In the land of curry

I know this is sacrilege to say, but I'm bored of curries now. Can you believe it?! Sri Lanka has the most incredible curries but, it seems, that's all they have, and the monotony is getting to me somewhat, so I thought I'd get it off my chest and tell you about the food here.

The first thing you have to know is that Sri Lankans believe that you can't properly enjoy the flavours and textures of food unless you eat with your fingers. The good news is that everyone washes their hands before they eat although the bad news is it's pretty cursory and the scanciness of the soap leaves a lot to be desired. They then sit down and, if it's lunchtime, unwrap their lunch packet which is wrapped in newspaper, inside which is a hotch potch of rice and various curries wrapped in cling film. People eat off the cling film even if a plate is provided - why wash up a good plate when you don't have to, after all? The wife or mother in the family will have got up at 5am and cooked 3 or 4 curries and the rice and created the lunch packets for her brood before sweeping the house and heading to work herself. By lunchtime, therefore, the meal is luke warm which, given you're eating with your hands, makes sense, I suppose. I do miss piping hot meals, though.

Eating with your hands is tricky. Like in many cultures you're not supposed to eat with your left hand. People do, though, and as long as you don't serve someone else with your left hand, you won't be looked down on. The trick is to sort of squidge some rice and curry together and, with your thumb bent in your palm, flick it into your mouth. It's considered bad to get food beyond your first knuckle and this + the thumb flick is an art that I'm only just mastering.

The curries are scrummy though. Sri Lankans know how to use spices and so the flavours and fragrance of the food is stunning. They do like their meals, spicy, though so be warned if you're palate isn't used to that. I, fortunately, seem to be surviving fine with the spiciness but some of my fellow VSO-ers are struggling with it.

For Breakfast, Sri Lankans, or particularly Sinhalese, will have String hoppers and curry. String hoppers are like vermicelli noodles and are served cold in little bird nest like swirls. I have to say they're not my favourite, especially not for breakfast. They shouldn't be confused with Hoppers which are delicious. They are a small bowl-shaped pancakes made from a batter containing coconut milk and palm toddy that is cooked in a small wok-like pan. Curries are then poured into the Hopper and eaten - stunning and zero calories (not!).

Lunch and Dinner are then the ubiquitous rice and curry. Given the plethora of vegetables here, there are some incredible vegetarian curries - aubergine, carrot, cauliflower, bread fruit and beans create a veritable feast of colour and taste. Fish and chicken are also wildly used although I tend to avoid them having seen the street sellers stalls covered in flies on a daily basis. Curries are normally served with a sambol on the side. This is designed to give that little extra kick to the food. One of the most common (and most eye watering) is coconut sambol which is chilli powder, chopped onion, salt, grated coconut, and "Maldive fish" (salty intensely flavoured shreds of sun-dried tuna).

The alternative for curry at lunchtime are whats called "short eats" which are plates of wadei (spicy donut of deep-fried lentils), rottys (dough pancake filled with veg or egg), fish cutlets (spicy fish balls), and other deep fried delicacies. You're served a plate with a mixture of these and then pay for what you eat. The only watch out is that what you don't eat is served to the next table and the next and Sri Lankans don't have any qualms about touching food and then eating it.

One of the most dramatic dishes is kottu roti. I'm still not sure exactly what goes in it bar lots of vegetables and whatever meat you want. The spectacle is when the chef gets his two massive cleavers and starts chopping up the ingredients as if he was the drummer in a marching band. The noise is part performance part advertising as it is normally done in a glass booth at the front of the joint and seems very effective at luring the punters in.

The beauty of Sri Lanka is, given the different cultures - Tamil and Sinhalese (and to a lesser extent Muslim) there are two distinct cuisines. Unfortunately there are no Tamil restaurants in Galle but I have been to one great one in Colombo. The Tamils eat something called Dosai which are like giant pancakes which you tuck into with curry. Their curries are much the same as what we'd imagine of when we think of Indian curries and, as they say, a change is as good as a break, so I'm looking forward to my next Colombo trip to have some more.

The fruits here are incredible. I have never seen so many different types of bananas. I still haven't worked out which is which so sometimes I end up with the plantains by mistake and other times hit the jackpot by getting the sweetest tastiest bananas you've ever had. The streets are lined with stalls selling pineapples, guavas, jackfruit, papaya, and things I'd never seen before like wood apple (which won't be missed either - they taste as their name suggests!). It's the season for mangoes at the moment which are so cheap and so delicious it's difficult to stop eating them. Interestingly the only fruit that isn't nice here are apples. They began to be imported when the Brits colonised Sri Lanka and are very expensive and not tasty at all.

All of this is, of course, washed down with tea. In the land of tea, though, you'd expect to have the best stuff ever. Unfortunately the best is exported and Sri Lankans are left with the dregs. It doesn't matter too much, though, as they drink it in roughly a 50:50 mix of milk and tea and also with heaps of sugar. The other tipple is arrack, the local hooch. Arrack is made from toddy which is tapped from the flower of the coconut. When fermented and refined it produces arrack (33% proof) which is either drunk neat or with coke or lemonade. I've found it goes well with the local Elephant Ginger Beer here. Last night we had this month's board meeting and the board at the end (11pm!) adjourned to my landlord's house (just downstairs from me) for dinner and drinks. They quickly polished off 4 or 5 bottles of arrack and some got extremely pissed. I was allowed to mingle with the guys (but stuck to beer) but my landlady stayed firmly in the kitchen. It's not done for women to be around men when they're drinking in Sri Lanka.

As you can imagine given the sugariness of their tea, Sri Lankans have a very sweet tooth. There are always stalls at the market selling the most lurid coloured sugary sweets and something that is very similar to Scottish tablet. Cakes are also big here. We went to the funeral of one of my colleague's Grandmother recently (more of that in a future blog), and we took presents of two bags of sugar and a cake - what more do you need for the afterlife, after all?!

Well, all this talk of food is making me hungry, so I'd better go and sort some lunch out. If you're interested in trying to cook some Sri Lankan curries, there is a good website called infolanka.com that has some great recipes. I'd recommend the Cauliflower and cashew nut curry!