Cookbooks on Sri Lanka

[Ramchandani Rajen Sham]

All this talk about sri lankan cooking, I had to pip in my two cents worth.
First, I bought the charmaine solomon book and have one piece of advice.
"Dont buy it". The recipes are adapted to suit western tastes, or rather
charmaines impression of western tastes. The recipes for Sri lankan food made
from this dont taste anything like the authentic Sri lankan food.

A better cookbook, that I love is a cookbook titled
"Asia the beautiful cookbook" I forget the author offhand, if anyone is
interested please send me email. The cookbook is beautiful to look at too and
has the bonus of the recipes being authentic and unadapted to anyones tastes.
It has a section on Sri Lankan food.

Ofcourse the bible of Sri lankan cooking is the Daily news cookery book, in its
14th printing ( the copy I have) in 1988. Must be 16th or 17th now. With the
the notes I made from the amah's and the aunty's cooking I learnt two years
ago on vacation at home, Im pretty happy. :-).

Take care
rajen

[D. P. Wijesinghe]

Ramchandani Rajen Sham wrote:

>All this talk about sri lankan cooking, I had to pip in my two cents worth.
>First, I bought the charmaine solomon book and have one piece of advice.
>"Dont buy it". The recipes are adapted to suit western tastes, or rather
>charmaines impression of western tastes. The recipes for Sri lankan food made
>from this dont taste anything like the authentic Sri lankan food.

I don't want to appear as a defender of Charmaine Solomon but the reason
I suggested that book is precisely because it is meant to be used by
non-Sri Lankans or Sri Lankans away from Sri Lanka. The person who requested
this information was clearly not a Sri Lankan. I don't think the
comment about Charmaine's recipes is quite accurate. I know at least
three experienced Sri Lankan cooks (my mother, my wife and an aunt)
who have used the recipes in Charmaine's book while away from their
traditional Sri Lankan kitchens with excellent results. As with all
recipes, of course, one has to adapt them to one's taste.

>Ofcourse the bible of Sri lankan cooking is the Daily news cookery book, in its
>14th printing ( the copy I have) in 1988. Must be 16th or 17th now. With the
>the notes I made from the amah's and the aunty's cooking I learnt two years
>ago on vacation at home, Im pretty happy. :-).

Miss H. Deutrom's "Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book" was first published
in 1929 (Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd., Colombo). It has been
revised and re-issued several times since then and the copy we have
is my mother's old book, a copy of the 4th edition of 1953, which she
must have bought soon after her marriage that year! Although it contains
many traditional Sinhalese and Tamil recipes what I find very quaint
about this book is its large number of 'colonial' recipes, including
a variety of British food, Dutch & Portuguese sweets, Malay curries,
etc. Where else can you find Ambarella Preserve, Atiraha, Kiri Dodol,
Katurumurunga Flower Badun, Kos Ambul, Masala Vadai, Thosai, Shepherd's
Pie, Steak and Kidney Pudding, Sathey Curry, Broeder, Bolo Folhado,
Cucumber Sandwiches, etc., all within the same set of covers???!!!

If I am not mistaken Miss Deutrom was a relative of Charmaine Solomon's
and Charmaine was involved in the revision of a recent edition of the
"Daily News Cookery Book".

Priyantha Wijesinghe
vh...@cunyvm.cuny.edu

[LAHIN]

I also found Chandra Dissanayake's cook book very authentic. I am not sure
whether that book is still available.

[Wije Wathugala]

LAHIN (la...@aol.com) wrote:
: I also found Chandra Dissanayake's cook book very authentic. I am not sure

: whether that book is still available.

I saw it in the Lake House Book Shop for Rs. 400 two weeks back.
I think the Sinhala version is cheaper