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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 flavorings 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 flavor 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 flavor and
richness.
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