The intriguing uniqueness that is the taste of Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan fare is often mistaken for yet another Indian regional cuisine. Yet to the culinary explorer, Sri Lankan Food is as intriguing and unique as the many other customs of this island paradise. In spite of its tiny size, Sri Lanka boasts an amazing variety of food and styles of cooking. The island has a rich heritage of indigenous dishes and its regional cooking is strongly individual and varied. For example, Kandyan Sinhalese cooking, with its emphasis on hill country vegetables and fruits; coastal cooking, making the best of the abundant seafood with which the land is blessed; Tamil cooking, closely linked to that of southern India, which is especially prevalent in Jaffna, in the north.

In Sri Lanka, as in any other country, the most typical food is cooked in the villages - getting precise recipes is almost impossible. They don't cook by a cookbook. A pinch of this, a handful of that, a good swirl of salty water; taste, consider, adjust seasoning. That's the way Sinhalese women cook, and no two women cook exactly alike. Even using the same ingredients, the interpretation of a recipe is completely individual. Ask a cook how much of a certain ingredient she uses and she'll say, 'This much', showing you with her hand. Spoon measures would be looked upon as an affectation. You watch, make notes and try to achieve the same results by trial and error. And when you arrive at the correct formula, write it down for posterity.

In addition to regional characteristics, some of the most popular dishes reflect influences from other lands. After a hundred years or so it does not matter that this or that style of cooking was introduced by foreigners who came and stayed, either as traders or conquerors - Indian, Arabs, Malays, Moors, Portuguese, Dutch and British. The dishes they contributed have been adapted to local ingredients, but retain their original character. They are not presented as Sinhalese dishes but accepted and enjoyed as part of the richly varied cuisine.

The influence of the Muslims and Malays is responsible for the use of certain flavourings such as saffron and rose water and the spicy korma, pilau and biriani which are Sri Lankan only by adoption. When the Portuguese ruled Sri Lanka for 150 years in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they left behind words which have worked into the language and customs which are very much a part of rural and urban life. Many recipes end with an instruction to 'temper' the dish. This comes from the Portuguese word, temperado, which means to fry and season. The Portuguese also contributed a number of sweetmeats which are popular to this day. These are served at celebrations (Sri Lankan are enthusiastic about celebrating every happy occasion) and people take enormous pride in old family recipes, which they guard with jealous care.

Then came the Dutch, and though their rule ended after a mere 138 years, their descendants stayed on in this prosperous land. They too brought with them recipes laden with butter and eggs in true Dutch tradition, but in the spice-rich land of their adoption they took on new flavour with the addition of cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and mace. The traditional Ceylon Christmas cake is a fine example of this, a fruit cake which stands above all others for flavour and richness.

Watch this page for the best of Sri Lanka’s finest flavours, a new delicacy featured every month.