Sri Lanka. Want to find out what it means?
Country....
Sri Lanka,is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent in South Asia. Known until 1972 as Ceylon,Sri Lanka,has maritime borders with India to the north west across the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Strait,and Maldives to the south.
Cuisine....
The cuisine of Sri Lanka draws influence from that of India,especially from "Kerala",as well as colonists and foreign traders. Rice which is usually consumed daily, can be found at any special occasion, while spicy curries are favourite dishes for lunch and dinner. A very popular alcoholic drink is toddy or arrack, both made up of Palm tree sap. Rice and curry refers to a change of Sri Lankan dishes. Sri Lankans eats hoppers, which can be found anywhere in Sri Lanka.
Much of Sri Lankan cuisines of boiled or steamed rice with spicy curry. Another well-known rice dish is kiri bath, meaning milk rice. Curries in Sri Lanka are just not limited to meat or fish based dishes, there are also vegetable and fruit based curries. A typical Sri Lankan meal consists of a "main curry"(fish,chicken or mutton), as well as several other curries made with vegetable and lentils. Side dishes include pickles,chutneys mad "sambol" which can sometimes be fiery hot. The most famous of these is the coconut sambol,made of scraped coconut mixed with chilli peppers,dried Maldives fish and lime juice. This is ground to a paste and eaten with rice, as it gives zest to the meal and is believed to increase appetite. In addition to sambols, Sri Lankans eat "mallung", chopped leaves mixed with grated coconut and red onions. Coconut milk is found in most Sri Lankan dishes to give the cuisine its unique flavor.
As noted above many of Sri Lanka's urban areas are host to American fast food corporations and many of the younger generation have started to take a liking to this new style of cuisine although it is rejected by many, particularly the more traditional elder members of the community.
Spices....
Sri Lanka has long been renowned for its spices. The best known is cinnamon which is native to Sri Lanka. In the 15th and 16th centuries, spice and ivory traders from all over the world who came to Sri Lanka brought their native cuisines to the island, resulting in a rich diversity of cooking styles and techniques. Lamprais rice boiled in stock with a special curry, accompanied by frikkadels (meatballs), all of which is then wrapped in a banana leaf and baked as a Dutch-influenced Sri Lankan dish. Dutch and Portuguese sweets also continue to be popular. British influences include roast beef and roast chicken. Also, the influence of the Indian cooking methods and food have played a major role in what Sri Lankans eat.
Sri Lankans use spices liberally in their dishes and typically do not follow an exact recipe: thus, every cook's curry will taste slightly different. Furthermore, people from different regions of the island (for instance, hill-country dwellers versus coastal dwellers) traditionally cook in different ways. Sri Lankan cuisine is known to be among the world's spiciest, due to the high use of different varieties of chili peppers referred to as amu miris (Chili pepper), kochchi miris, and maalu miris (Banana pepper) (capsicum) and in Tamil Milakaai, among others. It is generally accepted for tourists to request that the food is cooked with a lower chilli content to cater for the more sensitive Western palette. Food cooked for public occasions typically uses less chilli than food cooked in the home, the latter where the food is cooked with the chilli content preferable to the occupants.
Tea culture....
Being one of the largest producers in the world. Sri Lankans drinks a lot of tea. There are many tea factories around mountainous areas. Many Sri Lankans drinks at least three cups a day. Sri Lanka is also one the best tea-producing countries in the world and Royal Family of the United Kingdom has been known to drink Ceylon tea. Tea is severed whenever a guest comes to the house, it is severed at festivals and gatherings or just for breakfast.
Festivals....
New Year...
The Sinhala and Tamil new year "Aluth Avuruda" in Sinhala "Puthiyathandu" in Tamil. Is a very large cultural event in the island. The festival falls on April (also known as the month of Bak) when the sun moves from the Meena Rashiya (House of Pisces) to the Mesha Rashiya (House of Aries). Unusually, both the end of one year and the beginning of the next occur not at midnight but at separate times determined by astrologers with a period of some hours between being a time where one is expected to refrain from all types of work. During the new year children and adults dress in traditional costumes (specially red,yellow and orange). But the clothes need to be washed and cleaned because it has to be pure.
Language.....
While the Sinhalese people speak Sinhala as their mother tongue, the Tamil people speak Tamil. English is also widely spoken.
Sinhala is spoken by about 16 million, about 13 million are native speakers. It is one of the constitutionally-recognised official languages of Sri Lanka, along with Tamil, which originates from South India.
