It’s surprising how few cookery classes we’ve taken whilst travelling, especially given our love of food. Just one, in fact, in Thailand on our honeymoon. But when we saw the opportunity to take a Sri Lankan cooking class in Colombo, we jumped on it! Even more so when we discovered it would be just the two of us. (We like being teacher’s pet but we like having all the attention even more.)
The day began with a trip to a food market. And if you think the produce we found on our own was amazing, wait until you see this! We bought loads of things we’ve never seen before, including these things above, called drumsticks. They look and taste a bit like okra, but without the sliminess. And you have to scrape some of the skin off to make them edible. (We later used them to make a curry, one of – but let’s hold off for just a moment on the spectacular gluttony of our meal…) We liked everything about this, most of all the way our guide explained everything in terms of its health benefits. Not ‘this tastes good with soy sauce,’ but ‘this is good for diabetes’ – a very interesting attitude. Although our experience with ayurveda has been mixed to date, we loved this way of thinking about eating.
After picking up all the necessaries, and asking a ton of questions, we went to the cooking school. Our experience is limited, as we’ve said, but to our surprise, it looked remarkably like a house. Indeed, it was a house, a family home in fact, and when we arrived we met our guide’s wife and not one but two mammas, his ‘n’ hers. In the living room, we drank coconut water from the king coconut (generally agreed to produce the tastiest coconut water). Then we ate its flesh, also very tasty. Incidentally, king coconuts grow only here and in Indonesia. They are full of electrolytes, so very refreshing on a warm day.
Thereafter, we and the mammas and the wife went into the kitchen, which had a fridge, a two-burner gas stove, a rice cooker, and a sink. Plus an outside sink and counter.
We set to our tasks, heavily supervised, and although we did not share a common language with the mammas, we managed to communicate, mostly through the younger generation.
There was chopping of vegetables. There was mashing of spices. And there was even extracting of coconut, via a super-cool device we used by the sink outside the kitchen. It’s a bit like a manual juicer, but much sharper. And truth to tell, we were not very proficient with it. We did know that coconut milk comes from the meat of the coconut itself (not the water, sloshing about on the inside). But we didn’t realise how many pressings you can get out of it – three or even four!
We took turns doing all of the things and asking all of the questions. John even fried up his own papadams – he’s a natural! (Papadams are the greasy crunchy lentil- or bean-flour crackers you get at Indian restaurants.)
At the end of many hours of working, we had our lunch: prawn curry and lentil curry and jackfruit curry and drumstick curry and fish croquettes and small fried fish and onion chutney and coconut chutney and a chopped green salad. Plus an enormous quantity of rice and the papadams and a bunch of fruit.
PS: what’s a jackfruit? Here it is! It’s the largest fruit in the world, and it often takes the place of meat in South Asian cultures. We didn’t have to buy these; they were growing right in the backyard.
Then, obviously, there was more fruit for dessert, plus pancakes made with coconut milk and filled with coconut and caramelised jaggery (a sweet, minimally-processed cane sugar). And then we went out to fly kites, which seems to be a common past-time in Sri Lanka, as in Guyana. At least if the number of other kites in the air is any indication.
All in all, a great experience! Stuffed and happy, we rode back to Colombo, well schooled in the arts of Sri Lankan cooking.
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