6. Gotukola Sambol (Pennywort Salad)
Green leafy vegetables aren’t the most common thing to eat in Sri Lanka, though the cooking does call for many tuberous vegetables. But anyway, since I love green veggies, I ate a dish known as Gotukola Sambol, frequently during my visit.
Gotukola is the word for Asiatic pennywort, a small leafy green vegetable that’s common throughout southeast Asia. Sambol is the word used to describe a dish or garnish that prepared and eaten using raw ingredients. So gotukola sambol is a basically Sri Lankan salad garnish.
The gotukola is first sliced very finely, then mixed with grated coconut meat, red onions, and a few extra spices for seasoning. Asiatic pennywort has a very green flavor, I think it can be compared to the green flavor of kale, and it’s refreshing and crisp.
I think I could call it the Middle Eastern tabbouleh of Sri Lanka.
7. Beetroot Curry
A plate of Sri Lankan curry and rice is complete only when a nice helping of beetroot curry is included! No that’s not really true, you can have a plate of curry without beetroot. However, when I was traveling in Sri Lanka, I came to love the beetroot curry – it’s such a wonderful dish.
The beets are diced up before being cooked to death with a number of spices including cinnamon and curry leaves. The beets are nice and soft, and rich in flavor.
Throughout the duration of my stay, I just couldn’t get enough of this blood red vegetable, that tastes so good with other curries.
8. Vegetarian Kottu
An extremely popular Sri Lankan street food dish is known as kottu or kottu roti.
Essentially it is composed of shredded pieces of Sri Lankan godamba roti, which is sort of like a giant sized paratha (an oily fried piece of thin dough), that is stir fried with an assortment of spices and a choice of other meaty (or vegetarian) ingredients.
Kottu roti is sort of like the “hamburger” of Sri Lanka, something that’s so tasty, available as a fast meal, and it’s basically nearly impossible to resist.
To take things even to the next level, kottu is usually served with a separate bowl of curry sauce, used to moisten and add extra flavor to the stir fried flatbread.
9. Egg Kottu
Another variation of kottu is with vegetables and egg – a very good combo, one of my particular favorite variations of the dish.
The vegetables include a few meager sprigs of leek, onions, and cabbage, and the sizzling godamba roti is lathered with egg to make it even richer…and more delicious.
The egg adds some extra protein, which is always a good thing.
10. Cheese Kottu
If vegetarian kottu is the hamburger of Sri Lanka, cheese kottu is the quadruple bacon cheeseburger.
Yellow curry powder flavor is bumped up a few notches with cheese kottu and it’s a Sri Lankan food that you just can’t miss. The cheese is not traditional yellow cheese, but rather more like cottage milk cheese.
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