Varieties of curry with rice and roti bread will form a big part of your diet when you tour Sri Lanka, keeping in mind the tradition here is to eat with your hand – right only! Other dishes that will seduce your taste buds include coconut milk rice, paratha flatbread, deep-friend lentil fritters and seafood broth. Dress your meals with any number of spicy chillies, relishes and pickles, then cool off with drinks like mango lassi and local beers such as Lion Lager.
National Dish:
Rice and Curry
(with ingredients such as coconut milk, sliced onion, green chilli, aromatic spices like cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and saffron, aromatic leaves, fenugreek, cardamom, cumin, fennel seed, coriander, garlic, ginger, and turmeric, curry leaves, pandan leaves)
Kottu / Kotthu Roti (chopped coconut Roti bread with vegetables/meat)
Curry
Parippu Dhal (lentil) curry
Sour Fish Curry
Ela Batu Thai eggplant curry
Polos green jackfruit curry
Crab curry
-Eaten from a banana leaf or with right hand!
Mains:
Roti flatbread – with shredded coconut
Hoppers (appa make from pancakes batter, coconut milk and toddy)
Stringhoppers (indi appa steamed circlets of rice flour, thinner than noodles)
Paratha flatbread
Pappadum (lentil crisp)
Kiribath coconut milk rice
Vadai deep-fried lentil fritters
Specialities:
Kool (seafood broth)
Gotukola Sambol / Pennywort green vegetable salad
Maldive Fish
Snacks:
Deep fried jackfruit seeds
Cassava chips
Buffalo Curd
Pittu cakes, Samosas, Lamprais (rice boiled in meat stock)
Chillies/Sauces/Pickles:
Hot Sambal (crushed chillies)
Cobra chillies
Pol Salmbol – shredded coconut relish
Brinjal eggplant pickle
Seeni Sambal (onion relish)
Sour lime pickle
Fruit:
Durian, dried goraka, wood apples
Sweets:
Kevum oil cake, Jaggery, Kokis biscuits, Watallapan flan
Drink:
Thambili – the juice from King Coconut
Mango lassi
Falooda
Woodapple juice
Beer:
Lion Lager, Lion Stout, The Three Coins
Spirits:
Arrack
Palm Wine or Toddy
Courtney Gahan is a serial expat, traveller and freelance writer who has bartered with Moroccan marketeers, seen the sun rise at Angkor Wat and elbowed her way through crowds on NYE in NYC
