Cuisine
Rice and curry,
boiled rice with curried vegetable, shaped with spices is the
typical Sri Lankan food. It can be served as lunch and dinner or
sometimes as breakfast as well. Sri Lankan curries are usually hot
and spicy, but demands for softening its taste can be done to
cater tourists' palates, especially the Westerners'.
Sri Lanka endows various regional
foods of which many are influenced by the Portuguese, the Dutch,
the Malays, the Arabs, and the South Indians who have left their
culinary characteristic. Sri Lankan rice and curry usually
includes a variety of small curry dishes made of vegetable, meat,
and fish. Chicken and fish is very popular meat used in curries,
but beef and mutton are also available. In a meal, it must have an
accompaniment such as parripu (red lentil dhal), mullung
(ripped green leaves with spices, lightly stir- fried), and sambol
(a mixture of grated coconut, chilly, and spice).
Other unique specialties of Sri
Lanka include hoppers usually served for breakfast
or snack. It is a kind of flat pancake with crispy edges and soft
middle whereupon fried egg or sweetened scraped coconut is added
to make them more delicious.
When it comes to desserts, Sri
Lankan cuisine offers a wide variety of them to choose from. Kevum
or oil cake spiced flour and treacle and cashew-nut fudge. Kiribath
is a made of rice cooked in coconut milk, usually eaten
with sambol; this kind of dessert is usually served
on ceremonial occasions such as wedding. Wattalappam,
a Malay-origin-dessert, is an egg pudding. Curd and honey known as
kiri peni is also good; curd is yogurt
from buffalo milk, very tasty.
Fruits are also abounding in Sri
Lanka owing to its sub-tropical climate. Mangoes, papayas,
bananas, jackfruits, durians, rambutans, mangosteens, to
name just a few can be found everywhere in local markets according
to seasons. |
