Sri Lankan Christmas Food - Down memory lane

Christmas to me meant my auntie Violet’s secret recipe Christmas cake, made at least a couple of months in advance, well matured, iced in marzipan and cut into little pieces and wrapped in squares of waxed paper and then again in red and green cellophane paper with the two ends twisted like a toffee. Christmas cake was served with milk wine and ginger beer for us kids. My Dutch Burgher neighbours sent us a plate of food with Christmas cake, a few pieces of love cake, a couple of slices of Breudher with slices of Dutch cheese until most of the Burghers of Sri Lanka migrated to Australia after Sinhala was made the official language of the country.

Sri Lankan Christmas cake which obviously is closely related to the English Christmas cake brought to Ceylon when its colonisers arrived has over the years changed to accommodate a Sri Lankan flavour by the inclusion of ingredients such as roasted semolina, oodles of cashew nuts, honey, ginger, melon and chow chow preserves, rose water and almond essence and a few spices such as cloves, cardamoms and cinnamon, roasted and ground together and brandy from Father’s liquor cabinet. The English would not recognise it now but it is definitely an improvement on the stodgy English cakes. The fruit is cut into fine pieces and marinated for days or even weeks, cashews roasted and chopped finely and semolina roasted and cooled, at least 25 eggs separated, yolks added to the creamed butter and sugar and half of the egg whites whisked till still, the other half reserved to make kisses – little meringue rosettes delicately flavoured with almond or rose essence. The prepared cakes were usually sent to the bakery to bake after the bread was done as most houses did not boast of ovens then. The baked cakes were wrapped up in brown paper, then layers of newspaper and stored in boxes with precautions taken to keep the ever present ants from attacking them. A week before Christmas, the sheets of cake are iced with home-made marzipan using ground cashews, almond essence, icing sugar, egg whites, brandy and lemon juice and cut into small squares and wrapped.

I am not posting a recipe for Christmas cake as there are many around. I use my Auntie Violet’s usually as it has become my signature recipe for the family but have also made Charmaine Solomons’ a pioneer of Sri Lankan cooking, Mrs Dickman’s from her cookbook written by her daughter Shanti Cassie Chetty which is a really good cookbook and even more recently Peter Kuruwita’s which is a really nice cake which I made last year. I have come across Christmas cakes that use dates which I never add to mine and very fancy cakes with whole exotic fruits which look like stained glass when cut. I am a traditionalist so I make my usual cake around October (our labour weekend) and store it; ice it and wrap it in different ways. One year, I cut them into postcard sizes and hand painted a Christmas card and gave them to my family and friends. Last year, I made these Santa sledges using candy canes and chocolate Santas. 

 

 This year, I will make a stained glass Christmas cake and not my usual recipe for a change.

Another Christmas delicacy I remember from my childhood is the Breudher, a rich fruity bread that is made by taking bread dough and beating butter and eggs into it and kneading sultanas and baking in a Bundt pan after letting the dough rise well. Breudher is eaten usually for breakfast, buttered and with slices of cheese. I have started baking a Breudher as a gift to my Dutch son in law whose mum always has a similar bread for her Christmas brunch. Again you can find the recipe online and in most cookbooks.

Milk wine is the staple drink that is served with Christmas cake to visitors. It is made by using Sri Lanka’s signature alcohol Arrack, copious amounts of sugar, condensed milk, spices etc. and after infusion is strained several times and the horrible taste of Arrack miraculously transforms into a sweet and clear tasty wine that is served in tiny glasses.

Many people make Love Cake instead of Christmas cake and it is one of those Sri Lankan dishes from heaven made with roasted semolina, enough real butter that would sit on your thighs for a lifetime, sugar, honey, lime rind, heaps of cashew nuts and eggs as well as spices. It melts in the mouth and is a moist and tasty delicacy that is delicious. There is a Dutch delicacy that is sold in Dutch bakeries and delicatessens of Australia and New Zealand which we call Dutch fingers which is a poor relation of our Love Cake but it could be the origin of this slice of decadence.

There are other memories of Christmas delights made by different people from my childhood and youth. One auntie of mine used to make these melt in the mouth crescent shaped cookie out of ground cashews and icing sugar flavoured with lemon rind which were baked and dusted with icing sugar. Another friend of my mother’s made gingerbread trees and stars; many made kisses or meringues using the left over egg whites from the Christmas cake. My mother always made marshmallows with three layers – a pink layer flavoured with rose essence, a white layer in the middle flavoured with vanilla and a green layer of almond essence. I make this with the white layer flavoured with coconut essence now. I will post the recipe later when I post my New Year recipes if anyone is keen to have it.

In Sri Lanka turkey was not a Christmas staple as it was so expensive and not many could afford it. Instead, stuffed chicken, duck, pork or mutton were part of the Christmas table. Savoury rice dishes such as fried rice, ghee rice or lumprice, the heavenly banana-leaf wrapped spicy rice with a mixed spicy meat curry, an onion sambal, a pounded prawn sambal, two frikadels or meat cutlets (spicy minced meat balls, battered, crumbed and deep fried) and a fried ash plantain (a type of banana) squares and brinjal (aubergine) dish, baked and which gives out a mouth-watering aroma when the packets are opened are common. Several meat dishes, prawns and other seafood, several vegetable dishes and several sides like cutlets would be common on the Christmas table.

I always make a stuffed chicken or turkey with a fruity stuffing I learnt at a class by Sunita Godamunne whose cookery classes I attended as a teenager. The stuffing is made using sautéed onions, green chillies,  chopped bacon, breadcrumbs, pineapple cubes and juice, chopped cashewnuts and spices. The chicken or turkey is then covered with pineapple cubes covered in bacon on toothpicks and baked. Once baked each toothpick is topped with a cherry tomato and decorated with parsley and surrounded by stuffing balls and roast vegetables. This is another dish I have scrapped now in warmer weather in favour of more lighter sea food or cured salmon.

Christmas pudding complete with brandy butter and custard were also made. I came across an interesting pudding recipe by Shanti Cassie Chetty which I have made once with really good results. However, I don’t make Christmas pudding anymore now as I live in a country where Christmas happens to be in the middle of a hot summer so we tend to make either a berry trifle or a fruit and cream filled meringue (the famous Kiwi Pavolva) for Christmas dessert.

Another lovely custom we had was that everyone who celebrated Christmas would send round a plate or a tray of food to share with their neighbours especially those of other faiths who did not celebrate Christmas. The same custom was repeated by Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus at Sinhala and Tamil New year season in April and Muslims at Ramazan. This was the Sri Lanka before the civil war when all ethnic groups lived in harmony and in peace.

 

Have a Merry and Safe Christmas everyone!

Cook book review - Hidden Kitchens of Sri Lanka by Bree Hutchins

Book review – Hidden Kitchens of Sri Lanka – Bree Hutchins

When I came across a Sri Lankan cook book written by a non Sri Lankan, I was first a little sceptical about it. What would a young, Australian woman know about Sri Lankan cooking was my first cynical thought. She was not even a chef but a lawyer turned food writer.

However, Bree Hutchins’ efforts in unearthing some gems of little known food and her meticulous attention to reproducing some interesting dishes from all over the island of Sri Lanka are commendable and she has produced a book that does Sri Lankan cooking proud. I found her cookbook to contain more authentic Sri Lankan food than many a cook book published by Sri Lankan celebrity chefs and I want to congratulate Bree on her producing such a wonderful addition to the world of Sri Lankan cooking.

Bree has travelled the country courtesy of the Dilmah tea company who sponsored her travels and has peeped into kitchens in many unusual places, a food cart selling street food, a Tamil war widow’s kitchen in the North, a humble tea estate workers kitchen in the hill country, Sinhala and Tamil New Year food prepared in village kitchens by Sinhala and Tamil families, a Muslim woman’s kitchen creating a full feast, a soldier cooking in the army barracks and an entrepreneur making food for sale as well as kitchens that make street food. Her recipes are all tested and she provides a lovely and warm narrative about each dish and the beautiful photographs taken by Bree herself add so much to the value of the book.

Bree has included some unusual recipes such as the prawn vadai sold by a young Muslim man Rahuft on the Galle Face Green. Photograph of these Vadais with three prawns with heads placed parallel on top of the vadais reminds me of the Isso Vadai (prawn vadai or lentil cakes) sold on the trains from Badulla to Colombo I used to take often. She has a recipe for Mothagam which is an unusual Tamil sweet which I have not come across since I tasted it at a friend’s house in Jaffna in the early 80s. I have often wondered how it was made and finally came across the recipe which I will try out very soon.

All recipes in Bree’s book are well written with comprehensive and easy to follow instructions and hints on taking short-cuts and with guidelines on where to get ingredients which are very helpful to people who are new to cooking Sri Lankan. She has included a comprehensive glossary and a list of alternate names of ingredients that would help cooks from both sides of the Atlantic.

Hidden Kitchens include recipes for Muslim delicacies such as biriyani with Korma curry and different garnishes, fried whole chicken, a mungbean-green pea-carrot and cashew curry and a rich vatalappam dessert and a Faluda, a sickeningly sweet gaudy pink drink which is so good to taste. Bree covers food prepared in Dansal - free food stalls that feed passers-by during the Vesak Festival (Celebrations for Lord Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death which falls in May) such as the humble manioc served with a fiery lunu miris (a sambal made out of chillies, salt and Maldive fish), ginger and coriander tea and kola kenda, a green leaf based herbal porridge which is  a healthy and staple breakfast food. She covers Tamil and Sinhala festive food cooked in the kitchens of a Tamil household and that of a young Sinhalese couple in Hatton in the hill country. I was impressed by Bree's attempts at making Konda Kevun or oil cakes which is not something many Sinhalese cooks of this day can achieve.

Not many glossy cook books would include humble fare that is cooked on the humble hearth of a tea estate worker. Mary, a tea plucker from a row of cottages in an upcountry  estate shares her recipes for an egg curry, spinach with dhal and fried cabbage which is delicious. An inmate who works in a prison whose work involves cooking for other inmates makes coconut flatbread (pol roti) eaten with a skipjack tuna curry. A man from a remote village who makes fiery chilli bites and squares of milk toffees using fresh milk have shared their recipes which look very tempting. A typical upcountry village woman reveals her secrets in making curry powder from scratch, a fried potato dish, a Polos Ambula (slow cooked spicy young jack fruit), Okra  curry and Brinjal Moju ( fried and pickled aubergines/brinjals) which are typical Sinhalese dishes that would grace any almsgiving in that area.

As a fan of Tamil food ever since I lived in the hill country and worked in Jaffna, I appreciate the instructions to make some delicious seafood from the North and East Coast such as dubbi nandu (balmain bugs), a tamarind based fish soup Puli aanam, Odiyal kool a beautiful seafood soup which is the signature dish of Jaffna that uses palmyrah flour as a thickener, the fluffy and soft Idlis which are steamed dough cakes accompanied by Rasam and mint Chutney are all there along with a brightly coloured Rasavalli pudding made from a purple yam called Rasavalli. I have never eaten this dish so I made it using frozen purple yam from Thailand which turned out very nice and none of my Sri Lankan friends who tasted it had seen it before. I also tried out Bamini’s thosai (dosas or fluffy pancakes made from fermented batter that consists of black gram, rice and plain flour) from scratch which was different and much better than my usual Thosai recipe using readymade oorid dhal flour. The addition of a Thosai Podi, a spice mix that is sprinkled on Thosai was new to me but was a novel extra.

If Bree stops being a food writer, she can always find work as a photographer as her photos speak volumes. The book is  tribute to all the cooks from the hidden kitchens and the author has done a wonderful job not taking the credit away from the creators of those dishes.

 The author is humble enough to apologise for any errors that she may have made due to her not speaking Sinhala or Tamil and may have made culturally or with historical facts. Even the most eagle-eyed critic would not find many errors as Bree has taken meticulous care in getting her facts right and her book is an endearingly beautifully written and illustrated volume which every Sri Lankan food lover should be proud to own and use often.

As a person passionate about promoting Sri Lankan food to the world, I want to sincerely thank Bree Hutchins and congratulate her on her contribution to the Lankan food scene.

Hidden Kitchens of Sri Lanka is published by Murdoch Books and sponsored by Dilmah and costs approximately A$ 50.

 

Welcome to Asoka's Sri Lankan Kitchen

Ayubowan! Vanakkam! That is hello to you in Sinhala and Tamil, the two languages of Sri Lanka.

I was born in Sri Lanka although I have lived out of that beautiful island for more than half of my life leaving the country as a teenager.  However, I've always had a keen interest in cooking the food of my motherland even when I lived in countries where there were no Sri Lankan food items available for sale.
Currently I live in Auckland, New Zealand which has now become a really diverse city where we can lay our hands on most ingredients to cook Sri Lankan. It wasn't like this when I moved to NZ two decades ago when we had to go to the city to the one Indian shop where I would buy coriander, cumin and fennel seeds to make my own curry powder.

I know how hard it can be to produce our food when you live overseas. When I was a student in a foreign university, there were no spices that could cook our food unless our parents sent them in food parcels and we guarded those spices stingily until our next overseas trip to London where we could stock up on spices, Maldive fish and even dried curry leaves.

When I am creating recipes, I keep in mind people who may not have the luxury of obtaining a lot of the ingredients to create the tastes of Sri Lanka. Therefore, I will use substitutes and sometimes make stuff from scratch and provide hints to the amateur cook or the non Sri Lankan who would like to try their hands cooking Sri Lankan.

There are hundreds of cooking sites, many cook books and recipes online and I didn't want to start yet another blog on Lankan cooking.  The other day, I was gifted a Sri Lankan cookbook which I grabbed gleefully. However, on turning the pages, I found butter chicken, Tandoori chicken and korma within the first chapter and was saddened that Indian staples are passed off as Sri Lankan. On another occasion, a friend and I saw a sign advertising Sri Lankan lumprice at a food fair and were horrified when the man lined a foam container with a strip of banana leaf and served some yellow rice, a brinjal curry, a boiled egg and a chicken drumstick and a cutlet with seeni sambal from his rice and curry stall and passed it out to non suspecting expats as lumprice. My setting up this blog was to dispel such incorrect portrayal of food as authentic Sri Lankan.

I am not a trained chef but I have cooked since I was a teenager growing up in the suburbs of Colombo, learning from my mother and my aunts who were wonderful cooks. I also learnt cooking from some great ladies who conducted cookery classes such as Mrs Soma Gunawardena, Mrs Dickman and Mrs Mallika Joseph.  They taught me how to cook elegant dinner party food and make cakes.

Later, I conducted my own cooking classes  to my work colleagues and also taught Wilton cake decorating at my cousin Wasantha De Silva's famous cookery classes held in Gampola. After leaving the shores of Sri Lanka, I underwent some cordon bleu training in the UK and took cake decorating classes in Canada. Most of my knowledge comes from self learning and experimenting. I wrote a cookery column "Food Around the World" for Lanka Woman, the then only English language weekly for women in Sri Lanka. I had a page on the Ammas.com website (click on link) since 2000 which was very popular and I was on the Council of Ammas for cooking, lifestyle and marriage. I have blogged about crafts, gardening and healthy food before.

The purpose of this blog is to contribute my experience as a hobby cook, a food writer for a few decades and an enthusiastic foodie who wants people outside of Sri Lanka to cook authentic Sri Lankan food that their mothers, grandmothers and family members cooked. I was inspired by the generations of my daughter and grand daughter who may one day want to cook the foods of their childhood.  I also want non Sri Lankans all over the world like my Dutch son in law, my Aussie nephew  and my Kiwi soul mates Angela and Kiran who enjoy Lankan food to experiment with the wonderful tastes of Lankan cooking.

I hope you will join in my journey in experimenting with authentic Sri Lankan cooking.