Short Eats (Sri Lankan Snacks)
According to the Ceylon Daily News's Cookery Book—a sort of Sri Lankan Joy of Cooking—"short eats" are derived from the tidbits Europeans on the island served with sherry at six in the evening, a sort of cocktail party nosh. Now they're ubiquitous snacks, served from midday onward and encompassing far more than tea sandwiches.
Short eats.
Kotthu or kotthu roti takes flaky roti bread and chops it up on a flat top with vegetables, meats, and/or eggs, resulting in a fried-rice-like dish, where tiny pieces of chopped bread replace the grains of rice. Those same roti can be found folded around egg, chicken, or any number of other fillings to become something of a mini-wrap. It's a delightful little package.
Cutlets are more like croquettes—breaded balls often made of beef, chicken, or shrimp. And as long as we're talking deep-fried wonders, it would be a crime to miss the vadai—various deep-fried lentil fritters. There are many doughnut-shaped versions: corn-studded vadai, spicy vadai dotted with the green of curry leaf, and ones with tiny shrimp sticking out. They are dense, and tend to be hard on the outside, but moist on the interior, and as Fernando says in Rice and Curry, "the perfect cure for the munchies." Further exploration of short eats turns up more familiar dishes: spicy chickpeas served in a paper cone, empanada-like patties, and samosas with various spicy fillings.
Sri Lankan Dessert
If you're not full after all that, Sri Lanka has you covered on desserts. Owing much to the Dutch and Portuguese traditions of sweets—and a little to the Brits and Malays—it's hard to go far in Sri Lanka without running into a sugary treat. In a restaurant, the dessert you'll most likely find is watallapan. (How to pronounce that? As user churro89 on Reddit put it, it sounds like "what will happen.") It's similar to flan, but made from coconut and, like any good island dessert, the coconut palm sugar jaggery. Air bubbles keep the thick dessert from getting too heavy, and a good dose of chopped nuts on top gives a little bit of crunch to the otherwise soft sweet.
Watallapan.
If you're traveling in Sri Lanka, you may spot tall, narrow trucks or modified tuk-tuks with clear sides driving around, displaying baked goods and sweets for sale. They offer coconut pancakes and string hoppers (much like the savory breakfast kind described above), both wrapped around jaggery. The mild, starchy wrap contrasts the blast of crunchy sweetness. You'll also find the enticing-looking halapa: a mix of kurakkan (red millet) flour, coconut flour, and jaggery wrapped in a kanda leaf and steamed. It has the subtle flavor of the leaf (somewhat similar to a banana leaf), and a distinctive, thick texture, which had me guessing, mistakenly, it was made in part from dried bananas. If your sweet tooth's not satisfied yet, head to the markets or mini-marts for vast selections of packaged sweets: fudgy toffees, British cakes, and Indian candies.
From top, halapa (millet flour dessert), two savory vadai (fritters), and a coconut pancake stuffed with a mix of coconut and sugar.
How and Where to Eat Sri Lankan Food
Now that I've gotten you all excited about Sri Lankan food, here's the bad news: it is it isn't that easy to find. Even in Sri Lanka, the best way to eat good, authentic meals is to knock on the door of "rests" (the local version of a guesthouse) and ask them to cook you dinner later that night. Tourist hotels and guesthouses catering to Westerners tend to do watered-down versions of local food or pretty terrible attempts at Western food.
Finding recipes to cook Sri Lankan food at home is equally difficult. In the two books we bought in Sri Lanka, geared toward Sri Lankans, measurements were often vague or non-existent, while in the one we bought geared for Americans, they were clearly just wrong. Either way, you're forced to simply cook as they do in Sri Lanka: adding a little of this and a little of that, cooking by instinct and seasoning to taste. If you're in New York, you can follow this guide to Sri Lankan food, or, if you're near Vancouver, BC, you can hit up House of Dosas for a taste.
Wherever you find it, the key to enjoying Sri Lankan food is simple: don't be afraid of strong flavors. Armed with a big appetite, and a big bowl of rice to cool off after tongue-searing curries, you'll be ready to conquer a table full of curry, dhal, mallum, sambal, and all the rest.
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