Sinhalese
The ethnic majority of Sri Lanka, the origins of the Sinhalese can be traced back to the Indo-Aryan settlers who intermarried with the native island tribes. The Sinhalese are predominantly Buddhist, with a significant Christian population – a reflection of the island’s colonial past. Reading the works of Knox and other early writers, one can trace how traditional Sinhalese food has such fantastic everyday vegetarian dishes, and a few, but utterly perfect, fish and meat dishes usually reserved for special occasions or guests. This resonates with Buddhist philosophy, where meat is discouraged but not explicitly prohibited. Among the Sinhalese Christians, meat is more abundant. Christmas dishes in particular have delicious relishes of South Asian ingredients like ghee, nutmeg, and cloves paired with festive foods like yellow rice.
With most Sinhalese being farmers, they were thrifty in their food habits. Meals were simple yet delicious, with one or two vegetable curries and a sambol, allowing them to stretch their harvests for longer periods. This need also probably spurred the development of the many traditional Sinhalese recipes involving pickling, sun drying, smoking, “jaadying”, etc. and the hundred ingenious ways of using rice in main dishes to desserts. Through the years the Sinhalese have acquired a reputation as good bread-makers among other ethnicities – particularly the Tamil and Muslim communities in the North and East – who adore “Sinhala paan”.
Ceylon Tamils
This ethnic group has a long history stretching back to the Jaffna Kingdom and the associated Vanniyar chieftaincies. Most Ceylon Tamils are Hindus, though there is also a significant Christian population within the community. In Lankan-Tamil food culture, one can view a course of evolution that stays true to their history on this island, but it also incorporates later influences from the colonizing westerners and the more modern internationally inspired flavours. Lankan-Tamil desserts actually have close similarities to their Sinhala counterparts, with ingredients like jaggery, rice flour, coconut and sesame seeds, apart from the gingelly oil which is distinctive of the Tamil cuisine.
Everyday food is usually rice and curry, with their recipes often constructed using garden ingredients like hibiscus, pumpkin, moringa sticks, aubergine, and okra. The fiery orange Ceylon Tamil crab curries dotted with dark green moringa leaves are so legendary that there are restaurants in Colombo built solely on their reputation for making authentic “Jaffna crab curry”. The palmyra palm wine is another iconic element that I love about this food culture. In fact, all palmyra-based foods from snacks, savouries, sweets and porridge to drinks, form a significant part of Ceylon Tamil cuisine. This is because the palmyra palm (Borassus flabelliformis) is an important symbol of the Ceylon Tamils’ cultural capital Jaffna, to which most still have a strong connection.
Indian Tamils
The majority of “Indian Tamils” are immigrants who arrived in Sri Lanka from Southern India to serve as the labour force in the colonists’ tea, rubber and coffee plantations. There are also many other smaller groups of trader and merchant communities like Sindhis, Bohras, Memons, Nadars, Malayalis, Gujaratis, Bharathas and Baluchis (often called Afghans) who first migrated to Sri Lanka from the Indian subcontinent, sometimes even as far as 600 years ago.
The ingenuity with which the Tamil migrant communities have built a version of their homeland’s food culture from their sparse plantation housing gardens; the profoundness of the connection that Sindhis establish between nourishing the mind and the body – their bhajans always being followed by community dining; the absolute gastronomic delight of beloved Bohra treats like samosas, godamba roti, and Bombay sweets. These are just a few of the many, many Indian Tamils’ culinary elements that I find to be incredibly important to the diversity of Sri Lankan cuisine.
Burghers
“Kāla, bīla, joli karana minissu” (people who eat, drink and make merry) is a common phrase with which other Sri Lankan ethnicities fondly identify the Burghers. In fact, Robert Percival (1805) visiting Ceylon shortly after the British took over the island, observed that the Burghers began their day with tobacco and gin, and ended their day with gin and tobacco. The word “Burgher”, referring to the Eurasian descendants of largely the colonising Hollanders, derives from the Dutch term “burg” meaning city, to simply indicate “citizen”. However, all Burghers are not necessarily of Dutch origin, as the VOC (Dutch East India Company) employed people from other neighbouring European countries as well, particularly France and Belgium. Later, they intermarried with Eurasian women of Portuguese origin, which explains the enormous influence that the Portuguese Creole language had on the Burghers. They are a community with a rich culinary tradition that uses Dutch fare and borrows Lusitanian, and even British practices with an interesting interplay of Sinhalese and Tamil cuisine. Even today, the centre of this community – The Dutch Burgher Union in Colombo – is a local favourite for their legendary love cake (originally known as Bolo d’ Amor before the English name gained popularity), lamprais, and the homemade ginger beer that is still made by “aunties” in Burgher households.
Excerpted with permission from JayaFlava: A Celebration of Food, Flavour and Recipes from Sri Lanka, Tasha Marikkar, HarperDesign India.