Comments on: What’s God Got To Do (Got To Do) With It?

By: Leah Lakshmi

Leah Lakshmi — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:57:31 +0000

Egg hoppers! (Though milk hoppers remain my favorite, any kind of hopper is proving difficult to find in Oakland, California.)
Amazing Lankan reportage! Sugi, I’ve been really enjoying your posts and hope you keep them up. My dad (Burger/Tamil Lankan) grew up mostly in K.L. and I’ve always wanted to hear more about what it’s like to be Sri Lankan in Malaysia, now and then.
fckn idiot reviewer in the NYT! Pittu is definitely not from Mars.

By: 4luckyfeet

4luckyfeet — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:17:56 +0000

Dear V.V.,

You are my faworite Sri Lankan EWER.

kind regards,

4lf

By: V.V. Ganeshananthan

V.V. Ganeshananthan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:06:04 +0000

I don’t know what raagi is. I vill call her and update

By: ptr_vivek

ptr_vivek — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:08:11 +0000

62 Â· V.V. Ganeshananthan said

but my mother's idiappam and pittu are made with a darker flour than can be brown/gray to verging on red.

raagi? or something else?

By: V.V. Ganeshananthan

V.V. Ganeshananthan — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:11:04 +0000

Sri Lankan food incorporates curry powder with different proportions of spices, roasted differently than Indian curry powder; Sri Lankan food also tends to feature seafood. My impression (only anecdotal, but I feel relatively confident in it) is that while plenty of SL Tamils are vegetarian, vegetarian cuisine does not dominate in SL Tamil areas the way it does in South India.

I use only curry powder called Jaffna curry powder; I get it, or my mother gets it, from Sri Lankan stores in Toronto. She’s my spice dealer.

There’s quite a bit of overlap between Sinhalese and Tamil food, but I don’t think I saw white pittu and hoppers until I was olderâ€”in a restaurant. So there are different types of flour that can be used; those differences may be regional or ethnic, but my mother’s idiappam and pittu are made with a darker flour than can be brown/gray to verging on red.

By: ashvin

ashvin — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:34:34 +0000

60 Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â· retorts said

59 Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â· ashvin said
It's rare to find a restaurant that serves food from Kerala
Don't these count? They're everywhere.

I've never been to one of those. But it seems like they serve food from Tamilnadu. What I'm really asking is where do I go to get Appam and "stew" [preferably with chicken] ?

By: retorts

retorts — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:22:54 +0000

59 Â· ashvin said

It's rare to find a restaurant that serves food from Kerala

Don't these count? They're everywhere.

By: ashvin

ashvin — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:27:55 +0000

Yes, it seems to me that Sri Lankan food seems more similar to food from Kerala than food from Tamilnadu. Though I know "pittu" as "puttu" [well that's the closest transliteration I can come up with] and "string hopper" as "idiappam" [like ANNA, I'm jolted by the word "hopper"; it's such an inappropriate name for a food; damn british colonizers] and the appam (with the spongy center and crisp outer ring, as opposed to the other things known as appam in south india) is one of my favorite foods. Though I've never seen an egg in the middle of the appam. It's rare to find a restaurant that serves food from Kerala, so if I'm looking for a good appam maybe I should look for a Sri Lankan restaurant ?

Btw, our favorite Chinese explorer Zheng He visited both Sri Lanka and Kerala. Maybe he, or one of his predecessors, left behind the Cheena[/i]-Cha[/e]tti.

By: Ponniyin Selvan

Ponniyin Selvan — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 03:45:36 +0000

Are there big differences between Sinhalese cuisine and SL Tamil cuisine? How about SL Tamil compared to Indian Tamil cuisine?

I think "sambol" is unique to sri lanka, other dishes look the same to me, On second thoughts, extensive use of coconuts and "pittu" leade me to think that Sri lankan cuisine has more in common with Malayali cuisine

By: ptr_vivek

ptr_vivek — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:38:02 +0000

55 Â· V.V. Ganeshananthan said

"appa" is simply an adjectival reference to the the appam that are cooked in it.

Sounded pretty good to me...