I am not too certain about rice being eaten morning, noon & night, but personally, I still prefer rice & curry to ANY cuisine available to us, Sri Lankans. Thank you Victor Melder, for this elaborate story on the humble grain. Many thousands of our e’Lanka readers will enjoy this post, as I have done. I do feel that I am alive today, only because I chose rice & curry as my main meal
Forgetting about steaks. Sausages & stuff. Even at 4 score & 6, I still must have rice & curry (fish mainly),
a couple of vegetable (bandakkas, egg-fruit, & or roast potatoes, also called ala-thel-dhaala, preferably,
c/w a bit of lunu-miris or coconut sambol. No names or pack drill, but I now boast a Sri Lankan lady who has been a Chef in at least 4 (Four) different Countries, before making her home in Australia, who cooks and supplies me with my staple diet regularly. Including my own Mum, my late wife, & many other superb cooks whose meals I have partaken off, with relish, if I didn’t have the luck of eating the meals supplied to me presently, I would have carked it, a few years ago.
She does not know that I am writing this, but I have known many great cooks, only to realize that SHE out-cooks them all. I am feeling a bit hungry now, so I will close this intro. Please everyone, never forget what used to be our staple diet, in days gone by.
Desmond Kelly. (Editor-in-Chief) e’Lanka.
Rice morning, noon, and night in Sri Lanka-By Zinara Rathnayake
In Sri Lanka, rice is more than a sustaining staple. It is an undeniable main character in its history and identity.
A staple Sri Lankan rice and curry meal. Pictured are bandakka (okra stir fry), bonchi (beans in coconut milk), wam batu thel dala (eggplant), kesel muwa malluma (banana flower stir fry). Fish curry (served in a clay pot), papadam, and salt-and-pepper cucumber [Nathan Mahendra/Al Jazeera]
My father is just slightly better. That’s how my younger sister would always describe my parents’ food. She’s right. My mother cooked delicious curries. But my father cooked the food we hold dear.
My father grew up in Nabiriththawewa, a small village in Kurunegala, about 120km (75 miles) from Colombo.
Unlike his two older brothers who were more interested in going out with their friends, my father accompanied my grandfather to every village wedding. From what I could gather, my grandfather was the chef at every function in the village. He had cooked to feed hundreds.
“I followed him like a thread follows the needle. That’s how I learned to cook,” my father would say.
Although I wish I had met him, I never saw my grandfather, he was already a distant memory when I came to this world.
When my father was a teenager, Sri Lanka was battling drought and an economic crisis in the 1970s. Even though his family had land to grow rice, there wasn’t enough water. So my grandparents made the most of what was available.
“They told us never to throw away rice, not even a single grain of it,” my father said. “When I saw a little boy digging in a dustbin for food at school, I realised what it means to have food on the table.”
Rice and coconuts
I don’t remember us ever buying rice. Even when I left home to live in Colombo, my parents would visit me with tightly packed grocery bags of rice from my father’s fields. But recently when I called home, my mother said she might have to buy rice for the first time in her life.
“The [threshing] machine will only come if we give them diesel,” my mother said. “And we can’t get diesel.”
Many families in the village are now eating diya bath in the morning, my mother said.
Making diya bath involves a few steps if you, like my father, want to eat it hot. Many people eat diya bath cold, which is faster.
If there is rice left over after dinner, my father soaks it in water, letting it soak overnight and draining it the next morning. Then he heats up the coconut milk in a pot, adds dried red chilli, curry leaves, onion, salt, half a teaspoon of turmeric powder, and Maldive fish flakes (dried, cured tuna fish), and lets it simmer.
Diya bath as my father eats it with kiri hodi, served warm [Nathan Mahendra/Al Jazeera]
For sourness, he squeezes in half a lime or adds a few pods of dark brown sun-dried tamarind. (This concoction alone is called kiri hodi). When it’s ready, my father pours it, piping hot, onto a bowl of rice and eats it with fresh green chilli and, sometimes, fried dried fish.
Cold diya bath is a no-cook meal: mix two cups of coconut milk with one cup of soaked rice. Then add thinly-sliced red onion, two tablespoons of lime juice, three-four roasted dried red chillies, one teaspoon of grated Maldive fish, and salt to taste. If you like it sourer, squeeze in some more lime juice.
Some people like fresh green chilli instead of dried red chilli. Maldive fish is optional, but it adds a nice umami punch. Many elders believe that diya bath, with its fermented rice and coconut milk, cools the body and prevents heartburn.
Speaking of coconut milk, when I make diya bath, I reach for coconut milk that comes in sealed cardboard containers but my parents have never bought coconut milk in their life, they make it. My father plucks coconuts from our garden, removes the fibrous outer husk, halves the nut, and scrapes it with a hiramanaya – a traditional grater with a wooden seat for the person to sit while grating. He mixes the grated coconut with water, squeezing it several times with his hands to make coconut milk.
Making coconut milk is laborious, but my parents still do it. If rice is our staple, coconut is its mate. It thickens our curries, binds our sambals, flavours our foods, and balances meals with healthy fats. Coconuts also make our condiments richer to pair with humble rice.
A tractor at work, ploughing the fields for paddy cultivation in Pussellayaya, by the Wasgamuwa National Park [Nathan Mahendra/Al Jazeera]
More than aggala
While people usually boil fresh rice for aggala, my father soaks leftover rice to make sugary, coconutty balls with a slight crunch. For him, bath aggala is food security. It is minimising waste.
To make this teatime snack, he ferments leftover cooked rice overnight in water. In the morning, he drains and sun-dries the rice until it is crisp, then roasts it for about 20 minutes in a skillet on a low flame, until it turns brown.
When I made bath aggala recently, I roasted the rice for five to eight minutes and switched off the stove before it changed colour, so it stayed white. Do as you like, roasting for longer gives aggala a golden-brown colour and nutty flavour.
Using a pestle and mortar, my father grinds the warm, roasted rice until he gets an uneven texture with pieces of broken rice that add a delightful crunch. You can use an electric grinder as I do, just don’t grind it into powder.
Take 250g of this ground rice and add about 100g of grated coconut, half a cup of sugar, half a teaspoon of salt, and half a cup of water. Mix it well with your hands and shape it into little balls. Some people prefer a bit of a spice kick to their aggala, which is easily done by sprinkling a hint of black pepper into the mix.
Once ready, always serve with a cup of tea.
Like rice, coconut makes up a large chunk of Sri Lankan cuisine. Photo taken in Koggala [Nathan Mahendra/Al Jazeera]My father’s bath aggala is a testimony to Sri Lanka’s longstanding relationship with rice. It bears witness to the island’s often troubled history and present, twisted and framed by politics and economic interests.
The road to recovery is long. But for now, I’d like to be lulled into sweet teatimes at home. One bath aggala at a time.
Just before you leave, we at eLanka want to ensure we can keep you up-to-date with all good news stories about Sri Lankan Expats in Australia and Globally as well as other relevant news about Sri Lanka. So, if you wish to receive our Newsletter twice a week, then please fill in your Name & Email in this form. Thank you!