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Rice is the staple food of the people of Sri
Lanka and has been adopted by all the communities. When enquiring whether
one has had a meal, the literal translation of the question as asked in
the Sinhalese language is 'Have you eaten rice?' And all over the island
the midday meal is rice and curry, Sinhalese style.
For such a meal, everything is put on the
table at once - rice, fish and meat curries, soup, vegetables and
accompaniments. It is perfectly correct to have a serving of everything on
your plate at one time. Soup may be ladled over the rice or sipped from a
cup between mouthfuls, but it is not the first course. While the best way
to enjoy such a meal is to eat with the fingers as the people of the
country do, dessertspoon and fork are widely accepted now except on
special occasions such as the Sinhalese New Year, when everybody goes
traditional and eats with their fingers.
Desserts are unknown except on festive
occasions, and the meal usually ends with some of the luscious fruit so
plentiful on the island: mangoes of at least a dozen different varieties;
pawpaws so sweet they seem to have been macerated in honey; bananas in
even greater variety than mangoes; mangosteens and rambutan in
season; avocados which are served with cream and sugar, never in a salad
as they are served in the West; and the huge, ungainly jack fruit, spiky
green outside and the size of a large watermelon, which has large, golden,
fleshy seed pods of overwhelming sweetness and distinctive flavor.
Curries, which are inevitably part of every
meal, are not necessarily classified according to the main ingredients,
but according to the type of spicing, the method of cooking, or the color
which, to the initiate, conveys a whole lot more than just whether a curry
is white, red or black. White curries are based on coconut milk and are
usually mild and have a lot of liquid so they double as soups. Red curries
are based on few spices and a large amount of chili powder or ground
chilies that give the curry its vivid color and red hot flavor. In Sri
Lanka it is quite commonplace to have as many as thirty large dried red
chilies to spice a dish for 6-8 people. Unless you are accustomed to
spices on a grand scale, tread warily. Use some chili for flavor and
paprika to achieve the desired color. Discretion is by far the better part
of valor! Black curries are the most typical curries in Sri Lanka. They
get their dark color because the coriander, cumin and fennel are roasted
until a rich coffee brown. This dark-roasting brings out nuances of flavor
in a subtle and wholly pleasant way, making the cooking of this little
island strongly individual.
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