Where to experience the best authentic Sri Lankan cuisine

Aug 10, 2023

Share this article

A Dambulla fruit and vegetable market worker in Sri Lanka. Photo / Intrepid Travel; Mark Daffey

If you want to get to the real cultural heart of a country, immerse yourself in a local cooking class, writes Anna King Shahab

When it comes to understanding the cuisine of the country, you can eat in as many restaurants, roadside stalls, lunch canteens or markets as you like, but helping to cook and then eating dinner in a family home in a country you’re a visitor in, offers a real insider perspective. Cooking dinner with a local Sinhalese family in Sri Lanka’s second-largest city Kandy was a highlight of a recent Intrepid group tour I joined.

Set around a beautiful lake in Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands, Kandy was the ancient capital; it’s home to sacred Buddhist sites and surrounded by tea-growing country. After driving a fair distance throughout the day, a quick refresh in the hotel pool (the gilt-filled, befitting-of-its-name Grand Kandyan sits majestically on top of one of the city’s hills – the view with your swim is amazing) and a local arak and lime cocktail had me refreshed and ready to learn. Our group of eight along with our brilliant local tour guide Dodan arrived at the home of Kolitha, Deepthi and their teenage daughters Chamodi and Dilumi. The family welcomed us with tea and sweets served on the balcony. The tea was BOPF – that’s Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings, a high-quality Ceylon tea with a small leaf size resulting in a strong brew. The treats were homemade thala guli, a Ceylon-style bliss ball made with date, sesame seeds, and jaggery – one of us enquired about the latter ingredient and Dodan pointed to a crop of the tall variety of palm tree from which jaggery – a type of palm sugar popularly used in Sri Lankan cuisine – is extracted (this question was a among endless ones we threw at Dodan over our time touring with him, and even the curlier ones he would answer confidently, filling our knowledge boots to overflowing on a daily basis).

Progressing to the outdoor kitchen adjoining the petite but impeccably organised indoor one, I was reminded of the great tradition in homes I’ve visited throughout Asia of separating types of cooking according to technique (rather risky to get a huge flame under a wok, or light a wood fire indoors), and also to the potential of an aroma to linger. Kolitha instructed our group in cooking a classic chicken curry: grinding and combining spices, coconut milk and lime juice to marinate chicken pieces (we worried for a minute that Dan, our tour buddy and nominated marinade-massager, was going to infuse DEET flavour into the curry but happily this didn’t occur). The curry then cooked away in its clay pot over a periodically stoked wood fire as we moved into the indoor kitchen to continue our hands-on cooking demo.

Under Deepthi’s patient tutelage we made string hoppers – little steamed noodle nests that accompany curries and sambols as a staple. The dough made with rice flour and water is pushed through a press gently moved in a circular fashion over discs, to shape the nests. The noodle-filled discs are stacked into a steamer and the hoppers steamed in batches. Kolitha got us grating fresh coconut using the benchtop apparatus that must surely be one of the most well-used in any Sri Lankan household – fresh coconut is king and the grating of its flesh is quite a satisfying task. With the freshly grated coconut, we made two more dishes: pittu and pol sambol. Pittu is another staple used to soak up hearty curries and sauces and is made by piling a mixture of coconut, coconut milk and a little salt into a cylindrical steamer – the resulting steamed log is sliced into discs to serve. Sri Lankan cuisine boasts various sambols – condiments used to jazz up any meal – and pol sambol is the most ubiquitous (I recommend adding it to anything and everything at any opportunity while you’re in its homeland). Into a bowl went fresh grated coconut, plenty of freshly squeezed lime juice, red chilli powder, finely chopped pink shallots and tomatoes. The aroma released by mixing the sambol components had me salivating for the dinner to come. And finally, Deepthi showed us how she makes her ala kiri hodi – a mildly spiced coconut milk curry embracing chunks of tender potato.

Chamodi, who was about to graduate high school and was hoping to be accepted into nursing training, beckoned us over to the table she had set. We all sat down together to enjoy the food we’d – well, I feel helped is too positive a word here – had a hand in preparing, as well as some extra treats such as dahl, seeni sambol (akin to a caramelised onion relish) and crisp papadum.

The cooking class in a Sinhalese home in Kandy is one of the many highlights on Intrepid’s 12-day Sri Lanka Real Food Adventure.

GETTING THERE

Fly from Auckland to Colombo, Sri Lanka with Qantas, with one stopover in Sydney. Alternatively, fly with Malaysia Airlines and stop in Kuala Lumpur.

DETAILS

intrepidtravel.com/nz/sri-lanka

Share this article