Revisiting our food roots

Revisiting our food roots

By Sandamalee De Fonseka
The funny thing about us Sri Lankans is that we have evolved (or is it digressed???) to a nation eating soy sauce, oyster sauce and ajino-moto (MSG). Go to almost any Chinese restaurant and this is what is been served. Take any ‘executive’ lunch packet and that is what is in the packet. Yet, we relish that serving of fried rice, chili paste, and two pieces of sauce covered fish or meat and the few slices of carrots and beans, again tossed in some thick sauce. This is our choice when we dine out and this is our choice when we entertain. 

This would have been forgivable, had we not had great food of our own. Then again, what do we really know of our own food? There is a vague assumption that our rice and curries are a subset of Indian cuisine. It is recalled that Kerala cuisine has something very close to our appa (hoppers) called appam, so all our food must be from India. Or so we think. Even for those who has no such presumption, the choice of ingredients is limited, unless of course one shops in farmers’ fairs (pola) or lives out of the city and has a supply literally from the backyard. 

Especially for those who shop at the supermarkets the choice of vegetables are mostly carrots, beans, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, beetroot, couple of varieties of brinjals such as vambatu, thithbatu and thalanabatu, tomatoes, kohila, ash plantains and so on. Produce such as lotus roots, rata and raja ala are also available, but not regularly. Even if it is available, not many know how to cook it. Ironically, the rarity and the mystery of the produce have not made it exotic, but are more often than not cast aside as the fare of the hillbilly. 

The carrots and the beans and what-not that are often put into the shopping cart, have joined the Sri Lankan culinary quite recently. These actually came with our European invaders. One thing that could be said about the Portuguese and the Dutch is that they contributed something to the local culinary scene. The downside of it is our own indigenous foods, especially the vegetables; fruits and potatoes, tubers and yams, not to mention the pulses got pushed out into oblivion. 

This point was driven home when on a recent visit to Heritance Kandalama, (popularly known as the Kandalama Hotel) one of their chefs, Chef Jayalal introduced to bojoon.com ten common varieties of potatoes that are indigenous to Sri Lanka. It is Chef Jayalal’s task and passion to unearth truly local produce that was once a regular feature of Sri Lankan cuisine, but is now almost alien to the average Sri Lankan, and reintroduce it to the Kandalama menu.

Tubers and yams such as lotus roots, manioc, kiri ala innala (a small potato with a fibrous skin and a mildly pungent flavour), raja ala and sweet potatoes were not strangers. However, we have certainly not come across produce such as hulankeeriya (arrow root), bussarana, dandila, and kidaran. What really amazed us was that some of the produce such as hulankeeriya is a common household potted plant. Bussarana on the other hand is like an enlarged ginger – at least by hundred times. Dandila looks very much like a raja ala, but just a scratch of its skin would expose a potato that is a dark purple in colour, where as the raja ala when sliced would reveal a potato blotched with a lighter shade of purple. 

Out of all these it was the kidaran that fascinated us most. It was huge, but unlike the other varieties of potatoes, it was not unwieldy, but rather neat in shape. Almost a perfect circle, it was over 25 inches in diameter and resembles very much a claymore mine (!). Apparently there is even a song about this particular potato. When this potato is ready a huge mushroom-like flower blooms on it, and this emits a not so pleasant aroma advertising to those around that this potato is ready. This is the only way to locate this potato that is otherwise hidden well underground.