We really enjoyed the meals we ate during our short visit to Sri Lanka just before the pandemic broke out. Besides the iconic Ministry of Crab we also went to some places that focused on traditional foods, and I got this cookbook as a way to explore some of the spice blends and see the patterns of ingredients for Sri Lankan dishes.
The book is written by a restaurant owner in Australia with a Sri Lankan background, and they are clear on what they consider “traditional” and what things are their own sort of spin on a dish.
A couple of small gripes – the ingredients are given in grams/ounces, so it makes it a little hard to go shop for 165 g of white onion. How much does a white onion weigh? Or the say to roll some dough into a size that is about half of a rock melon. Now I have to go research rock melons and their average sizes.
There are also quite a few special ingredients (“just go to your local Sri Lankan market”) and some special tools you need (especially for the hoppers). While these steps might be practical in Australia it is different here in Japan. Stuff like this just adds extra work to make the recipes.
But there are a lot of delicious looking recipes here and I’m looking forward to making some of the curries, the kottu roti, and maybe if I can figure out a way to do the egg hoppers I’ll try them out too.
Let the coconut milk flow!
