Serendip by Peter Kuruvita
Editor Keith Kendrick is transported to Sri Lanka through its vibrant, colourful and fragrant cuisine
Sri Lanka is one of those bucket list destinations that has eluded me. In the heady days when holidays were a taken-for-granted part of our lives, many of my colleagues had visited the teardrop-shaped island at the bottom of India and raved about the people, the scenery, the beaches and, most of all, the food. This inspired me to take a course in Sri Lankan cookery (cooksrilankan.co.uk) and then to plan a family holiday to the country in 2019. It never happened. Terrorists struck; our holiday was cancelled. One day, maybe. Until then, I sate myself with cooking, and Peter Kuruvita’s Serendip cookbook is inspirational.
Emotionally, it’s a tribute to Peter’s dad, Wickramapala, who had left home on an Indian motorcycle many years earlier to find his fortune in the UK, and to the Kuruvita clan who still live in Sri Lanka.
Practically, it’s a gateway to the island’s cooking, taking you on a journey from spice blend basics through chutneys, sambals and pickles, on to every curry imaginable, from beef, chicken, fish and seafood to cucumber, beetroot and pineapple, and finishing with vibrant, aromatic desserts and cakes.
A word to the wise: this is a cuisine that requires an investment of time and e ort. Some ingredients need to be sought from specialist retailers, and some recipes are lengthy: an ordinary Sinhalese curry, for example, can contain up to 13 herbs and spices. But the rewards are dishes that are vibrant, colourful, fragrant and complex.