Sri Lanka

Sheryll and I got a taste of Sri Lankan food and just kept going! First we tried Baja Sub, a little Mexican sandwich shop turned Sri Lankan grocery store and restaurant in Northridge. To eat immediately, I bought what was called rice in banana leaf, which was a full meal with beautifully spiced rice, pineapple on one side, peppers on the other, potatoes on top, and chicken and a lemon on the bottom. I also bought the fish empanada, a fish stick, and a bread roll with fish inside - all very spicy and very good. Sheryll had lentil patties, roti with vegetables and coconut, and what they called fudge, which was made with coconut milk. I like it better than fudge. Here is the story behind the restaurant: https://la.eater.com/2020/7/8/21316584/sri-lankan-food-baja-subs-northridge-los-angeles-restaurant

While we were shopping in the grocery store, one of the customers kindly told us about the various options. He led us well, and you can read about some of the things we bought in my blogs for Madagascar and the Maldives. For our Sri Lankan meal, I bought red rice (apparently they have more than 2000 kinds of rice in Sri Lanka), moong beans, Maldive fish sambol, Malay pickle, and coconut sambol. Sheryll took home a lot of frozen foods, spices, and bottles. We made a feast with all of them, and everything was delicious. I particularly recommend the coconut sambol. Here is the dal recipe: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016106-buttery-moong-dal-with-garlic-and-cumin. I also made a Sri Lankan cake, and it was really good! https://savoryspin.com/sri-lankan-love-cake/

Six months later, Sheryll and I were in Santa Cruz and we found the restaurant Malabar. The meal we had there was wonderful. Sri Lankan food is all about the detail, so here it is:

· Peanut boda: mixed vegetables, peanuts, and garam masala dumplings coated in masala and chickpea batter served with tamarind chutney and mint chutney

· Fresh mango salad with red bell pepper, red onion, Kifia lime leaves, and cashews (this was my favorite)

· Devvil Lanka: cardamon, cinnamon, clove, Anaheim peppers, cucumber, pineapple, curry leaves, carrots, tomato, red onion in a sweet sour spicy tomato sauce

· Eggplant dosa: crepe with dhal, coconut sambol, mint chutney, and mango chutney

· And for dessert, watalappan: a cardamom spiced coconut custard sweetened with palm honey, served with pineapple sauce and topped with cashews and cherries.

That was not the end of my Sri Lankan food journey. I paid admission to the Alameda Point Antiques Faire on the first Sunday of the month just to eat Sri Lankan food at the Ayubowan food truck. I had the Jungle Kottu Roti, a kind of hash made with leftover roti as well as eggs, cabbage, ginger, garlic, carrots, leeks, and curry leaves. I ordered mine with the tuna steak and it was so good! It was perfectly offset with the pickled carrots and onions. If I go again, I might also try the coconut roti or the rice and curry platter. Because Ayubowan is a food truck, you might be lucky enough to find them someplace besides the Alameda Antiques Faire: https://www.facebook.com/Ayubowan.California/

I have more Sri Lankan restaurants on my list to try, Rice N' Spice in Anaheim, Kurrypinch in Tarzana, Apey Kade in Tarzana, and Pearl Island in Lake Balboa, but I’ll finish the food section with an episode of No Reservations then move on to books: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6txxpd

Well, my reading blurs the line between the food section and the literature section. I read Sri Lanka: The Cookbook by Prakash Sivanathan and Niranjala Ellawala. There were several copies at both the Los Angeles County Library and the San Bernardino County Library, but I read it online through Hoopla. Now I know what to do with all my leftover tamarind!

I also read Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala. It’s a story about grief after the tsunami and the love for Sri Lanka that endures. For more about Sri Lankan literature with links to several works, see here: https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2013-06/an-introduction-to-sri-lankan-literature/

The Sri Lankan films I enjoyed include diverse views of jungle, village, and city:

· Monkey Kingdom on DisneyPlus, has beautiful photography and a well put together story

· My Mother's Village by Aaron Burton on Kanopy is a generational story where the filmmaker took films made by his anthropologist mother and showed them many years later in the same village.

· A Common Man is a thriller with one of my favorite actors, Ben Kingsley. It is found here: https://tubitv.com/movies/659802/a-common-man

· I haven’t had the chance to watch Funny Boy on Netflix yet, but it is well rated and a recent film on a serious subject.

I spent so much time eating that I didn’t have time to look up all the musicians I found, but I had to include at least one song, one dance, and the amazing and important drums:

· Singer Victor Rathnayake surrounded by additional talented musicians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu9MlMfX4qk

· Traditional dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqNmhNTnmY4

· Drums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0lgKQ8355g

Suitcase Monkey shows their trip to Sri Lanka here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAVUmnsKdeo and a list of great places to visit is found here: https://www.planetware.com/sri-lanka/best-places-to-visit-in-sri-lanka-sri-1-2.htm. Yes, I would love to go! I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in Sri Lanka and throughout the world.

Photo Credit: Hendrik Cornelissen https://unsplash.com/photos/jpTT_SAU034