Sri Lankan food and drink

As a change from our normal what-we're-up-to I bring to you what-we're-eating-and-drinking!

If I was to ask you what do you eat when in Sri Lanka for a month you'd assume rice and curry, right? Well that's right! Sorry folks, not a massive surprise!

I'm only being half serious there. I'll talk you through some of the every day food, snacks and of course the rice and curry.

Breakfast
Normally in the guesthouses we're staying in the option of Western or Sri Lankan is available. Western is toast (think warmed bread) and egg, jam and fresh fruit juice. It's normally pretty uninspiring however the Sri Lankan breakfast is the way to go. 'String hoppers' are like noodles made with rice flour and often they're put inside a thin pancake that looks almost like a flower in bloom. With this you can have daal, spiced onion, curry, jams and any number of options! Our favourite was a coconut milk based curry with a whole boiled egg in. A staple of any meal here is sambal which is shredded coconut, chilli and spices and normally packs quite a punch!

A lot of Sri Lankan's eat curry for breakfast and it's normally a BIG portion!

Lunch
Normally a lighter meal but curry and rice is an option. More common though is a roti or kottu - rotis are like pancakes with a filling of veg, spices and meat if you like. Coconut roti is simple and delicious, normally only about 15p each as well! Kottu is the same components as roti but all chopped up! Chefs have a large flat heat plate that they fry the ingredients on then when it's all cooked they take two flat blades (wallpaper scrapers?!) and swiftly run them through the piled food, chopping it up small.

Another lunch option is dosai, a very thin pancake in which they put practically any filling, but normally it's curried!

Dinner
The best time of day for a curry! Almost everywhere we've stayed offers to feed you the 'lumprais', the curry of the day. Mainly we've stayed in guesthouses so the lumprais is what the family are eating too, and this is the best way to try some really great food. It's never just one curry though, normally there's about 4 or 5, poppadoms or roti and rice. We've even been to a restaurant that served us about 15 different types of curry including: runner bean, aubergine (our all time favourite!), dried fish, chicken, beef, mango, pineapple and probably the biggest surprise in durian(jackfruit) curry which is the huge green fruit that absolutely STINKS and normally tastes just as bad, but when cooked in a curry it's absolutely delicious!
The cost? About 600-900rupees, so about £3.50-£5 each!

Largely we've eaten vegetarian whilst here, for two reasons. Firstly, food hygiene is ok at best (we've not had any severe upsets by this...yet!) and secondly the quality is often not great with bits of gristle and bone served up regularly.

Fried rice or fried noodles are easily available too but these are just ok, nothing special.

Snacks
On every roadside, in every bus and train station and often ON every bus and train are hawkers who sell fresh fruits like mango, papaya and pineapple. They're also the best place to buy battered roti rolls (healthy!), mini doughnuts, daal biscuits, nuts and Bombay mix. A pretty normal way to buy them is wrapped up in a piece of paper that once was a school kids homework, good recycling Sri Lanka!

More so for tourists than Sri Lankan's are ice creams, which we've probably had one a day of. It is hot, so it's fair enough we think!

Drinks
Iced coconuts are everywhere as Sri Lanka has absolutely no difficulty in growing them. They simply cut a hole in the top and stick a straw in!
Chilled water and fizzy drinks are common although we prefer the iced or hot teas, with every variety you can imagine available and rightly so given Sri Lanka's booming tea industry!
Let's not forget the national beer, Lion. It's a pretty standard lager but is very welcome after a hot and sticky day out. £2 or so is the price for a 500ml can.

Near to the coast the best meal options are the fresh seafood caught that day. From prawns and lobster to red snapper and barracuda, the choice is brilliant. And a whole fish can be yours for less than £5 with salad and rice.

Overall we've enjoyed the foods that Sri Lanka has on offer and the cost is what makes it really great as it has tempted us to try lots of new things. However, by this time we're ready for a change as it has become a bit too samey.

I'll conclude with a nugget of humour we've picked up here:
Similarly to lots of other Asian countries Sri Lanka has very strict drug smuggling laws, with the death penalty a possible punishment. If you think that's a very severe punishment consider 30 years in a Sri Lankan prison being served rice and curry 3 times a day...Read more