A much deeper insight into the cuisine of Sri-Lanka:
Warning:
I want to preface this blog by saying I have never eaten Sri Lankan food at a restaurant, or had anyone else make it for me. This is always a difficult one when looking at a new cuisine, as there is no reference point. For example, a few weeks ago I ate out at a Persian restaurant and had a Joojeh Torsh. This was described on the menu as skewered chargrilled chicken in a pomegranate and walnut sauce. To me, this is a flavour profile that’s incredibly hard to imagine. It turns out Joojeh Torsh is completely delicious, and I wanted to try and recreate something at home. To do so, it’s a matter of looking up the ingredients that make up a pomegranate Persian marinade and cooking it. I knew it was this simple because I’d eaten it; I knew a flavour to aim for, and thus it wasn’t too difficult to recreate something close.
My point, and how this relates to the following on Sri Lankan food, is that I haven’t done this. I don’t have a point of reference. I only have the knowledge from what I’ve learnt online about Sri Lankan cuisine, plus my own twist of what I think makes a dish good. Therefore, creating a dish without having a flavour profile in your head may create something that is far off what a traditional version looks like. However, I can assure you that despite it potentially not being traditional, it’s delicious and at least inspired by the cooking and ingredients of Sri Lanka.
The ideas behind Sri Lankan cuisine:
To me, the thing that makes Sri Lankan cuisine so interesting is its interplay with bitterness. The best example to speak about is almost definitely the use of Karavila (commonly known as Bitter Gourd outside of Sri Lanka) within their curries and sambols. If you’ve never heard of Bitter Gourd, here’s a Google summary:
Often considered the most bitter among all fruits and vegetables. Its rough, green skin and flesh have a strong, sharp, and medicinal taste, particularly when raw.
The reason I am highlighting this point is because it, to me, sums up the whole idea of Sri Lankan cuisine. You are dealing with something that is so bitter; the rest of your ingredients in the dish are there to balance out the bitterness. This is the entire spine of Sri Lankan cooking and needs to be considered whenever making anything inspired by their cuisine. You NEED bitterness and you NEED balance. This idea was in my head when creating a recipe for a recent Sri Lankan curry I made. I have made a few Sri Lankan inspired curries in the past (as spoken about in my last blog), but now, with this in mind, I think it allows me to develop a much more interesting and thought-out flavour profile.
Recipe:
I want to approach this recipe by looking at ingredients as either two things: bitter or balance. We’ve established Sri Lankan cuisine is based on these two principles, so therefore each ingredient involved must be one or the other. As many curries do, it needed to start with some form of curry powder/spice blend. Now you might be picturing some sort of Indian curry powder. However, this as the backbone of a Sri Lankan dish is never going to work. Indian curry powders are far too warm and rounded. However, they would make a great balance ingredient.
Coriander seeds, fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds, cloves, cumin seeds, Kashmiri chilli powder, fennel seeds, black peppercorns, Indian curry powder, dried curry leaves, and cardamom pods.
Looking at these, the majority of them are very bitter. The coriander, cumin, and Indian curry powder are all non-bitter elements. However, the rest have that bitter sharpness that is perfect for a Sri Lankan flavour profile.
Much like when making any sort of curry powder, it is common to toast your spices to bloom their fragrance before grinding them. The same applies here but with its own uniqueness. If you’ve ever read a more traditional curry powder recipe before, for example an Indian-inspired curry powder, it always warns you not to let your spices get too dark, otherwise they’ll become bitter. This is perfect for Sri Lankan cuisine; bitterness is the spine of its flavour profile. Therefore, a huge step in preparing this spice blend is to really toast them for longer than you think.
The curry started with some cubed, deboned chicken thighs, which were marinated in Greek yogurt, ginger, garlic, Scotch bonnet chilli, lime, bird’s eye chilli, and our spice blend. I had made sure to keep the bones and to marinate these too. After about four and a half hours of marinating, the cubes were placed onto kebab skewers whilst I lit up a charcoal grill. I figured cooking the curry’s meat over charcoal would add a huge amount of depth to the curry and is just another flavour blending into its already complex profile.
I started the curry sauce itself with onions, curry leaves, garlic, ginger, and bird’s eye chillies getting cooked down initially. These are the aromatics. My last blog post explains the role of aromatics in detail; I would recommend reading it. I added in the marinated bones to let the marrow cook out, and then be removed before serving. The remainder of the homemade spice blend was added into the fragrant oil. Finally, coconut milk was added and set to reduce.
A pot of plain white rice was then put on to boil and would be served as our main vessel for this dish.
Let’s stop for a moment and think about what sort of flavour we can expect at this point. We have made a bitter and spicy aromatic curry base, but the coconut we added will perfectly round this out. Everything before this step had a role of bitterness; the coconut milk acts as our much-needed balance. Furthermore, with the grilled chicken, we can expect a flavour profile of spice, smoke, and bitterness. The perfect way to counteract this is with a salad.
When making a good salad, I really think it’s important to consider the ingredients of the main dish. A good salad in this case would need to counteract bitterness and provide sweetness to help cut through the spice. The salad consisted of:
Avocado, cucumber, artichoke hearts, raw chilli, and pineapple.
This might sound like a weird combination, but each ingredient has its own purpose. The avocado provides a creaminess and moistness; this is necessary when having plain white rice, you don’t want dry bites. Cucumber adds crunch and is the backbone of a good salad. Artichoke hearts are delicious. Raw chilli obviously adds more spice, but a different kind. A raw spice is different to a cooked-out spice. It’s sharper, more intense, and adds another layer of depth. Finally, the pineapple is the perfect addition. Its sweetness cuts through the spice and bitterness and really rounds off the entire dish. Using fruit in a salad is an incredible way to elevate any dish with spice and creates a much more interesting profile. The salad was dressed in lime and artichoke oil.
Final result:
Despite all this, the execution doesn’t always go as planned. In this case, I forgot to watch the curry sauce and it reduced too much. Whilst my original intention was to serve the curry sauce in a bowl to pour over the rice, it ended up thickening too much, and thus I decided to use it as a coating for the grilled chicken. The skewers came off the grill and were tossed in the coconut sauce. I figured I could justify this, as the salad would provide moisture to the dish. It was served with a side of mango chutney, which again provided a much needed sweetness.
Overall, it was spicy, fruity, smoky, bitter, and sweet all at once. It was completely delicious.