Gems and greens!

Tuk tuk trouble! 

Today was a fun day – after breakfast at the hotel, Kingsley met us at 8am for our day’s activities.  The main event was a culinary experience – not a cooking class per se, but cooking with some locals involving – what else – a trip to the local market – to get an authentic first-hand flavor of Sri Lankan cuisine.   I’m not sure why Kingsley had us meet him so early as it really felt as if we proceeded to kill time for the next two hours!!  He took us first to a Buddhist stupa, the Peace monument, perched high up on a hill, to have a look round that.  Then, because I’d expressed some interest in buying a Ceylon sapphire as a memento of the trip, we went to a local jeweler, about 20mins out of the main city.  He’d advised me not to buy gemstones from one of the many, many jewelry stores within the boundaries of Fort Galle, as he said there were lots of very unscrupulous sellers, waiting to take advantage of unwitting tourists (ie me!) by selling them fake gemstones.   But this guy was pukka and reliable, so I ended up buying a lovely Royal Blue sapphire and diamond ring that I love and that will be a wonderful souvenir!  (I’ll have to eat ramen noodles for the next 6 months, but hey ho!).  ManpanionTM sat in the car while I shopped (and set the world to rights with Kingsley) and, by the time I was done, it was about 10.30am, so time to go meet our host for our cooking experience.


Local market, Sri Lankan style

We drove for another 30mins outside of town, into verdant countryside, and finally parked up in the front courtyard outside this pink house.  There we were met by our cooking host (cant remember his name either!) and we had to transfer into a tuk-tuk which would take us to the local market.  The “market” turned out to be a single food stand, just on the side of the road, but bursting full of the freshest produce you could wish for!  Some of the veggies were recognizable, some were not and our host told us that we had to pick the ingredients we wished to cook with!  After some mild panic (“we need help!!”), we picked out a selection of yummy veggies and clambered back into the tuk-tuk and were then driven through some narrow dirt lanes that were very reminiscent of our time in Vietnam!  We really were off the beaten track! 


Banana flower (I think)



On the way to our cooking experience, we got to see how cinnamon
is made - here its being painstakingly shaved off the cinnamon tree branch...




....then its dried before being cut into pieces and sold.
Apparently the best (ie Sri Lankan) cinnamon is one
which you can't look in one end of the rolled piece
and see all the way through to the other end.

After 10mins or so, we arrived at our destination, a large open-air bamboo-covered area with a long kitchen, with a sink and multiple burners, and then a dining area with tables and chairs.  It was all very rustic!  Along with our host, there were two other local folk – one guy was the main cook, the other lady the sous-chef/prep cook.  

Yes, chef!

For the next hour, the cook proceeded to turn all the yummy fresh ingredients we had just bought (which he didn’t know exactly what we were going to pick) and turn them into multiple delicious dishes!  We helped out with some of the chopping and prep work, sipping on a fresh King coconut while we “worked”.  We learned that there are always 4 basic ingredients at the heart of any Sri Lankan dish – onion, garlic, curry leaves and panpan leaves.  They went into everything – and then various other spices followed – turmeric, curry powder (both roasted and unroasted), cinnamon bark, pepper, chilli, cardamom, fenugreek, some weird fish crystal thing, cloves, cumin – and a ton of salt!   Before too long, the kitchen was starting to smell delicious and it was so fun watching the chef whip up loads of different dishes, seemingly off the top of his head!   Most of the dishes were vegetarian but we did have one with super fresh tuna.   When it was all ready and lined up in various round clay pots ready to serve, we were given bamboo platters lined with a banana leaf and got stuck in! 


The Mouse Special

The staple spices of Sri Lankan cooking

ChefpanionTM

Fresh tuna and potatoes, ready for curry magic!

nom nom nom

Cool contraption with which to grate out the
fresh coconut from the husk

It was all delicious!  My favorite was the cooked banana dish (sounds gross, but was really tasty!) and potatoes that had been cooked in water flavored with turmeric.  Yum!!   ManpanionTM washed his down with a beer, while I stuck to the coconut water, and we finished up with very traditional buffalo milk curd and treacle! 

Grub's up!!

So fresh - and exciting

Dig in!!

After that, and with achingly full tummies, we bid our farewell to our host, waddled back into the tuk-tuk which then somehow managed to carry all three of us (Kingsley squashed into the back seat with us!) back to the car.  It had started to rain again, so the rest of the afternoon beckoned for a post-prandial nap – and a bit of honeymoon cake!!   After we had digested sufficiently, it was obviously time to go out and feed ourselves again (I’m glad I lost weight before this vacation as I’ve done a fantastic job of putting it all back on!!) but we decided it was finally time to drink the free bottle of prosecco we’d been given a week earlier back in Sigiriya at the Water Garden (which made sense now – it was obviously a honeymoon gift from the hotel!).  Our hotel didn’t have a liquor license but are happy to open any BYOB bottles free of charge, so we’d given them the bottle when we’d arrived the day before, so now sat out on the front verandah, people-watching and playing cards.  It was very chilled out – we couldn’t be arsed to move so we also had dinner there, before finally decamping to the place next door for a nightcap, more cards and a chat with a couple of handsome  New Zealanders who were visiting from Dubai.  Tomorrow, we bid a fond farewell to Sri Lanka – and to Kingsley – and embark on the last part of our trip – paradise on earth in the Maldives!!  It’s a 3hr ride to the airport for our short flight – and I can’t wait!!!