Book facts
Elaborate everyday meals - sumptuous Sunday lunches, delectable “tiffins” produced and presided over by Granny Brohier; the very satisfying early supper which generally started with a soup (beef, fish or vegetable), and might be followed by a main meal chosen from a variety of possible menus - seer fish prepared according to a Dutch recipe, or a Portuguese meat stew, or perhaps stringhoppers, (laterias as the Dutch called them), taken with a Dutch specialty in the form of a thick chicken and cabbage soup, our own pol sambol and seeni sambol, and egg ruling which might be described as a Dutch version of the English scrambled egg. These delicacies are only a few of many enticing foods for which recipes are given.
There are accounts of the distinctive birthday parties given by the Burghers and the two traditional Dutch Burgher celebrations held in December. The first of these was the singularly Dutch event known throughout Holland as the `Sint Nicholas Fete’, celebrated in Colombo at the DBU on December 5. St. Nicholas, unlike his universally-known counterpart Santa Claus, came attired in the full regalia of a Bishop and he made an impressive entry as he rode in astride a tall white horse to distribute presents to the children. The run-up to Christmas was full of excitement, with carol-singing aplenty from house to house, and other cherished rituals.
Every Burgher home was redolent with the inviting aroma of good cooking emanating from the kitchen, in preparation for Christmas Day. Deloraine writes that ‘Christmas was the happiest occasion in the Burgher calendar’ and she recounts her nostalgic memories of this season as celebrated in her own parental home.
I noted with some surprise that breakfast is dismissed with only a mention of a ‘light breakfast’ on Sundays prior to setting out for church. I imagined that people with such a penchant for good eating would have enjoyed the kind of hearty breakfast relished by the British of colonial times. Deloraine enlightens us about the origin of many dishes which we might loosely term as Dutch or even as Sri Lankan. She makes