This month's challenge is the island country of Sri Lanka, home to around twenty million people. The food of Sri Lanka is hot and spicy. The base food of the inhabitants of the island is rice which they consume with curry which is both vegetable and fish based. The cuisine of Sri Lanka draws influence from that of India, as well as colonists and foreign traders. As with many of the countries in the area, Sri Lankans traditionally eat with their right hands.
Our menu for the Sri Lankan evening is:
- Sri Lankan Rolls
- Home made Rootis
- Beef Curry and Rice
- Sri Lankan Love cake
This was probably one the most successful evening yet. Sri Lanka rolls are a curried vegetable (potato and carrot) filled spring roll, which is dipped in a batter and bread crumbs before frying. We ate these with some chili sauce on the side and they were crispy and very filling. They would make for great 'hand arounds' at a dinner party. Very impressive rotis were made from scratch with the addition of coconut making the roti more typical of the Sri Lankan type. The coconut definitely gave the roti an extra nice flavour. The accompaniment was a fairly traditional beef curry and rice which was very tasty and mild. Dessert was a Sri Lankan love cake. Love cake is a spicy cake which tastes a bit like a cross between a Christmas cake and a spice cake. It was sweet and very interesting as all the individual spices each added a bit of zing to the cake in different ways. We had fun trying to taste each component with every bite. Among the ingredients are lemon zest, almond essence, nutmeg and semolina. Strangely there is no oil or butter in this recipe and all the moisture comes from the addition of the stiffly beaten egg whites.
NEXT MONTH: CYPRUS
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