A Feast of Serendib: Recipes from Sri Lanka by Mary Anne Mohanraj

  • Sri Lankan curry powder (page 18)

    from A Feast of Serendib: Recipes from Sri Lanka A Feast of Serendib by Mary Anne Mohanraj

    • Categories: Spice / herb blends & rubs; Sri Lankan
    • Ingredients: coriander seeds; cumin seeds; fennel seeds; fenugreek seeds; cinnamon sticks; whole cloves; cardamom seeds; dried curry leaves; cayenne
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Notes about this book

  • SULibraries on October 18, 2025

    641.5954 M697f 2020 (LOU)

  • mjes on June 17, 2020

    Pg 166 Cucumber salad - a nice break from sour cream or apple vinegar pickled cucumbers - cucumber, onion, chili, lime juice and coconut milk make this a unique salad. I lacked the optional Maldive fish flakes thanks to the pandemic.

  • imaluckyducky on June 16, 2020

    Absolutely fantastic book. Slowly cooking my way though it and it hits all the flavors I remember from my room mate's cooking and my brief visit to Sri Lanka.

Notes about Recipes in this book

  • Egg curry (Muttai kari)

    • jenburkholder on January 27, 2024

      This was so lovely, mild, sweet, and creamy, just absolute comfort food. Good textural contrast from the raisins and the cashews. Served with pol sambol and a rather fiery stir-fried cabbage (and rice, of course!)

  • Green bean varai

    • jenburkholder on April 16, 2023

      Good green bean side. Ended up adding some generous squeezes of lime.

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  • ISBN 10 1645432750
  • ISBN 13 9781645432753
  • Published Mar 06 2020
  • Format Hardcover
  • Page Count 288
  • Language English
  • Countries United States
  • Publisher Mascot Books

Publishers Text

We come together with other Sri Lankans homelander and diaspora, Sinhalese and Tamil, Buddhist and Hindu and Christian and Muslim over delicious shared meals. Sri Lanka has been a multi-ethnic society for over two thousand years, with neighbors of different ethnicities, languages, religions, living side by side. We try to teach our children to be welcoming to all, to share our unique cultural traditions. That is part of what it means to be Sri Lankan, what it has always meant.

Dark roasted curry powder, a fine attention to the balance of salty-sour-sweet, wholesome red rice and toasted curry leaves, plenty of coconut milk and chili heat. These are the flavors of Sri Lanka, a South Asian island at the crossroads of centuries of migration and trade.

Can we choose the good parts of our culture to cherish, and leave the darker aspects behind? I hope so. I hope food can help provide a pathway there. Come together at our table, sharing milk rice and pol sambol, paruppu and crab curry. Linger over the chai just one more cup. Eat, drink, and share joy.

In A Feast of Serendib, novelist and post-colonial academic Mary Anne Mohanraj introduces her mother's cooking and her own American adaptations, providing an introduction to Sri Lankan American cooking that is straightforward enough for a beginner, yet nuanced enough to capture the unique flavors of Sri Lankan cooking.

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