ANOTHER SRI LANKAN DISH

Think of curry with a salty-soursweet taste and a bit more heat than in Indian cuisine, and you have the most popular dish from Sri Lanka, the island off the coast of India that was once a crossroads of European exploration and trade.

The title of the new book, A Feast of Serendib: Recipes From Sri Lanka ($51.48, Mascot Books), uses the ancient Persian name for the island, explains author Mary Anne Mohanraj, who moved to the United States from Sri Lanka at the age of two.

She presents her native cuisine in a big, informative book of more than 100 family-style recipes.

Waves of immigration — Portuguese, then Dutch, British and, more recently, Chinese — influenced island cooking, says Mohanraj, an associate professor in the English department of the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Her mother, who immigrated in 1973, did the heavy lifting in adapting dishes from her Tamil background to accommodate American ingredients.

Mohanraj redid the work, using newly available foods and fresh research into Sri Lankan recipes.

She cites cookbooks that helped her, in particular The Complete Asian Cookbook (Hardie Grant) by Charmaine Solomon, a veteran Australian writer who was born in Sri Lanka.

Shopping for the essential seasonings is easiest in Indian stores, but supermarkets increasingly stock these products, says Mohanraj, who includes one of the best ingredient chapters I have ever seen in a book.