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From elephants to sapphires, tea to cricket, Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast explores a remote and secret Eden to discover the stories behind the things that make Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan.
Welcome to an episode of Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast, brought to you by The Ceylon Press.
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Many of Sri Lanka’s indigenous spices are barely known outside the island; indeed, so far as Tesco, Walmart or Carrefour go, they remain inscrutable, ingredients of electrifying mystery. But collectively, they may well have been what Virginia Woolf had in mind when, as she sat for dinner with her husband, Leonard, the assistant government agent for the District of Hambantota - “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." Sri Lanka’s lesser-known indigenous spices lend dishes a distinctively captivating flavour.
The first of these reticent herbals is moringa, a short-lived, fast-growing, ten-metre-high tree, indigenous to India and Sri Lanka. It matures with good-tempered ease, demanding merely tropical temperatures, water, and good drainage. Barely known outside Asia and Africa, it is a spice to covet. Every part of the plant is edible. Its leaves can be used in salads or boiled like spinach. Its flowers make an excellent tea, and its seed pods, when young, are a rare alternative to asparagus. Its taste is grassy, a little bitter with an agreeable horseradish-like heat and flavour, which explains why it is also known as the horseradish tree. According to several authoritative scientific studies of the plant, it is ridiculously healthy as well. Its dried leaves offer seven times the Vitamin C of oranges, nine times the protein of yoghurt, ten times the Vitamin A of carrots, and fifteen times the potassium of bananas.
It is widely used in Indian Ayurvedic medicine to mitigate heart disease and as an anti-inflammatory, anti-cholesterol, antidepressant, and antioxidant. It may also help you see better and grow more luxurious hair. The ancient Greeks used it in perfume. The Egyptian pharaohs depended on it for their complex death rituals. Warriors consumed it before battle. And with far less drama, it is widely used in Sri Lankan cooking and in many of the rice and curries made here on The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. It is a favourite addition to all things fish, and it stars with the most incredible lustre in the island’s celebrated Spicy Drumstick Curry dish.
But if it’s a touch of fusion food you are really after, go down the moringa-as-asparagus route. Collect young, tender pods around a foot long before they become too woody. Trim them into smaller asparagus-like lengths, add the onion, butter, and salt, and boil for 10 minutes. Then steam the pods in a marinade of oil, vinegar, sea salt, pepper, garlic, and parsley and enjoy them with all the sophisticated delight that made Louis XIV’s obsessive consumption of asparagus so memorable as to figure in every contemporary Versailles diary.
Another of the island’s lesser-known spices is brindleberry – known here as Goraka, or to give it its full and formal Latin honorific, Garcinia gummi-gutta. It is the Lewis Carroll of the spice world for the White Rabbit must have had its mercilessly caustic taste in mind as he wandered through Wonderland: “The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All on a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, And took them quite away!” It is a slow-growing rainforest tree that reaches about 20 meters in height, with dark, shiny leaves and rough, black bark. It is an unfussy plant, growing happily so long as it has its roots in deep, well-drained, slightly acidic, light clay soil. In Ayurvedic medicine, it is used to treat ulcers and digestive problems. Western medicine is now busy studying its hydroxycitric acid content to better design medicines that increase fat burning whilst simultaneously reducing fat accumulation and appetite. Some scientists also believe it can help manage cholesterol, stabilise blood sugar levels, and protect the body from cell damage.
Goraka fruit, which resembles doll’s house-sized pumpkins, is first dried before its flesh is used in place of lime or tamarind to give dishes, especially fish dishes, a distinctly tart taste. The fruit badly needs this pre-preparation, as it is otherwise far too acidic to eat raw. Its most famous island offering is Ambulthiyal, the classic Sri Lankan sour fish curry, where, as part of a mix of spices, the fish turns the meat a stylish black as the walls of a Soho literary cocktail bar.
Gotu Kola is another of the island’s demure indigenous species, something of a Mother Theresa amongst spices, awash with virtue and value. Known as pennywort or centella asiatica, it is a herbaceous perennial vegetable with small, round leaves that bud from soft stems, like a kind, apple-green version of watercress. It thrives in rich, moist soil, with plenty of shade and manure – the swampy edges of ponds are an especial favourite. The leaf has a subtle, earthy taste, sweet and bitter at once, and pairs exceptionally well with coconut. It is popular in traditional medicine, where it is believed to promote longevity and good vision. Modern science is catching up on the beneficial effects of its principal compounds – especially triterpenoid saponins, naturally occurring sugars. Studies suggest this has many applications: as an antiviral to inhibit the replication of viruses like herpes; as an antioxidant; as an anti-neoplastic to combat cancers; and to promote collagen production. Other studies are in progress to identify how it helps improve memory and support blood circulation.
In Europe, Gotu Kola has yet to make the leap from specialist natural food shops to supermarkets, but here in Sri Lanka, almost any vegetable shop sells it. It stars in many island dishes, but the two most famous are as a sambal – a salad where it is combined with coconut, onions, lime, tomatoes, and pepper - and as a porridge. Kola Kanda, or Gotu Kola Herbal Rice Porridge, to give it its full and formal name, is a comfort food that is ridiculously easy to make. Red rice and a bit of garlic are boiled up. Gotu Kola and curry leaves are blended into a dust, strained, and added to the cooked rice with coconut milk. The gorgeous green porridge is poured into breakfast bowls, and served with a piece of sweet jaggery – and so begins a better day.
Curry leaves, the small pinnate leaves of the sweet neem tree, are a commonplace ingredient in Sri Lanka and are no longer the Mr Quiet of the spice world, becoming ever better known outside of South and SE Asia and China. It has even made its first tentative appearance at Sainsbury's and Tesco. It is a straightforward plant, growing well from cuttings and root divisions and afraid of few, if any, animals. It reaches heights of around four meters quickly, as long as it’s got decent sun. It tolerates all soil types and prolonged periods of dryness. It gives all the dishes it touches an earthy citrus-like flavour and a scent as if lemon grass and star anise had been twinned in some ecstatic horticultural coupling. It is especially delicious when fried with cashew nuts. Picked and used fresh off the tree, like basil in Italian cooking or marjoram in Greek dishes, there is almost no South Asian dish to which it cannot be added to deepen both flavour and scent. It has long been a staple ingredient in Ayurvedic medicine for treating skin and hair problems and for combating indigestion, bloating, and constipation. Western science is studying its various chemical properties, especially its carbazole alkaloids, to improve cancer and anti-inflammatory therapies.
Despite the racial slur implicit in its common name, kaffir lime," Citrus Hystrix, as it is known in more Latin quarters, is an indigenous plant right across South and Southeast Asia. It most probably gained its ill-starred name through the Bantu slaves brought to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese, who were known by the generic term “kaffirs.” One of its earliest appearances in Western literature is in Emanuel Bonavia’s 1888 book “The Cultivated Oranges, Lemons, etc. of India and Ceylon”. H.F. MacMillan also includes it in his seminal 1910 reference work, “A Handbook of Tropical Gardening and Planting”. Something of a Caliban amongst spices, it is a small thorny scrubby tree with an all-round appearance only a mother could love. It has few animal enemies of any sort. Its leaves appear to double back on themselves in growth, and its tiny, bitter, thick-rinded fruits are shaped like miniature brains. Its taste, however, is remarkable, much more citrusy and floral than that of any other lime, and for this reason alone, it is the secret weapon of all top chefs. It is used in place of traditional limes to give things the sort of intensity that only good rock music can otherwise bestow. Thai chefs in particular have taken it to heart, using it for standout Massaman curries and Tom Yum soups. Its intense flavour and acidic nature also make it a favourite ingredient in other products, from leach spray to shampoo.
For reasons best known to travel agents, Sri Lanka’s indigenous lemon grass, Cymbopogon Citratus, gained the moniker “West Indian Lemongrass” somewhere along the way. It is one of only two species of Cymbopogon that are treasured in all the ways lemongrass should be, the other being Cymbopogon flexuosus, a variant more inclined to produce oils and medicines used in foods. Greener, thicker, more fragrant, and harder to grow, Sri Lanka’s native so-called West Indian lemongrass is the one to be found in discriminating kitchens. Although modern science has yet to determine the impact of its various bioactive compounds fully, it has, in large part, endorsed the characteristics that have made it a popular ingredient in folk medicine: relieving pain and arthritis, reducing blood pressure, inhibiting infection and vomiting, and combating gastrointestinal disorders and fevers. For so simple-looking a plant, it is the most complex of food additives, with its unreproducible blend of sweet, tangy, floral, citrusy, and almost ginger-like flavours. It has hallmarked any number of Malay and Thai dishes, particularly fish cakes, curries, and sauces, whilst in the West, there is no better way to start your morning than with a lemongrass tisane at Alain Ducasse’s restaurant in The Dorchester. It is used in many Sri Lankan dishes, but when added to the classic Cashew Curry, it elevates the eating experience to a level only slightly below the gods.
Sri Lanka’s last, most erotic, and most secretive indigenous spice is the blue butterfly pea flower - Clitoria ternatea. An immodest, fast-growing vine that reaches lengths of around fifteen feet, it is, by dint of its etymological origins, considered something of an aphrodisiac; the genus part of its name (Clitoria) derives from "clitoris", a shape faithfully reproduced in the plant’s blossom. Science has backed up its reputation as a love drug.
A study published recently in the International Journal for Herbal Medicine noted that “the milk treated group showed a significant increase in body weight, sperm count, motility and sexual behaviour parameters compared to the control group.” Ayurvedic texts dating back many thousands of years before this study were conducted could have told them not to bother, as the flower has long been used in traditional Asian medicine to improve overall sexual vitality. Not that the ancient medics stopped there, for the plant and its flowers were also used to improve memory, reduce stress and depression, minimise the outward signs of ageing and mitigate inflammations. Modern science is now busy confirming most of this - and adding to its tally of benefits. The unique cyclic peptides that make up one of its cornerstone active ingredients have been found to help lower blood glucose and insulin levels, as well as combat certain bacteria. But all of this pales into off-stage mumblings when compared to its colour – for the pure sapphire blue hue it gives to many recipes, especially teas – this, even though its taste is easy to miss, being mildly floral at best. Little else denotes such modern sophistication today as sitting, sipping a warm glass of cornflower-blue Clitoria Tea. It also works remarkably well as a natural dye - so should you be eager to host a Blue Dinner Party, use it to turn your pasta, butter, rice, or custard into something unforgettable, before hitting a playlist that includes Mr Blue Skies and Blue Suede Shoes.
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That was a production from The Ceylon Press, based in the jungle north of Kandy at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, and set up to tell the story of Sri Lanka.
The complete list of podcast series from The Ceylon Press includes:
1. The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka
2. Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast
3. Complete Audio Books About Sri Lanka
4. Poetry From The Jungle
5. The Jungle Diaries
6. The Archaeologies Diaries