Living in two worlds

Passport & Plate - Kiribath and lunumiris

Sri Lanka | Thursday, March 5, 2015 | 5 photos

Ingredients for Kiribath (coconut milk rice)
2 cups short grain rice
2 cups canned coconut milk (don’t tell Nandamma)
3 cups water
2 tsp salt

Lunumiris (red onion sambol)
one red onion
½ tsp red chili flakes
1 tbsp. dry Maldive fish flakes
fresh lime juice
salt to taste

How to prepare this recipe
Kiribath: Wash the rice by hand until the water is less cloudy. Put all ingredients in the rice cooker and stir well. Set the cooker to “cook” and relax with a ginger beer while it cooks. When “cooked”, check to see if rice is the consistency of a thick gruel. If it is too runny, run the cook cycle again. Rice will get stiffer once it cools. Serve savoury with lunumiris or as a dessert with jaggery (palm sugar.) Sometimes I just eat it by itself because it’s so good
Lunumiris: Chop the onion in quarters and place into the food processor. Add the chili flakes, Maldive fish, and lime juice. Blend until onions are chopped into a chunky sauce. Add salt to taste. Eat as an accompaniment with the kiribath with your right hand only, never the left!

The story behind this recipe:
Yes, I’m a bit insecure when it comes to my Sri Lankan cuisine. I’ve polished my craft for over 15 years (since I married Sanjaya) but I’m still not asked to make the egg hoppers and curries at the Buddhist fundraisers. When I last went to Sri Lanka, my nandamma told me that all Canadian food comes from a can.
Oh well. Everyone in Canada loves my milk rice and my sister in law admits to me in secret that my kiribath is better than hers.
And kiribath is such an important food for Sri Lankans. When a couple gets married, we offer a tray of cooled, cut up kiribath to share with the family. Usually put in a heart shaped mold and decorated with flowers, the bride and groom go around to the guests at a wedding, feeding relatives which represents how as a family we are united and will feed each other both literally, emotionally, and spiritually.
A baby’s first solid meal is kiribath. As will all “firsts”, it is celebrated with relatives in attendance with a decorated pahana brass rooster lamp watching over. On News Year’s day (in April) a pot of milk is heated until it boils over, representing luck flowing into the new year.
So, there was no way that I wasn’t going to have kiribath back in our home in Canada and if it meant my using a rice cooker, so be it.
It is the smell of home, of comfort, and to me, a blend of Asian and Canadian traditions.
If you make it at home, put your face close to it, enough so the steam lightly fans your face, and you can smell Sri Lanka ... and maybe even your mother, no matter her nationality.