or ra, a foamy white alcohol that can be drunk as is, or distilled into arrack. Ra is such a staple that it even lent its name to a town on the Colombo-Kandy railway line, Ragama—literally “Toddy Town."

The sea's bounty includes several kinds of tuna, plus grouper, whitefish, kingfish, barracuda, trevally, squid, octopus, and a host of lesser species. One of the most popular fish in Sri Lanka is the seer or Spanish mackerel which is cooked in many styles.

Most fishing is done from old-fashioned oruwa dugout outrigger canoes lashed together with coconut-fiber twine. The old handmade katta maran (literally “big logs,” and the origin of the word "catamaran”) dugouts come in various hues of salt-toughened wood. Their crews divide between "netters” and "chummers," the latter a term for hook-and-line fishers that was borrowed from the British.

The fish left over after those for household use are sold to itinerant hawkers who have mounted wide wooden boxes on the back of bicycles. They wobble their way into the countryside, fish tails sticking out either side of the box, calling out "Lu! Lu!” (short for malu, the Sinhalese word for fish).

A drive along the coastal highway passes one ramshackle wooden roadside stall after the other with gorgeous rows of tuna lined up like cordwood. They also sell squid, seer, kingfish, slabs of shark big enough to cover a dinner plate, and tiny silver sprats that are dried and munched like popcorn.

Other stalls display freshly caught skipjacks drying in the sun. Although the chewy locally-dried tuna is often referred to as "Maldive fish,” the authentic Maldive fish used in restaurants is tougher than dried leather.

The most idiosyncratic of Sri Lanka's fishermen are the island's famous stilt fishers. These men wedge sturdy poles into rock crevices in the shallows, to which they attach a tiny sling-net that passes for a seat. While the catch is modest, some of the brilliantly colored coral-dwellers they bring in, such as the striped mullet, are among the tastiest on the island.

Another fishing style is net casting. Fishermen patrol tidal pools and rocky ledges in the late afternoon in search of the parrotfish or trevallly hungry enough to let down its guard as night approaches. Netters have hurling styles so unique that locals can identify someone at a distance by the way he throws his net.

Mangoes, coconuts, pumpkin, and bananas are just some of the fruits and vegetables available from roadside stalls such as this.

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

One Land, Many Peoples

Sri Lanka’s multiethnic population ensures culinary variety

Wendy Hutton

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 multiethnic 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 vegetarian (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 shrimp 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 colorful fish markets.

Another Sinhalese specialty from the coast is ambulthiyal, or sour claypot fish. At its best in the Southern town of Ambalangoda, ambulthiyal is a dish of balaya (bonito) which uses goraka (gamboge) as both a flavoring 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 favorite, although dwindling forests and restrictions on hunting in protected areas have diminished the amount of game now being cooked in upcountry kitchens.

A street vendor prepares kaum (left) and kokis (right), two traditional deep-fried snacks or sweetmeats as they are known in Sri Lanka.

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 chile, and usually a limited number of spices. There are also the distinctively Sinhalese "black” curries which develop a wonderfully rich aroma and flavor, thanks to the technique of roasting whole spices (primarily coriander, cumin, and fennel) to a rich brown color before grinding them. "Brown” curries are made from unroasted spices, while "white” curries, which contain plenty of coconut milk and very little chile, 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 flavors, 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 shrimp to salted lime—heightened by the flavors of chile, onion, salt, and Maldive fish.

One of the most popular sambol, pol sambol, is made with freshly grated coconut; a simple meal of rice, lentils, pol 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, chile, 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 chile 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 laborers 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 chiles 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 savories made with black gram flour; and many types of vegetable pachadi, where cooked vegetables are tossed with curd or yoghurt, and freshly grated coconut. Thosai, 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.

A market trader removes the skin from a jackfruit.

A Galle Market trader displays his kiri peni, or curd and honey, a popular Sri Lankan snack The "honey" that one sees in the roadside stalls and on restaurant menus is really treacle from the kitul palm. Curd is traditionally made from buffalo milk.

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 colonized 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 chile 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 multiethnic 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.

Fruit vendors pile their stalls high with whichever fruits are in season.

British colonials celebrate the end of World War II with a victory dinner in Colombo.

Colonial Tastes

Portuguese, Dutch, and British influences and the creation of a Burgher culture

Wendy Hutton

The wave of Western expansionism which began at the end of the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese first rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the west coast of India, was to have a significant impact on Sri Lanka. Over the next four centuries, colonialism affected not only the agriculture, social structure, and religions of the country, but also the cuisine.

In fact, it was cuisine that attracted the Portuguese in the first place, or to be more precise, spices. With refrigeration and modem methods of food preservation, it is difficult today to imagine how vital and valuable spices were several centuries ago. They were used to help preserve food and also to mask the flavors of food that might not necessarily be in prime condition. Many spices have medicinal properties and some were believed to ward off the plagues that frequently swept through Europe.

The trade in spices—particularly pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom—was then controlled by Arab merchants, who obtained the spices in various parts of Asia and then sold them to Venetian merchants at exorbitant prices. The search for the source of these valuable spices prompted the Portuguese to set out on their voyages of exploration. Not only did they intend to cut out the Arab middlemen, they were also filled with missionary zeal, intent on obtaining Christian converts.

By the early 1600s, the Portuguese had gained control of the southwest coast of Sri Lanka (which they called Zeilan), and had converted some of the Sinhalese royalty to Catholicism. The island was an important source of revenue, thanks to its spices (particularly cinnamon), and was also an ideal place for Portuguese vessels to take on supplies in their voyages between their colonies of Goa and Malacca.

The Portuguese introduced a number of plants they had discovered in the Americas, the most important being chile, as well as com, tomatoes, and guavas. It is hard to imagine Sri Lankan cuisine without chile, but prior to the introduction of this taste-tingling plant, all Asians had to rely on pepper for heat. The Portuguese impact on the cuisine of Sri Lanka has lasted until today, but almost exclusively in the area of rich cakes: bolo de coco (a coconut cake), foguete (deep-fried pastry tubes with a sweet filling) and bolo folhadao (a layered cake) are all a legacy of the Portuguese.

By the end of the seventeenth century, the people of Sri Lanka were desperate to oust the Portuguese; they promised the Dutch the monopoly of the rich spice trade if they could get rid of these foreigners who "never took pains to find out what the local laws and customs were.”

However, it proved to be a matter of exchanging one colonial master for another, as the Dutch pushed the Portuguese out and then extended their control over most of the island, except for Kandy, which remained an independent Sinhalese kingdom.

The Dutch—who controlled most of the islands in the Dutch East Indies, and who had followed the Portuguese as rulers of Malacca—brought in a number of Malays to Sri Lanka (there was even a Malay regiment). They also introduced several fruits indigenous to the Malay peninsula, including rambutan, mangosteen, and durian, as well as Malay names for certain dishes, including spicy condiments (sambol) and pickles (achchar).

Laborers at a spice plantation peel cinnamon bark on the verandah of the factory in 1900.

Like the Portuguese, the Dutch left a number of cakes to become part of the culinary legacy of Sri Lanka, and particularly of the Burgher community, including breudher, a rich cake made with yeast.

Dutch meatballs, or frikadel, appear as part of a cross-cultural dish served on special occasions in many Sri Lankan homes. Lampries (a corruption of the Dutch lomprijst) combines these meatballs with a typically Sinhalese curry made with four types of meat and a tangy sambol, all wrapped up in a piece of banana leaf and steamed.

Another Dutch recipe, smore, or sliced braised beef, has evolved over the years into a version that would not be recognized in Holland, with the meat simmered in spiced coconut milk accented with tamarind juice.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the British, with their superior naval force, had started to push the Dutch out of the island they called Ceylon. However, it took almost another two decades until they managed to topple the independent kingdom of Kandy, and to exert control over the entire island.

The British had by far the greatest impact of any of the colonial rulers. They abolished most of the discriminatory regulations and monopolies established by the Dutch, and brought about a significant change in the island's economy. By the mid-1800s, coffee—planted in the hill country in the interior— had replaced cinnamon as the island's most valuable crop. However, a blight virtually wiped out the coffee plantations in the late 1870s.

Tea seedlings had been imported from China in 1824 and from Assam in 1839, and the first tea estates were established by 1867—just in time to take over in importance after the failure of the coffee crop. The import of large numbers of southern Indian Tamils to work on the coffee and tea estates was another move to have a significant impact on the shape of the country.

Inevitably, as there had been intermarriage between the Portuguese and Dutch and local woman, so too was there intermarriage with the British. However, one observer remarked, in the late 1870s, that the "English, Scotch or German mechanical engineer, road officer or locomotive foreman generally marries the native burgher female with whom he associates; the civil servant, merchant, planter and army officer only keeps her.''

The children of these marriages became known, during the Dutch period, as Burghers or "town dwellers.'' This term was also used for people of Portuguese descent, and later, for those who had British blood. Christian converts were able to escape the social distinctions of the traditional caste system, and the Burghers became a privileged minority. Their fluency in Dutch, and, later, in English, ensured they found work in various government departments and even as lawyers.

Burghers, other wealthy locals, and Europeans enjoy an evening at the Orient Club in the early twentieth century.

The British influence on Burgher food seems to be limited to the way meals are served. In many Burgher homes, lunch is the universal "curry and rice.'' However, the evening meal is often served British style, in what is called a "course” dinner. This usually begins with a soup and might be followed by a spiced meat stew, potatoes or bread and vegetables. Many of these dishes are based on Dutch or British recipes, but with sufficient spices and seasonings added to please the palates of those accustomed to more flavorful Sinhalese food.

(Clockwise from top left) cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, coriander, mace, pepper, cardamom, dried red chiles, mustard seeds, cumin, fenugreek, fennel, and turmeric.

Spice and Other Things Nice

How cinnamon changed the course of history for Sri Lanka

Wendy Hutton

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.

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 flavor 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.

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 color with a stronger flavor.

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 flavor savory dishes such as curries; some also add their fragrance and flavor to desserts and cakes. Spices such as cinnamon therefore command a very important position in Sri Lankan culture, not only as culinary flavorings but also by virtue of their having played such a major role in the country's history.

Banking on Tea

Or how the word “Ceylon” was immortalized

Douglas Bullis

Aserendipitous twist turned a disastrous blight of coffee rust, which swept through the island's coffee estates in the 1870s, into a tea bonanza: the pretty but unassuming little bush became Sri Lanka's chief export and immortalized the word "Ceylon.” A few tea plants brought from China took very well to the cool, crisp highland climate of the Looloocondrie Estate near Kandy. The island's planters were much relieved to find that tea plants love the same climate that coffee does, and that tea has just as enthusiastic a following all around the world.

Converting a green leaf into a tasty brown beverage is a quite a story in inorganic chemistry. Yet it is an everyday event in the slab-sided white or aluminum-painted tea factories that dot the flowing hills. These are slatted with louvers to hasten the drying process. Within them the three steps of withering, grinding, and fermenting convert the fresh leaves to a moist, black mass, which is then heated in a stove to reduce to two percent all the moisture originally contained in the leaf.

Once broken into flakes, tea is graded into names based on the size of the flake. These names have the kind of arcane character often emanating from professionals when talking to each other. In the case of tea, the size categories are pekoe, orange pekoe, broken orange pekoe, broken orange pekoe fannings, and dust—the latter a low quality, inexpensive tea that finds its way into many of the world's teabags.