How To Eat Like a Goat-Herding Italian Hare Krishna

An Early Morning at the Fish Market

lindsaylauren — Sun, 1 Nov 2015 02:36:00 GMT

Our final adventure in Colombo required a very early morning – I set my alarm for 4:50am, if I recall correctly. We left before dawn, headed towards Negombo, about an hour north of the capital.

Bleary eyed, we arrived at the town’s daily fish market, full of people who’d forgotten about sleep hours before. With the noise, and crowds, and powerfully hot sun, soon we were awake, too.

Because so much of the fishing in North America is done in big, industrial trawlers, it’s difficult to buy fish right off the boat. In Negombo, however, the ocean-to-table chain is visible, and it’s short: the open air market sits just off the beach, a mere hundred metres from the water.

Early in the morning, the fishing boats come in with their day’s catch, a constant throng of birds circling overhead, each hoping to snag breakfast.

First, the smaller motorized boats arrive, and later, the wind-powered catamarans, which were still nodding along the horizon when we walked onto the beach.

To protect themselves from the hot sun, I noticed many of the fishermen had pulled squares of cloth over their heads and tied under their chins, making them look like endearing, old Eastern European grandmothers.

Once the boats were hauled onto the beach, the fish were shaken from nets or pulled off lines, and loaded into buckets.

Finally, they were carried across the sand to the market, all of a stone’s throw away, and sold directly to customers.

Some vendors, many of whom were older women, stood behind tables loaded with a diverse number of fish and prawns, while others squatted on the ground, a small arrangement of one species laid out before them.

Along one side of the market stood a row of men, each behind his own tree trunk butcher block.

They’re the people to visit once you’ve purchased your fish, and want them de-scaled, de-finned, and chopped up for a small fee.

Just outside fish market another one had popped up, this one with fruit, vegetable, and spices for sale.

There were piles of rambutans, cinnamon sticks, and fresh turmeric, as well as bowls of cashews soaking in water. Seth and I each downed an entire king coconut; not realizing until our first sips just how dehydrated the beach had made us.

We returned to the van, and drove 10 minutes to another nearby fish market. This one seemed to be more of a wholesale operation, and was predominantly filled with men. They were far more interested in me and my camera than at the first stop….

During our visit to Negombo I purchased a fish – my very own fish! – and took it back to the Mirage, where Chef Lloyd Opatha taught me how to make fish curry. He’s a popular figure in Sri Lanka, the host of a cooking show and a long-time chef in the hotel industry.

Thus, my last official Passport and Plate meal was a classic curry, made with fish I’d picked out that morning from a beach just north of where I ate it. The coconut broth was subtly spiced and sweet, colourful with chili, curry leaves, and a spoonful of sambal. I ate it in the hotel restaurant, a wall of windows next to made turquoise by a view of the ocean. Of course, there was also a cup of tea on the table, a reminder of my days in Hill Country.

It is difficult to convey just how much I appreciated this opportunity, this once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore Sri Lanka through food. World Nomads could easily just sell insurance, re-tweeting cool travel stories and sharing remarkable pictures on Instagram. But they don’t. They’ve made their company about so much more, by creating programs like Passport and Plate and letting people like me experience a life outside the one I already know.

Thank you to Alicia, Pari, Jesse, and the whole team at World Nomads for working so hard to make our trip a success. Thank you to Asanga for guiding and translating so many conversations, and to Deepal, our driver, for safely and smoothly getting us everywhere!

Finally, thanks to videographer Seth Coleman, who followed me around with a camera the whole time, and put up with my often inarticulate, heat-exhausted sound bites. I mean, there are only so many times you need to hear someone say, “I’m really sweaty!” on camera. He put together these three brilliant short videos about my trip, each of which I am proud to share here, here and here.

So what should you consider your one takeaway from all of these posts? VISIT SRI LANKA. It’s that simple. You won’t regret it.

Thanks so much for reading,

Lindsay

Arriving in the Big City

lindsaylauren — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 14:23:00 GMT

The final few days of our trip were spent in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital.

In moving around the city, Asanga mentioned several times how much faster and more convenient it was to travel. During the decades-long civil war, Colombo was riddled with checkpoints, meaning you could be stopped and questioned multiple times, even on a short journey.

Though the war ended six years ago, only now is the city’s nightlife finally returning, as people start to become accustomed to life without a curfew, or fear of random attacks.

We drove into Colombo with such ease, even I was surprised. I’d become so used to winding country roads that the highways with passing lanes were a true novelty. As we neared the city, we passed flooded fields filled with water buffalo. They provided some of the milk for the curd I’d been eating every morning, topped with a liberal pour of sweet treacle.

Colombo felt enormous after our time in Hill Country, a sprawling city in which old Sri Lanka shares space with a modern city on the rise.

Tuk tuks and unassuming shops selling short eats were still on offer everywhere, but now there were also luxury cars on the roads, grand hotels sweeping palm-lined boulevards, and seemingly more women dressed in western-style clothing than saris.

We stayed right on busy Galle road, with nothing but a hundred feet and a railroad separating my room from the ocean.

Further north, the grassy Galle Face Beach is filled with people picnicking, flying kites, and buying snacks from vendors along the promenade.

We wandered around there on our first evening, amused by the large groups of school kids high on relative independence and the thrill of the big city.

A mass of adorable, giggling girls approached me, wanting to know where I was from, and declaring “You are white! Nice white! Very, very white!”

Next, we headed to the Old Dutch Hospital, a restored complex that houses some of the city’s trendiest restaurants. Built during the 17^th century, the building was indeed a hospital for Dutch colonizers, and later used to store arms during the war.

We ate at two of the restaurants there, the first being Ministry of Crab, a highly-successful collaboration between well-known Sri Lankan Chef Dharshan Munidasa and two of the country’s most famous cricket stars.

Chef Dharshan took the time to sit down with us, and talked about the philosophy behind the restaurant. A few years ago, he began questioning the fact that most of Sri Lanka’s best seafood – lagoon crabs, in particular – were all being exported to places like Singapore.

He made it his mission to keep Sri Lanka’s best food at home, and celebrates their bounty of seafood, spices, produce, and all-things-coconut at the restaurant.

We feasted on chili crab, enormous prawns in black bean sauce, dragged chunks of street bread through slicks of garlicky chili oil, and spooned up sticky coconut rice. Later, we joined Chef Dharshan at his flagship Japanese restaurant, the now 20 year-old Nihonbashi, and snacked on izakaya, like grilled chicken hearts and sashimi.

Another evening, we hung out with Harpo Gunarathna, a local restauranteur and entrepreneur. He started his career decades ago as a DJ, at a time when they were essentially unheard of in Sri Lanka. He worked his way up in the hotel and entertainment world, eventually opening his own hotel, followed by several restaurants, and even a hotelier school.

We ate dinner at his Colombo Fort Café, also located in the Dutch Hospital, tucking into the “Really Simple Prawn Curry” with a fried egg and fresh bread, Ceylon fish tacos, and mac and cheese.

Later, we joined Harpo and his two business partners at Park Street Mews, part of another stylishly-restored historic area in Colombo.

I got to order as many different kinds of ice cream as I wanted, including avocado. It was a dream.

Next up: my final post in Sri Lanka. It’s all fish markets and mongers!

In Search of Rubies and Sprats

lindsaylauren — Thu, 8 Oct 2015 01:39:00 GMT

After our somewhat cloak-and-dagger glimpse into the tea world, it was time to leave Hill Country and head south, to where it’s truly hot. All that time in the mountains I’d thought it was scorching, but I was actually just lukewarm in comparison to what was coming. We travelled south to Ratnapura, a region famous for its gems. The landscape became a lighter green as we drove, dominated by coconut palms and quilt-like rice paddies.

When Asanga told me we’d be visiting a gem mine, my mind immediately jumped to past mining experiences, assuming there would similarities. Like when my family visited a nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario, and we put on hard hats before descending hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface by elevator. With the exception of the sky remaining upward and my name still being Lindsay, this mining experience was different in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY.

The owner of the mine met us on the road, and we headed by foot to his operation. There were no trucks, no hard hats, and certainly no elevators. Instead, there was a small hut, several pits, and five men in the centre of a rice paddy.

Most mines in the region are located in fields; one year they’re growing Asia’s most popular staple, and the next they’re dug up with the hope that sapphires and rubies lie within them. Such an endeavour is a huge gamble, with thousands of rupees and hundreds of hours funneled into a literal pit, and absolutely no guarantee that any of it will pay off. These mines are optimism at its finest, and there’s no way I’d survive a single day of work at any of them.

Upon arrival, all I was required to do was stand, and in that kind of heat, I had a hard time accomplishing my task.

While I stood, the men were digging and hauling up weighty loads of mud, then sifting through basket after basket of rocks.

The work is excruciatingly hard, and to both fuel themselves and deal with the heat, the miners’ food is heavy with chilies and salt. When it comes to their midday meal, I must say this: Sri Lankan miners are so much more refined than most Canadians I know (including myself).

These guys don’t pack themselves a disappointing sandwich, apple, and granola bar for lunch. What they do is stop work, build a small fire, and prepare a fresh tomato and coconut curry to be eaten with rice, coconut sambal, fish, and salad.

With nothing but a piece of corrugated tin supported by tree trunks as their kitchen!

In an act of extreme generousity, they shared this beautiful lunch with us, including the dish called “sprat curry,” which I was crazy about. Sprats are a small, oily fish that are salted and dried, then mixed up with spices.

Though the fish themselves are bigger, their intense saltiness and flavour reminded me of the dried anchovy salads that always come as part of the Korean banchan.

The miners waited to eat until we’d enjoyed ours, all the while encouraging us to have seconds.

I obliged by scooping another half spoonful into my bowl, but felt too guilty to eat any more. I wasn’t involved in the hard labour – why do I deserve extra sprats??! They also made sure the coconut shell I’d been handed was always full of water, and even humoured me by agreeing to take a photo.

After we left the field, I was taken up to the mine owner’s house to meet his family, including his wife and very elderly mother. I asked if I could take her picture and she too obliged, then grabbed my hand and sat me down next to her.

She looked well into her 90’s, and I wished I could’ve heard her stories. So much has happened in Sri Lanka over her lifetime.

Their home – their mercifully cool home - was filled with Christmas lights, garden ornaments, and shrines. If this is typical for Ratnapuran homes, I cannot tell you, but it sure was colourful.

Next, we’re onto Colombo for our final few days.....

Tea-Induced Time Travel

lindsaylauren — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 02:26:00 GMT

When I sat down to write this, I had a cup of tea next to me. When I sat down to finish it, I had another cup of tea. A third cup will keep me company as I edit the photos. Tea is my ritual, my companion, my main source of caffeine. For some reason, though my body has opted to reject coffee, it has enthusiastically embraced the concept of dried, fermented leaves soaked in water.

By day 5 of the trip I’d seen tea on the bush and watched how it’s picked, but I hadn’t yet seen how it’s transformed into something drinkable. So, after our very filling lunch of idli and chutney, we stopped by the Dambatenne Tea Factory, which was built 125 years ago by Sir Thomas Lipton and is still in operation.

Factories like this one are scattered all across Hill Country, though some now sit empty, their windows cracked and grounds disheveled.

(www.srilankaitinerary.com)

This visit was one of the most surreal experiences of the trip, and it pains me we weren’t allowed to film or photograph inside. I’ve found a few images online that help, but I guess I’ll just have to buckle down, act like a writer, and use my words…….

Being inside the tea factory was the closest I’ve come to time travel. Visually speaking, these factories haven’t changed much since they were built; they’re tall, box-like structures that scream “English Industrial Revolution!” complete with ornamental hedgerows out front.

Inside the lobby (where we were allowed to photograph), the walls were hung with prints of colonial-era propaganda: idealized images of tea planters (the name given to British and Scottish plantation managers) and hyper-sexualized drawings of Sri Lankan women.

With the exception of a few newer (circa 1960’s/70’s) machines, the factory itself looked as though nothing had changed in a century. Everything - including the workers themselves - was covered in a fine layer of tea dust, a sort of 19th century patina. Inside it was noisy, warm, and smelled like damp tea leaves, as though I’d stuck my nose in a teapot and inhaled. The workers wore faded green uniforms, and there was always someone sweeping with a twig broom, trying to keep back the endless tide of dust.

We climbed worn wooden stairs to the attic, where the newly-picked tea is spread to dry on massive tables.

(www.portalexport.wordpress.com)

Next, it moves down to the main floor, where an elaborate series of drying machines and grinders transform millions of leaves into powder. This powder is either packed down and left to ferment into black tea, or dried immediately to keep it green. A few more machines sort it according to quality, then the finished tea is packaged into large sacks and sent to auction.

Another aspect that felt old-worldly was the bureaucratic order of the place. While standing in a tea factory in clear view of tea, cups, and a kettle, we were denied a cup because, “The man who makes the tea is not here today.” The man who gave us the tour delivered this ironic news, then asked if we would like to buy some boxes of bagged tea. Seth asked if we could buy some, open it, use the kettle to boil water, and make a cup ourselves (the poor guy just really needed to get some footage of me drinking tea). Nope. Denied. We thanked our guide very much for the tour, then drove back into Bandarawela (still chuckling and shaking our heads) and got ourselves a cup in a small café.

It was busy with people consuming trays of short eats and butter cake, as well as hoppers made by a vendor out front.

Our time travel continued that evening. We drove high into the mountains, through the town of Ella, to visit the home of a tea planter, the title given to a high-ranking plantation manager. For reasons I’m not totally clear on, but obviously respect, we weren’t allowed to photograph him either, or know the name of the tea corporation for which he works. By this time, Seth and I were wide-eyed - we had no idea the tea industry was so clandestine!

Our host was a tall and handsome man who, for censorship purposes, I’ll call Frank. Here’s the curious thing about Frank: he’s a born and raised Sri Lankan who lives the life of a 19th century white British tea lord.

The hierarchical system that supports the tea economy is almost exactly as it was a century ago, except now it’s all Sri Lankans running the show. People like Frank are hand-selected out of school to become “planters” (the managers), and undergo intensive training in every aspect of the industry. Once they’re managing operations for a company, they assume the house (and lifestyle) of the white colonial managers who came before them. Frank, therefore, lives in a huge house at the top of a mountain all by himself, with grounds maintained by several gardeners and employees who do all the cooking and cleaning.

When we arrived, we sat on the verandah and admired the view, which that evening included a rainbow.

One of the servants brought us tea served in English China, and we sat and talked. We spoke about Frank’s education, how it’s nearly impossible to find tea that’s sourced from a single plantation (though that’s what we were drinking, an obvious privilege), and eventually headed inside to the kitchen. Along the way we passed the house’s multiple dining and living rooms, almost all of which had a wind chime in the doorway.

I helped cook a dinner made entirely of tea; we prepared a pork curry flavoured with tea leaves, rice cooked in tea, and a tea-based custard.

Though we cooked everything on electric elements, the back of the kitchen had a huge empty space, where I’m assuming the wood-fired hearth used to be. We were served the meal in the dining room, the walls of which were covered in black and white pictures of composers and classical musicians, and had a fireplace, as did every other room I saw.

Architecturally speaking, the house had such a colonial air to it, I felt as though we should all have been gathered in the drawing room dressed in safari gear, post-leopard hunt, while servants delivered trays of whisky and cigars. So much has changed in Sri Lanka over the past century, and yet there are moments when it feels as though time has stood still.

Time to make myself another cup of tea.

A Tamil Lunch

lindsaylauren — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 09:42:00 GMT

“They’re called Italy.”

“Excuse me?”

“They’re called Italy.”

“I’m sorry….what?”

“Idli. I-D-L-I.”

“Oooooooh…..”

Such was the conversation I had with Siva, our kind, soft-spoken guide in Bandarawela, as he was trying to describe a dish on the table for lunch. He comes from a family of Tamil tea pickers, the Tamils being the foundation of the tea industry’s workforce. Siva and his son Sanju, sister-in-law Susikala, and mother-in-law Pakyawathi hosted us for lunch one day in their tiny, colourful home.

As with many in the area, the predominantly Tamil village in which they live clings to the foothills of a small, lush valley. It’s a patchwork of square homes and neatly-kept terraced gardens, where the men grow “English vegetables” such as carrots, potatoes, and peas. We descended a series of earth and stone steps to get to Siva’s house, where I was welcomed with a bindi on my forehead by the beautiful Susikala.

Inside, Susikala and Pakyawathi took me into the narrow, smoky kitchen, and showed me the hearth on which they were preparing idli, a staple in Tamil cuisine. They’re made by preparing a batter with the soaked and ground pastes of urad dal (lentils) and rice, mixed with a bit of salt.

It’s left to ferment, then poured into molds and steamed over water.

Alternatively, the batter can be thinned out and fried into pancake-like dosas. Either way, they’re filling, have a faintly sourdough flavour, and are the perfect vehicles with which to eat accompanying chutneys.

In past lives, I’d only ever thought of chutney as a sticky sort of jam, made with big chunks of spiced mango and onion. Not so, however. There are dozens of varieties of Tamil chutneys to be eaten alongside idli and dosas, and it’s easiest to think of them as fresh sauces, often with coconut as their base.

We ate green chutney with fresh coconut and mint, as well as spicier red chutney with chili, cumin seeds, fennel, black mustard, turmeric, and curry leaves.

They were the sauces to end all sauces – I just couldn’t stop spooning them onto my plate.

There was also aama vadai (fried lentil fritters), sambaru (a stew of lentils, beans, and potatoes), and payasam for dessert, a sweet soup made with sago, vermicelli noodles, plums, cashews, sugar, salt, and coconut milk.

We scooped it up with crisp, salted pappadums.

After lunch we stood outside, and Siva talked about his family. While his parents and grandparents had all worked in the tea industry, his own family did not, which seemed to be a growing trend in the area. His son’s education was clearly his utmost priority, and he spoke of how he and Sanju wake up early each morning to walk the 3 km to where he catches the school bus.

Though the quality of schools can vary, education in Sri Lanka is free, and it’s clear that people value it. Everywhere I went, I saw enormous crowds of impeccably-groomed school children, and as we passed two girls in Siva’s village, they waved hello and shouted, “School pens? School pens?” at us. Fortunately, I had several pens in my bag to give them, and was struck by the request. They didn’t desire candy, or money, as I’m often asked for when travelling. These girls wanted tools to school, and they held those pens up like trophies.

Thank you so much to Siva and his family for hosting us for lunch. I truly could not have enjoyed it more.

Where To Get a Great View + Killer Snacks

lindsaylauren — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 00:06:00 GMT

Our epic, 7-hour train journey from Kandy to Bandarawela took us high into the mountains. I was now in tea. RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT.

As we pulled in, green mountains dominated the view, and a sign on the outskirts of town welcomed us to “The Cool Climes of Bandarawela” (I, for one, continued to sweat). We checked into the Orient Hotel, and I discovered my room overlooked a golden-domed mosque.

That night, we climbed up to the hotel’s rooftop patio, where I was privy to yet another cooking class.

We made chicken curry and pumpkin curry, the latter of which was thickened by a sort of powder we made from toasted, ground rice.

The chefs cooked up many more dishes for us and we feasted, drinking bottles of Lion Lager to cool down, and perpetually waving to keep the mosquitos at bay.

The next morning, we set out to ascend Lipton’s Seat, the point from which Scottish tea baron Sir Thomas Lipton once surveyed his tea-dom (from a seated position, we can assume). As we drove along a serpentine mountain road, Seth all of a sudden shouted “STOP!” and we pulled over abruptly. He’d spotted a group of women picking tea, and we scrambled up the steep hillside to ask if we could film them. They were absolutely game.

Here are a few fascinating things about tea pickers in Sri Lanka’s Hill country: they’re almost always women, they’re typically the primary breadwinners in their families, and most of them do not look young.

In fact, many are grandmothers who’ve been doing it for decades. They work 8-9 hours a day in the baking heat, then head home to cook dinner, clean house, and look after their children or grandchildren. In other words, they are super heroes, and friendly ones at that.

All the tea pickers we met were gracious with our requests to film and photograph, and one woman even made sure to give me an address to which I could send some photos. We also tipped them, which I would certainly recommend if you’re a tourist who’s planning (as we did) to interrupt the their work day.

The women were dressed in coarse, sturdy clothes, and collected the leaves in sacks hanging from their heads and down their backs. I was told women have traditionally made up the tea-plucking work force because of their dedication to quality, rather than quantity. Their husbands typically maintain the family garden, growing food to be harvested year-round.

As we continued up, we came across another group of pickers who were their morning break.

Nearby, sacks bursting full with tea leaves - the morning's work - sat waiting to be collected.

They poured me a cup of tea, and sliced into a sweet, fresh peach to offer as a snack. This picture of them, a colourful mass at the edge of a mountain, is one of my favourite images of the entire trip.

Many switchbacks later, we finally reached Lipton’s Seat, a narrow ridge of land between two immense valleys.

Perhaps as Sri Lanka’s tourism industry grows, this site will become built-up and commercialized.

For now, however, it’s as simple as can be: there’s An Unbelievable View, and a Very Modest Shop That Serves Really Good Food.

By modest, I mean a small hut with a dirt floor and the most basic of kitchens. A piece of cardboard serves as the cutting board, and there’s a single gas burner with a pot of oil for frying.

We sat outside on plastic lawn chairs, and were brought tea and snacks. There were platters of roti and patties, which are a tamil food similar to samosas, all served with a intensely red chili sambal.

Spicy snacks at the top of the world, with a breeze? Nothing better.

The Tea Train

lindsaylauren — Tue, 1 Sep 2015 01:28:00 GMT

When a particular country is mentioned, my mind usually thinks of its landscapes. Someone says Bolivia, and I think of salt flats. For Iceland, it’s those mighty waterfalls. Italy is a neatly-laid vineyard. The words ‘Sri Lanka’ have always summoned thoughts of women plucking handfuls of tea, tiny figures within expansive, intensely green hills.

My mind is quick to associate Sri Lanka with tea, and that’s because over just a century and a half, tea has completely transformed the land, economy, and in many ways, the social and political structure, of central Sri Lanka. Tea arrived with colonization by the British, who planted it on every last undulation of the landscape. In doing so, they created the visual of Sri Lanka I now draw on.

My first real glimpse of tea country was on our last night in Kandy, when we drove up into the hills. Up, and up, and up, until the narrow but well-paved road gave way to tracks, and we all agreed we’d gone high enough.

In just 20 minutes, we were away from the city’s hum and into quiet rural villages, each made up of small, well-kept homes with corrugated tin roofs.

In the same kilometer we saw a Buddhist temple, Hindu temple, and Christian church, and drove past a large, red-earthed cricket pitch with a game in full swing. We passed a gathering of people who listened to a man with a clipboard, all of them surrounded by sacks of tea leaves - the results of a day’s work.

Of course, that’s the other thing we saw: hills of tea, stretching out eternally.

It was my first opportunity to examine, up close and in its purest form, the thing I’ve sipped nearly every morning for the past decade, the drink that brings me so much comfort. As a shrub, tea looks like something I might have found in my Grandparents’ garden, with the leaves themselves reminding me of fresh bay leaves.

At the time, it was hard to imagine how they become the dried, black, aromatic bits of matter that infuse into my hot water daily, but I’d learn that all later…..

The next day, we boarded a train and headed towards Bandarawela, a 7-hour journey famous for its grand displays of Hill Country.

This was one part of our trip I was most looking forward to, though I’d (very) pessimistically thought, “There’s no way it can be as beautiful as the images I saw online.” But as it turns out, it was even more-so.

I found myself torn between a desire to capture it on camera (an impossibility, of course), and wanting to experience it in the moment, camera in lap and jaw agape.

When we pulled into a station, vendors approached the train, hollering the name of their ‘short eat’ snacks on offer. My favourite call was the incessantly rolling “wadi-wadi-wadi-wadi-wadi-wadi-wadiiiiii” for ulundu wadi, savoury little fried donuts.

Halfway through the day, I purchased a bag of fried peanuts and curry leaves, and I can say, oily hands down, those spicy nuts + crunchy curry leaves were my favourite snack of the trip.

Another big gold star for curry leaves.

This entire post – all of it – is just to say this: if you go to Sri Lanka, take the train from the Kandy to Bandarawela, and bring money for snacks. It’s a journey that just can’t be beat.

Much more on tea to come…….

Unmarried in Kandy (and Other Stories)

lindsaylauren — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 11:46:00 GMT

Our last few days in Kandy were a flurry of pineapples and processions.

One evening, a local family – Kolitha, Deepthi, Chamodi, and Dilumi – hosted me for a cooking lesson and dinner.

Their home sat next to a flooded rice paddie, and their two shy, beautiful daughters welcomed me by placing a green betel leaf in my palm, a symbol of friendship and respect.

In the kitchen we set to work, first making a kind of quick-pickled, pan-fried vegetable chutney to be served with the curries.

Then we put on the kaha bath, a spiced rice made with ghee and coconut milk, then fried mustards seeds to get the dhaal started. The dish I quickly became obsessed with was pineapple curry, which began with the dissection of a whole, fresh pineapple.

In a clay pot over high heat, we fried it in coconut oil with spices, chili, and a few pinches of cane sugar, then finished the caramelized fruit with a pour of thick coconut milk. Once we began eating, it took every last bit of my willpower to avoid consuming the whole dish.

The spread also included spicy devilled beef; tiny, puffed pakoras; and a sweet, chocolatey biscuit pudding for dessert. This family was unbelievably kind to me, and damnit, they know how to cook. If they read this, I want them to know that fresh pineapple curry was the first thing I made once I’d returned to Canada!

The next morning we visited the Kandy Public Market, where I found more pineapples, every vegetable, fruit, spice, and fish in the region, and of course, plenty of friendly people.

The market is a mix of permanent stalls, both indoor and out, with one large main hall that’s crowded and noisy. Vendors hawk their produce by shouting good-naturedly, as much to each other as to potential customers, and most of the fresh food is sold by weight, with battered, ancient-looking hand scales used to determine the cost.

At one point, a tractor and trailer pulled through, and vendors (still yelling) scrambled to gather their food scraps to dump into the passing bin. I watched as one tiny, lithe man swung from a rope above his fully-enclosed stall and ran to catch the tractor before it left. When he returned, he swung gracefully back up to his perch, and resumed his endless sales pitch. A small, vegetable-vending Tarzan.

As I wandered through, I was offered samples of sticky tamarind and small cuts of fruit, answering the same three questions as I snacked:  

I am from Canada.
No, I am not married – he (Seth) is not my husband.
Yes, I am enjoying your country very much!

In Sri Lanka, it’s not just men who asked if I was married – it was everyone. Most people I spoke with for more than 10 seconds asked me about my marital status, then stared at me wide-eyed, but generally without judgement, when I answered “No.” They just didn’t quite know what to make of me, and I found it amusing.

(Still unmarried), I continued on to the indoor portion of the market, where a man stood behind a counter selling supplies for betel quids. They’re a mild, chewable drug that’s popular in many parts of Asia, and consist of an areca nut wrapped in betel leaves and coated in slaked lime.

They turn people’s mouths red, so if you’re not used to seeing them, the result is, well, awesomely terrifying. When I visited one of the market’s fish vendors, I found myself within a dimly-lit, fly-swarmed stand, being handed a winged fish by a man with an entirely red mouth. I can honestly say that was a first.

On our last evening, we found ourselves in a far more serene place.

The Temple of the Tooth, which sits on Bogambara lake, houses Sri Lanka’s most significant relic: one of the Buddha’s teeth. The temple has a golden roof and an endless stream of pilgrims moving toward it, though their path is now regulated within the vast complex.

In 1998, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) detonated a truck bomb in front of the temple, killing sixteen and injuring dozens more. Vehicles can no longer drive up to the main entrance, so we walked slowly up the long approach with everyone else, many of them carrying lotus flowers as an offering.The temple looked as though it had been carved out of sugar, and since we visited at dusk, the sky was gold.

Inside, drummers banged loudly, and we joined the crowd as it moved upstairs.

The temple is made up of shrines within shrines, like a sacred matryoshka doll, and the longer we stayed, the more doors we saw opened. Upstairs, there were huge lineups of people waiting for one in particular, which was opened on the hour and allowed a glimpse of an ornate, jewel-draped box. I think the tooth was buried within it, but to be honest, I’m not quite sure. I read somewhere that the real tooth may be hidden elsewhere….

We visited a room with centuries-old books handwritten on dried ola leaves, and as we left, saw hundreds of oil lamps burning in a small, glass-walled building. It was a completely different experience from our visit to the monks, but no less extraordinary.

Next post, we’ll be hopping on a train and riding the famous route through tea country to Bandarawela!

Taking Breakfast to the Monks

lindsaylauren — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 06:40:00 GMT

One morning in Kandy, we woke up very early – so early, the city’s many stray dogs were still sleeping, and the roads were not yet crowded with tuk tuks. We climbed into the van, and held on carefully to the containers of well-wrapped dishes we’d been handed. This was precious cargo; we were taking breakfast to the monks.

Though its religious diversity is astounding, Sri Lanka is predominantly a Buddhist society. The day before, Asanga had told me the monks at temples are fed by locals, who organize a rotating schedule amongst themselves. When it’s your day, you rise at daybreak, and transport a homemade breakfast – typically milk rice, fish curry, sambal, and some fresh fruit – to the temple.

The temple we visited was small, extremely modest in comparison to those that serve as pilgrimage sites. It sat up on a hill, and consisted of a series of living quarters, the small temple itself, a shrine, a bright white stupa, and a large outdoor area for classes. When we arrived, we removed our shoes at the door, and were led into the back kitchen area where we unwrapped the food. To the banging sounds of monkeys scrambling overhead on the tin roof, we prepared a special plate as an offering to the Buddha. When it was ready, I carried it up the stairs to the temple, and placed it on the shrine. From the kind monk who’d followed me in, I was instructed to unroll a mat, sit down, and place my hands in a prayer position. He sat next to me on a small stool, and began chanting.

I knelt, with the incomparable light of early morning filtering in, thread-like trails of incense rising up, and the words of a monk filling the colourful, sacred space. It was a privilege beyond comparison. My mind began its own sort of chant, reminding me that “Four days ago I was in East Vancouver, and now I am in Sri Lanka, in a Buddhist temple, bearing witness to this.” Sometimes, though absolute proof surrounds me, I find it difficult to believe things.

There was a moment when my meditative calm was broken by a fear my legs would fall asleep, and I would be unable to rise when instructed to do so. Or, I’d stumble up and be forced to clutch onto a piece of the shrine that ought not to be clutched, or I’d fall right over and have to be attended to by monks. As a person with a lengthy history of poor circulation and fainting spells, this was an absolutely realistic fear. My slightly cramped legs sustained me, however, and when the ritual prayers had been said, we rose (successfully) to our feet!

Then I was shown a part of the temple I hadn’t expected: the monk pulled back a blue satin curtain to reveal the Hindu God Vishnu. While the religious intricacies are far greater than I comprehend or could explain, the simple explanation is this: there has been a certain amount of crossover between Buddhism and Hinduism in Sri Lanka, a blend which reflects both the religions’ tolerance for other beliefs, as well as the social overlap of the two cultures as they co-exist on the island. It kind of felt like seeing a Koran in a church – such a sight is startling, but ultimately reassuring, as it implies a sense of understanding.

Afterwards, I spoke with Sri Amunugana, another one of the monks at the temple. Before we left, he tied a white string around my wrist, a sign of peace and protection.

Then, in an act that amusingly reflected modern times, he gave me his email address and username for the Asian version of Whatsapp. Monks may live simply, but they definitely move with the times. Also, as you can see here, I was pretty much a giant in Sri Lanka.

Close to the end of our visit, crowds of children were arriving for classes that could be considered the Buddhist version of Sunday School. They were impeccably groomed; the boys wore long tunics, while the girls were dressed in bright white saris, their hair in thick, shiny braids finished with ribbons.

It felt refreshing and surreal to have had this experience by 8am in the morning, with the whole day stretching out before us. Later that afternoon, the chef at the hotel taught me how to make ‘kiribath,’ the milk rice we’d taken to the monks.

It’s made with white rice, water, fresh coconut milk and salt, the finished result being a sticky, coconuty pan of pressed rice that’s cut into squares. It’s simple, and so, so GOOD. While we stirred the rice, the chef told me stories of his time as a cook at an American army base in Fallujah.

“Just four days ago I was in East Vancouver, and now I’m in Sri Lanka, learning to make rice milk from a chef who learned how to make lasagna in Iraq.”

You can bet I repeated that one a few times.

*(Just a note – I chose not to take pictures during this visit, as the combination of video + photography just seemed too much, and I wanted to enjoy the experience ‘untethered,’ if you will. Seth, however, as he was hired to do, filmed the whole experience, and kindly shared some beautiful stills from his footage. All the images in this post from the temple are his. Thank you, Seth!)

Making Sweets. SO MANY SWEETS.

lindsaylauren — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 04:29:00 GMT

Learning to cook from people is one of the greatest privileges I know. Watching experienced hands take ingredients and transform them into dishes is something I’ll never tire of, and more often than not, my cooking teachers and I haven’t shared the same language. Like in Sri Lanka, where I was fortunate enough to be taught how to cook Sri Lankan food on many occasions, including an entire afternoon dedicated to my favourite things: sweets.

A friend of our guide welcomed us into his home, along with his wife, sister-in-law, and several more of their friends. Typically, these women get together before a wedding or special occasion, and over several days make hundreds of traditional sweets to be enjoyed at the gathering. That day, they very graciously showed up and squeezed all that work into one afternoon. Just for us.

We spent most of our time moving between the kitchen and an outdoor area with an open wood-burning fire. Working together, these five women were a model of efficiency, a tightly-knit team happy share their secrets. For each sweet that was prepared, one woman became the obvious leader, with the others ready to support her in every way possible. She need only hold out her hand, and a spoon would be ready; the fire, which fuelled most of the cooking process, never lacked wood; and every dish was washed and put away as soon as it was no longer needed. I was in awe. Absolute, dumbstruck awe.

We (and I use the term ‘we’ loosely, since they did most of the work) prepared five different sweets that afternoon: mung kavum, undu walalu, welithalapa, aluwa, and kokis. Most, in one way or another, involved freshly-prepared coconut and white rice, which was pounded down into flour with an enormous pestle and mortar.

The process for mung kavum was painstaking: it first involved making a dough of mung bean flour, white rice flour, and black treacle (which is sort of like the maple syrup of Sri Lanka, made from the sap of the kithul palm). Once formed, the dough was rolled out, then carefully cut out into diamond shapes.

Next, a batter was made with egg, rice flour, a pinch each of salt and turmeric, and coconut milk.

Each diamond was dipped in the batter, and deep-fried in coconut oil over the wood fire.

Next up was undu walalu, which reminded me of the honey-soaked sweets in Greece. First, a dough was made from a paste of soaked and ground urad dhaal beans, rice, and thick coconut water. I was informed the consistency should be “that of a well mashed potato.” Salt was added to taste, and then the dough was spooned, about a cup at a time, into a special round cloth with a hole at its centre that was reinforced with extra stitching. Into a pan of hot coconut oil, the dough was squeezed out in rings, and fried until a deep golden brown.

The coils were then transferred to a pot of hot treacle, where they soaked up the honey-like syrup. Once cooled and ready to eat, undu walalu are crunchy, oily, sticky, sweet, and AMAZING. I ate one too many, and got a headache. It was totally worth it.

Welithalapa was another recipe that required multiple steps. First, pittu (a mixture of scraped coconut, salt, and rice flour) was prepared. The pittu was steamed in a basket over a pot of water, then broken into small pieces.

Next, sugar was caramelized in a pan, joined by treacle, cardamom, maduru (sweet cumin), and water, and stirred until the mixture began to thicken. Once the pittu was stirred in, the welithalapa was scooped out onto a banana leaf-lined basket, and allowed to cool before being cut into squares.

Aluwa are similar, but they’re made with ground cashews, and are pressed into a wooden mold to create shapes.

The most fascinating sweet preparation to watch was the kokis. A batter of coconut milk, rice flour, turmeric, salt, and an egg was mixed up while a pan of coconut oil was heated over the fire. Next came the very delicate process of frying the cookies: a metal mold in the shape of a butterfly, hanging from a long wooden stick, was first dipped into the hot oil, carefully lowered into the batter, and then put back into the oil.

When the batter began frying, and the cookie slipped from the metal mold. In order for this to happen seamlessly, the oil must be the right temperature, the mold must be heated up just enough (but not too much!), and the batter cannot go past the top of the butterfly design, lest it fry around the mold, rather than slip from it. It requires a great deal of skill and patience to fry koki properly, since they can only be made one at a time. The result are these gorgeous, lacy, incredibly thin fried cookies, which can be eaten in copious amounts since they’re not sweet.

We ate the desserts all afternoon as they were prepared, and then again with tea once the ‘buffet’ was ready. Just as I began worrying I’d tip over from fullness, our very generous hosts insisted we stay for dinner, so we followed up our dessert with a very large meal of curry. I left stuffed, smelling of smoke and treacle, and forever grateful to this family and their friends for sharing their knowledge with me.

Where My Favourite Foods Grow

lindsaylauren — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 07:28:00 GMT

In today’s world, we’re all very accustomed to eating foods that don’t grow where we live. Though I eat as locally as possible, I regularly use olive oil, throw cashews into my salads, and love coconut milk. I also eat chocolate…..all the time. Because I live so far from where these foods originate, I can’t help but think of cashews as having originated in bags, and that chocolate has ever existed outside of foil wrapping.

This is why I find it genuinely thrilling to see my favourite foreign foods actually in their native soil. I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw an almond tree and tasted a fresh almond. Or how about a tree weighed down with lemons? Or olives! Trust me, I could barely keep it together.

This is why my visit to a Sri Lankan spice garden was so exciting. Upon arrival we met with Bonny, a guide whose encyclopedic knowledge of Sri Lankan plants and their medicinal value was overwhelming.

The garden was shady and cool, its pathways lined with old coconut shells. Bonny led me from plant to plant, first having me guess what we were looking at, then blowing my mind each time he revealed what they were.

The only one I had a real hold on was cinnamon (it’s the bark from a tree - well done, me), and the rest were unveiled like wonderful surprises. This geometric vine creeping its way up a tree? Vanilla!

That apricot-shaped shell, encasing a nut wrapped in a gum-like red web? They’re nutmeg and mace!

After we walked through the garden, we sat in a small hut and Bonny showed me many of the oils and tinctures that can be derived from each plant, along with the ways in which they’re used to treat everything from muscle aches to digestive issues.

He did this while I sipped a milky tea with cocoa and banana essence, which he told me was healthy for a variety of reasons. I don’t remember the reasons, I just remember that it tasted like a milkshake.

THEN, to demonstrate the effectiveness of a highly-prized “red oil,” I got a surprise massage! An unexpected deep back massage by a trained masseuse in a Sri Lankan garden feels good, people.

Nice and drowsy from my treatment, I headed to the back of the garden for a cooking lesson from two cooks named Dharmawathi and Suresh (fortunately they were in charge of the open fire, not me).

They taught me to cook dahl, coconut sambal, and eggplant curry, the latter of which was one of my favourite dishes of the trip. The key to making many Sri Lankan curries is all in the prep: onion, garlic, ginger, and vegetables are cut ahead of time, spices are assembled, fresh coconut is shredded and squeezed to make coconut milk, and any meat or fish is chopped and ready to go. Once the actual cooking process begins, the flavours take form quickly, with everything added to the pan in a very specific order.

The mustard seeds, for example, need a few seconds in an uncluttered pan to fry and release their flavour, so they go in first. Onions, garlic, and ginger typically go in next, followed by the spices, vegetables and/or meat, and eventually a pour of the ‘second-squeeze’ coconut milk.

When making coconut milk, the first squeeze gives the thickest, creamiest milk, while the second squeeze is thinner. The prized first squeeze is used to finish the dish, only added at the end as the dish is coming off the heat.

At one point in the lesson, I sat on a small stool with a simple metal grater attached, and shredded a fresh coconut for the first time. While it would have taken me at least a half hour to scrape the flesh down to its shell, Dharmawathi’s technique was fast and precise, and she quickly had a pile of snowy-white shreds. We put them onto a granite slab, and used an oblong piece of granite to grind up the fresh coconut with chili into sambal.

We also cooked a jackfruit curry, which was carried over to the garden’s restaurant afterwards, where at least twelve other prepared dishes were waiting for us. When cooked into a curry, the chunks of jackfruit looked so much like braised pork, I think it would have been impossible to get an untrusting vegetarian or vegan to eat it. It was during that meal that I realized that Hill Country is actually a vegan’s paradise. So many of the dishes are derived from just coconut and vegetables, that it’s more likely the extreme carnivores might have a hard time finding meat, rather than the other way around.

I learned a great deal that day, both about foods I've adored for a long time, and ones that are completely new to me. Also, I am so pleased that I now picture the spice garden - not the inside of a bag - when I think of where cinnamon comes from.....

A Big, Colourful Kandy Market

lindsaylauren — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 04:43:00 GMT

After several hours on the road, we finally arrived in Kandy, a city with Bogambara Lake at its centre. The lake was constructed by King Sri Vikrama Rajasinha in the 19th century, with a square island that apparently used to be the king’s private bathing facility, and was connected to the palace by a secret tunnel. That’s one expensive bathroom.

Today, the lake is often surrounded by barefoot pilgrims in white, who are on their way to visit the sacred Temple of the Tooth. But more on that in another post…..

My first impression of Kandy? It is abundantly green, the kind of verdant heaven one might dream of when lost in the desert.

From the lake’s edges, the city rises up into leafy surrounding hills, where our hotel was.

My second impression of Kandy? I didn’t care about second impressions, I just wanted to sleep. By the time we arrived in the city I’d been up for 36 hours, and was grateful to crawl into a comfortable bed.

Only in the morning did I discover my room had a deck, and that deck had this view:

And this warning:

Noted.

The day began with a breakfast spread for six, served to just one (me).

After my first cup of Sri Lankan tea on Sri Lankan soil, I ate slice after slice of fresh pineapple while heaping spoonfuls of fish curry and coconut sambal over string hoppers. Before this trip, the word ‘hopper’ had only brought to mind images of tractors or bugs, but that quickly changed over breakfast. In Sri Lanka, hoppers aren’t just any food - they’re an absolute staple of the cuisine. String hoppers are flat clusters of roasted rice noodles, usually the size and shape of latkes. They’re a bit chewy, quite filling, and their lacy design is perfect for absorbing spicy sauces.

After my enormous breakfast, I met up with Asanga and Seth for our first day of exploring, and we headed down the hill to check out Kandy’s special Friday market.

Each week, in a parking lot wedged between the lake and an old British prison, dozens of vegetable and fruit vendors lay out their goods for the locals to browse. It’s a colourful spread of people and food, and it was first real experience in the Sri Lankan heat. At times it was so hot, it felt as though the sun hung just a few feet above my head. And I was in Hill Country, where everyone claims it’s ‘cool’!

The market was busy and diverse, full of foods I didn’t recognize, or had never seen in situ.

There were trucks with bananas tumbling off their flatbeds, mountains of shaggy brown coconuts, and vegetables the size of baseball bats.

I very quickly learned the difference between an immature jackfruit, which is chopped (very skillfully) with machetes and utilized in dishes as a vegetable, and a mature jackfruit, which has quickly transitioned to an extremely sticky texture and sweet, banana-like flavour.

I wandered amongst neatly-arranged piles of ginger, tapioca root, okra, squash, peppers, mangos, avocados, eggplants, onions, beans, and branches of dark green curry leaves. They’re another staple of Sri Lankan food, and something with which I am now completely obsessed. In Kandy, the vendors bound up the branches with equally-fragrant stalks of pandan, like beautiful – and very green - edible bouquets.

While at the market, just one day into my trip, I learned something about Sri Lankans as a people: they are friendly. So very friendly. As I moved through the crowds, I was met with nothing but warm, somewhat shy smiles. No one approached me as the obvious outsider, or pushed their product on me, or asked me for money. They just let me be, answering my requests for pictures with an easy-going nod.

I should mention that when I say ‘nod,’ I really mean ‘wobble’ – it’s much more of an ears-towards-shoulders situation than a chin-towards-chest. There is no direct translation for the head wobble, as famous in India as in Sri Lanka, but it generally means “sure,” or “I understand,” or is simply a way of acknowledging someone. The head wobble is so incredibly ubiqitous, it wasn’t long before I had the desire to answer a wobble with a wobble, and my head began to feel looser, like my neck was a slightly-uncoiled spring. This bobble-head habit was something I noticed Seth also picked up on, whether he was conscious of it or not.

After the market, we wandered down the street and met Mohammed, a Muslim street food vendor who’d just returned from the mosque. He has a modest stand, tucked into a gap within the city wall, and his setup includes a sack of tapioca root, a small cutting board, a knife, and a pot of hot coconut oil over a gas flame.

He spends his days chopping the dense tapioca into matchsticks or cubes, then frying them in oil until they’re pale golden. As customers come, he scoops the tapioca into small paper pockets made from students’ old homework, and sprinkles them with chili salt. We bought a bag, and they were a crispy, satisfying snack.

Mohammed also had a bowl of ‘Ceylon olives,’ which are made with a type of fruit that’s indigenous to the island. They look similar to European-style olives but have a softer texture, and are first boiled, then crushed, and pickled with salt, pepper, chili, sugar, and water. I would absolutely snack on them daily if I lived there.

Later in the day, we visited the Royal Botanical Gardens. Here are some pictures from our walk amongst the bamboo, jackfruit trees, and orchids. Plenty more food (including spices) to come…..

Welcome to Sri Lanka

lindsaylauren — Sat, 4 Jul 2015 12:25:00 GMT

When I grew up, my Grandmum sometimes talked about her time in Ceylon. She’d worked there as a nurse with the World Health Organization in the 1950’s, and also spent years in India, Indonesia, and Iran. As a child, I listened to her stories, not yet realizing that the country she called Ceylon was now known as Sri Lanka, or that she’d done an extraordinary thing. At the time, living and working abroad as a single woman was almost unheard of; the ‘ideal’ path was to settle down and keep a happy home for one’s husband and smartly-dressed children.

As a teenager, I finally drew the Ceylon/Sri Lanka connection, and as an undergrad, I interviewed my Grandmum and one of her old nursing pals about their adventures overseas. It was for a paper I wrote in one of my history classes, and their stories were endlessly remarkable – I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked for them sooner. Hearing little old ladies speak of encounters with rebel fighters while driving Red Cross trucks through the jungle was genuinely surreal.

My Grandmum passed away in 2010, after having lived a fulfilling 94 years. I just returned from a trip to Sri Lanka, and desperately wish she were still around so I could talk to her about it.

I was one of three fortunate souls chosen to participate in World Nomads’ Passport and Plate Program for 2015. The first edition took place in Italy, and this year myself, Suresh Doss, and Mahsa Fratantoni were selected to board planes headed for Asia. I travelled in Sri Lanka’s central Hill Country, Suresh took to the south, and Mahsa headed up north.

I left Vancouver with my backpack, camera, and enough sunscreen to protect my blindingly white winter skin, arriving 30 hours later in Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport. As soon as I walked off the plane, I felt an all-encompassing humidity, saw a Muslim man kneeling in prayer, and had that delicious, somewhat adrenalin-filled realization that I was somewhere new.

I met up with Asanga (my guide for the trip), Seth (our videographer), and Deepal (our driver), and together we set out on a seven-day adventure. We headed straight towards Kandy, our first of two bases for the trip. Located in the very heart of the country, the city is Sri Lanka’s cultural capital, as well as one of the last places to fall to colonization. This is a legacy they are proud of.

Our first hours were spent driving. I watched as the roadside, framed by our van’s windows, changed from scenes of a coastal city to the more lush, rural interior. We passed trucks filled high with jackfruit, and tuk tuks loaded up with fresh bread. As we climbed higher, the tropical forests turned a darker shade of green, accented by colourful banners leftover from a recent full moon festival.

We drove by bright white Buddhist stuppas, colourful Hindu temples, modestly-adorned Christian churches, and mosques, all the while listening to Asanga as he described the country’s diversity and tolerance when it comes to religion.

Eventually, we stopped for a snack of sweet, starchy red bananas (my first ever!) from a roadside vendor.

There were all kinds of fruits I’d never seen before, including musty wood apples, which looked like stones extracted from deep below the earth’s surface.

Later, we pulled over by a bridge, got out of the van, and looked up. At first, I thought we were watching an enormous flock of birds circling over the river and congregating (very noisily) in the trees.

But no, Asanga pointed out that those ‘birds’ were actually hanging upside down from the branches - we were looking at hundreds and hundreds of giant fruit bats!

Eventually I looked down to the water, and watched as a water monitor (an animal similar to a small crocodile) swam slowly to the shore, and crawled up into the grass. Yes, I was somewhere very, very new.

Check back soon for stories from my first few days exploring Hill Country……

Photos: Passport & Plate - "Tuscan" Besan Laddu

lindsaylauren — Fri, 6 Mar 2015 11:04:00 GMT

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter or ghee
2 cups chickpea flour (also called gram, besan, or chana flour)
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ cup shelled salted pistachios, roughly chopped
1 cup powdered sugar

How to prepare this recipe
Line a 9x9-inch pan with parchment paper and set aside.

In a stainless steel or non-stick 9-inch skillet, melt the butter or ghee over low heat. Add the 2 cups of chickpea flour, and stir until they’re well mixed. For the next 15-25 minutes, let the mixture simmer on low heat, stirring every few minutes to ensure it doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn. Keep this up until the mixture turns a dark, golden brown colour and takes on a nutty fragrance (the time this takes will vary depending on your heat source and pan). Once it’s golden brown, remove the pan from the heat and let cool for several minutes.

Next, stir in the cardamom, then the chopped pistachios, and finally the powdered sugar. Combine well, then press the mixture into the parchment-lined pan. Let it cool on the counter for 10-15 minutes, then in the fridge to harden up completely. Once it’s cooled, cut the laddu into 16 squares, or break it into chunks. Enjoy!

The story behind this recipe
Six years ago, I found myself in a Hare Krishna temple in Italy, plucking something off the top of my dessert and asking incredulously, “Wait, is laddu INDIAN?”

My time as a wwoofer - a Willing Worker on an Organic Farm – led me to that moment. When I was 24, I volunteered on a farm south of Florence, and spent my days herding 80 stubborn goats around the grape-covered hills. My hosts lived in a 400 year-old stone farmhouse, and when I climbed its stairs for the first time, the heady smell of incense filled my nose. Later, after my first meal of vegetarian curry, I learned that my born and raised Tuscan hosts were also practicing Hare Krishnas.

The greatest influence this had on my life was when it came to food. My host mother prepared both Indian and Italian dishes, and one of my favourite treats was laddu. She made it by cooking chickpea flour with butter and sugar until it turned dark brown, then pressed it into a pan and let it cool. Since chickpeas are common in Italian cooking, I automatically placed laddu (despite its name) into the “Beloved Tuscan Treats” category in my mind.

One evening, we trekked up to the local Krishna temple for a festival. Amidst the colourful music and dancing, an enormous cake depicting Krishna rescuing a town from a flood was paraded out (I was thrilled to discover this religion formally involved cake). Later, after an Indian feast, the cake was cut up for dessert. My plate included some of the mythical town’s river, as well as a chunk of laddu, which I removed from the icing and held up, confused. Slowly, and to the Italians’ amusement, I came to the realization that laddu is an Indian sweet, not a Tuscan one. Embarrassing? Yes. But all that really mattered is that my host mother shared her recipe with me, and its taste will forever be a reminder of that patchouli-scented stone house in the hills.

About Me Growing up, my Grandmother told me stories about her time as a nurse with the World Health Organization in Iran, Indonesia, India, and Ceylon. Her tales were remarkable not only because she’d travelled alone in the 50’s, but because she spoke of places so vastly different from quiet northern British Columbia where I grew up. Even before I learned Ceylon is actually Sri Lanka, I always knew I wanted to travel there; however, while I inherited my Grandmum’s love of exploring, it has been food - not nursing - that has propelled my adventures. During university, I cooked for tree planters in the woods of rural British Columbia, then earned a Masters of Food Culture and Communications at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy. In 2011, I spent an entire year combining my love of storytelling and eating as Tourism Richmond’s 365 Days of Dining food blogger, a job for which 1,507 applicants competed. After 365 consecutive blog posts, I launched my next adventure, called FEAST: An Edible Road Trip. Over 5 months, my friend and I travelled to all 10 Canadian provinces and 3 territories, covering over 37,000 km from the Pacific to the Atlantic and up to the Arctic. On www.edibleroadtrip.com we shared stories of Canadian food culture, and for our efforts won a Saveur Best Food Blog Award. I’m a curious writer who’s happy in front of a camera and up for eating anything, including frozen raw caribou dipped in fermented whale fat. I’ll tell you right now, that stuff is RICH!