Sri Lankan Food - A Photographic Diary

As you may know, I have just spent three blissful weeks exploring the beautiful country of Sri Lanka! Beautiful scenery, wonderful people and delicious food! But of course, this is a food blog - so lets get to the food!! I took a few pics along the way so that I could share with you the great curries, I also took a cooking class in Unawatuna so that now I can make these delicious curries at home!

Pollonaruwa

You won't be surprised to hear that Sri Lankan food is centrally curry and rice. Finding vegan food is very easy in Sri Lanka, as "Vegetable Curries and Rice" are on every menu and they are naturally dairy free - often using coconut milk and cream as their base. When you order vegetable curry and rice, you don't pick your curries, they just bring out a selection of vegetable curries, chutneys, sambals, papadums and rice.

Clockwise from top: dhal, chokoe curry, cabbage and kunlun, whole cooked garlic cloves, beetroot sambal, papadums

L-R: papadums, dhal, tomato curry, potato curry

Clockwise from top: okra curry, rice, chicken curry, tomato and cucumber salad, pumpkin curry, manioc curry

The above vegie curries on my plate.

Fried noodles with pineapple chutney and chilli paste

Unsurprisingly, Sri Lankans also eat curry for breakfast as well as lunch and dinner. Most of the guest houses we stayed in offered an option of ordering Western Breakfast (eggs, toast, jam, tea/coffee) or Sri Lankan Breakfast (curry, hoppers of some kind, curries, tea/coffee). I've always been a fan of eating savoury foods for breakfast, as I just don't really like many of the breakfasts typical of Western countries, so I actually loved the curry for breakfast - although we didn't manage to do it every day for three weeks! I admit we had to go for toast some mornings.

A Sri Lankan breakfast of rice & coconut milk squares, hot onion sambal and bananas.

A Sri Lankan Breakfast of potato curry, chicken curry and string hoppers

A Sri Lankan breakfast of string hoppers, rotti, hoppers, coconut sambal and an egg hopper (with 2 curries in the background)

Egg curry and dhal

My friend's Western Breakfast - for those who don't feel like curry first thing in the morning!

A rare opportunity to get "moosly"

You could also buy King Coconuts on the side of the road anywhere in Sri Lanka, to drink and eat the small amount of soft flesh inside.

(not me)

The spoils of our amazing Sri Lankan cooking class in Unawatuna, for more details check out this post here!