Wondering why “hells” kitchen?

– it is not related to the popular culinary program only with the focus of the served attitudes. Because of the spices, local dishes are a challenge for tourists. The fire that arises in our mouth after tasting rice with curry, it is worth to extinguish a lot of still water on the spot. To find true Lanbian food, you have to look for places where the islanders live, because restaurants and hotels often focus on the European palate, with a spicy menu.

This diversity inspires and, although often requires courage, opens the way for a glorious world of culinary sensations. The main raw material of all dishes are delicious fruits and vegetables from local gardens.

Traditional cuisine of Sri Lanka

It is undoubtedly curry rice, which is served everywhere and at any time of the day.

Ask Leo – a day without rice is a day lost.

Rice curry is usually served in a very savory form and only on request will you get a slightly milder version of the dish. Curry is the most common type of coconut milk sauce mixed with vegetables, fruit, nuts or sometimes with pieces of meat or fish. It is usually served with rice and a variety of bowls with different types of curry – meat sauce, fish and vegetables. Curries, as an additive, often also serve sharp vegetable pickles.

Everyone can find a variant of curry rice for him that will best taste him.

Also a popular ingredient in dishes in Sri Lanka like rice is coconut. The ubiquitous form of coconut oil, milk, cream or coconut shavings.

Popular snacks, which are often served for breakfast or for dinner, is a hopper – a cake reminiscent of a small rice pancake with coconut milk.

Most often served with an egg in the middle of the egg hopper, but I also had a banana version and tasted as well. It all depends on whether you like the sweet or the sweet version.

Another snack that personally brings me down Sri Lankan bread which does not belong to the best roti. It is a rice or wheat flour cake with coconut shells and coconut milk fried on coconut oil. Poetry is served warmly. Personally I love the butter slightly melting on a warm tomato and onion pie but for sweet fans with butter and jam.

String hoppers a kind of pasta rice or wheat flour also served to breakfast. Popular on the island are also short eats pancakes with vegetarian or meat stuffing very spicy.

I also recommend pasta with vegetables, chicken and egg finely chopped. These dishes are often wrapped in foil or served lanski believe that only by eating fingers, you can feel the real taste of dishes, so it is a natural sight.

In the area of Habarana, you can go to lunch at Wiska, where Lankijka will prepare a meal with you, which will later be served on banana leaves. Great adventure.

Where to buy it? Mainly on stalls. Some of them are highly specialized – you can see stalls with several types of bananas, separate stalls with strange lime varieties, fruit stalls with jackfruit tree.

It is worth to try the mango with different flavors and shapes, papaya (very well regulating the stomach work but I did not take it I treat it like medicine), pineapple, red banana
and long bananas of XXL size, lesser known rambutana (similar in lichen to lemons, I recommend delicious), wood apple – a fruit called a wooden apple, cherymoja – very interesting taste of banana with pineapple and very aromatic guava fruit. Popular types are also all kinds of nuts including: cashews, royal coconuts
and ground nuts – fistas.

Sri Lanka is home to many spices. Today they are grown in large gardens or plantations. The gardens are mostly open to tourists and the staff are happy to show you around
and talk about each plant. I recommend a visit to such a garden because it is worth seeing the crop of plants from which we receive spices. Without these spices, there would be no aromatic dishes. Always before returning to Poland, I go shopping for spices to store myself, my family and friends for a while.

The most famous spices are cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom, black pepper, nutmeg and cloves.

For example, you can find out that vanilla pods are the fruit of an orchid creeper with golden flowers and bright green leaves. They have a dark green color
and after the break they do not smell at all. Aroma will only pick up during processing until they become flexible and almost black, with a delicate white, crystalline coating of vanillin. It is good to know that cardamom is a perennial belonging to the ginger family. This is the saucer one the most expensive spices in the world. With a mild taste and a definately spicy note. It is also worth to know the tree cinnamon Ceylonese. Who among us does not like apple pie with cinnamon? Cinnamon bark is characterized by a huge content of tannin, so it has antiseptic and fungicidal properties. The cut branches deprive the outer bark
and the rest of the sip. The stripes are dried in the sun, where they have a distinctive color and curl up to form cinnamon sticks. Black pepper is one of the most popular
spices around the world. Pepper in Sri Lanka is growing a lot. Just stop by the road. These are just a few spices that you can see in such a garden.

The processed spices you will find at each market. The smell of spices in the air stops the visitors of the market for longer. We can touch everything, smell and check what we buy. Products are spread in open bags. It is worth to visit such places just to stroll among the colorful stands.

“Good water straight from the tap” – it works in Poland, especially in Cracow but in Sri Lanka I did not check, supposedly here you can drink it but after boiling. Leo claims,
that the water from our deep well is sensational. There are no problems
With the purchase of bottled water, and if you are traveling with Leo Tur no problem to buy it in large 5 liter bottles and transfer to the smaller on the go. It is always good to have her handy, because the sun can be on the signs and lots of water we lose from the body sweat, so it is better not to dehydrate. It is also advisable to take some electrolytes with you as they will help us keep the minerals in your body.

I after mango lassi put in the first place juices, juices, juices … Natural, freshly squeezed, aromatic in one word FROZEN and compared to Poland not so expensive. Very often served to breakfast, especially the papaya and lime.

Of course another drink recommended is tea. How to stay in Sri Lanka and not have a wonderful aromatic tea every day? It is served solo or with milk and sugar.

A great natural isotonic quenching thirst is coconut water – which is splashing in fresh coconut fruit.

Coffee – even soluble better to take from the country, because coffee in Sri Lanka often has a sweet laced taste and for me is not drinkable. Unless it is served in luxury hotels.

The most popular among the residents of the island alcohol is arak.

It is made from fermented coconut palm flower juice and comes in many varieties. Recommended as an additive for mixed drinks, and the Lankians dilute it with soda or cola.

I also recommend the hot chilled beer. Lion Lager is the most popular beer on the island in two versions and percentages and colors, ie light and dark. Dark is always “strong”. We can also order a ginger ale for a meal. is very good just for me a little sweet, but it’s a matter of taste.

In a regular store we do not get alcohol. Local beers, imported wine and local and foreign heavier alcohols are found in shops called wine stores. The second option is to visit a bigger brand in a big city.