Viimeinenkään pitempiaikainen majapaikka Kandyssa ei jättänyt meitä nälkäisiksi. Täällä tuli ehkä tehtyä enempi ruokaa kotosalla niin lounaaksi kuin iltaruoaksi. Ensinnäkin siksi, että vettä satoi ensimmäiset 3 viikkoa melkein koko ajan eikä aina hotsittanut lähteä suhailemaan sateessa kylille ruokailemaan. Toiseksi siksi, että täällä keittiö oli ehdottomasti parhaiten varustettu – oli jopa grilli, jota kylläkin käytettiin ensimmäisen kerran vasta sitten kun liesien kaasu loppui eikä heti saatu lisää 🙂
Aamupaloja tuli tehtyä neljän viikon aikana melko monta, vaikkei ihan jokaista päivää oltukaan asunnolla. Päivän tärkeimmän aterian sisältö vaihteli simppelistä jogurtti-myslistä aina suurempaan kavalkadiin sisältäen niin paahtoleipää ja munakasta kuin hedelmäsalaatteja ja tuoreita mehuja.
A simple breakfast at home – yogurth with muesli, toested bread with cheese and freshly made watermelon-papaya juice
A bit more hearty breakfast – sri lanka style masala omelet, toast, fresh juice and tea & coffee
The Christmas Day breakfast would not do without the rice porridge. This time though it was kind of a cross between that and local version called kiribath. Fresh fruits and juice and toast completed the meal.
The breakfast at Avasta Resort & Spa in Anuradhapura. Apparently you could not get it without the chicken sausages, which sadly were left un-eaten, even though Eero took a small nibble on one of them.
New Years day breakfast at Ohiya Hill Safari Eco Lodge. I can’t say the food there would be the main reason to visit, but this special breakfast was nice, including two types of kiribath, toast, eggs – and good company.
Rice & Curry on Sri Lankan perusruokaa. Sitä saa lähestulkoon joka kulmalta niin päivällä kuin illallakin eikä annos ole yleensä kovin kallis. Hinta pyörii useimmissa paikoissa euron molemmin puolin. Sitä tuli syötyä niin ravintoloissa kuin take-awayna, mikä on näppärä tapa saada halpa ja hyvä lounas kotiin vietäväksi.
A rice and curry in a road side diner. Basic price gives you the selection of a few veg curries and on top you can buy “add-ons” like the fish curry we have on separate plate. Tasty and cheap.
A rice & curry at one of our favorite restaurants which conveniently was also the closest one. Perhaps not as great as the other dishes on the plate, nor it was not the biggest portion out there, but nonetheless still quite good. In the back is veg club sandwich which on the other hand was excellent. As well as the pink faluda drink.
Take-away rice & curry from a railway station restaurant. Neatly packed in a plastic and newspaper wrapping. Speciality here is the soya curry on the right. This one was a bit spicy as the restaurant’s main clientele is locals.
In some places if you order the rice & curry for two, you get them on shared plates like here. Then you will probably get even more food than having separate portions – even too much! Eero’s expression reveals the spiciness of these curries.
Rice & curry at a bit more fancier place. For the same price you could get some 7-8 sets from a street diner. Good, but not that good, though the beetroot curry was very nice. The pasta we also had was a nice for a change.
Jo ennen lähtöä fiilisteltiin että täältä saa dosaa joka on yksinkertaistettuna etelä-intialainen täytetty lettu. Tai sinnepäin. Jotkut tykkää kuin hullu puurosta ja jotkut ei. Me ollaan sitä ensimmäistä. Harmillisen vähän tuli kuitenkin niitä syötyä ja lopulta siitä paikasta mistä sai parhaat niin haettiin vain kerran mukaan.
The best dosas we had. One is masala dosa and other is onion dosa. Usually they are served with some gravy which you dip the dosa in – or coconut sambol around here.
Another version of the masala dosa on the right. On the left is the Sri Lankan kottu which is basically a mix or different vegetables fried with spices. Simple but very delicious.
Rice & curry ja dosa ei tosiaan ollut ainoa mitä syötiin vaan välillä tuli otettua muutakin.
Unlike in Finland, Sri Lanka has quite a few Baskin Robbins outlets. We tried their ice cream once.
Not too many places offer Western style salads. This place was a bit on the “hip” side and had all this kind of stuff on the menu, which naturally attracted quite a few western tourists in.
One of the surprising things we found (via Tripadvisor) was The Soya Food Centre which served all kinds of food based on soya – even ice cream 🙂 The food was super good and no wonder the place was packed with locals on a hot day having cones of frozen soya.
One of the best meals we had was in a place called Muslim Hotel. Despite the odd name they had great food. Here we have the kottu and roti at the bottom and egg biriyani at the top. In the middle there is again the most excellent drink faluda shake.
Again something different. Our New Year’s eve special dinner at Hill Safari Lodge in Ohiya was special, but not perhaps in the most flattering way. We got noodles with potatoes, cabbage, eggs and loads of chillies. Also we got chicken which they gave because they thought Eero might have some. He didn’t though.
Jostain syystä tuli myös vedettyä aika monta hampparia matkalla. No, ei oikeasti niin hirveän monta, mutta niitä on kiva syödä vaihteeksi täällä suunnalla, kun kasvisburgerit voi olla oikeasti jotain muuta kuin raastepihvillisiä kummajaisia.
Maybe the worst burger we had. And the same goes for the pizza slice. They pineapple juice was excellent, though. I made it myself 🙂
This burger may not look much, but was surprisingly very, very good. Also worth noting are the “normal” cucumbers they’ve put inside. These kind of cucumbers are quite rare and also expensive here.
Not quite a burger, but something like. In most of the street side small eateries they sold some kind of buns. They are excellent value. This egg and seeni sambol bun cost only 0,25 euros.
Again at our local restaurant. Veg club and superb chips at the back and veg submarine or sub at the front. All very delicious.
A burger with a bit of style. Or at least that’s what they aimed at. The burger was quite nice, even though the odd olive there on top does look a bit out of place (it was concealing the toothpick that was holding the burger together). We also had eggplant caprese salad (in the middle) and vegetable noodles.
Kotosalla syötiin myös aika monta kertaa, niin lounaita kuin illallisiakin. Kotona syömisen etu (oli sitten itse tehnyt tai ottanut noutoruokaa) oli se että sai syödä ainakin hitusen rauhallisemmin, kun ei tarvinnut toisen olla koko ajan perässä seuraamassa kun Eero haluaa juosta ympäri ravintolaa, kadulla tai kiivetä portaita.
Our first meal in Kandy. We had some take-away from the local restaurant, which proved to be very good. Here we have veg curry (the red rice we boiled at home), shawarma and roti on the right and some dessert cakes.
One of our new favourites: pumpkin. When we think about it, it is not that odd we liked it here too, since we “found” the butternut in South Africa few years back and liked it a lot. The ones here were pretty similar in taste. Sometimes we boosted it with some tofu.
This does not look much, but the thing here is the stuff on the right. Those are actually soya pieces, which you could buy from a store in various flavours: shrimp, squid, chicken and so on. Totally vegetarian still, though. Sadly, the these didn’t taste that good. They would have been very good instant food option.
Eero developed a fancy for the pomegranate. He called it “candy” 🙂
The normal routine for Eero to eat: watching Pingu and stuffing bits of food into his mouth every once in a while.
Pretty much the only option to have home delivery was Pizza Hut. There were some other places too, but they required phoning in and quite frankly it was not that easy to make the order with them in English and be sure you’d get what you wanted. From Pizza Hut you could order online 🙂
Maiju made a couple of times this “woodapple crumble”. Woodapple is a local fruit which is quite unappealing to eat by the looks of it. We did not fancy that much its taste raw either, but it was ok for baking. Here served with yogurth and kithul treacle.
On our anniversary we had bought some wine, which proved to be a good one and bought only that afterwards. Cheeses are rare and expensive, though we did find some brie and other cheese they call “gouda”, but was quite far from it. Despite that it was edible and being chili flavored, it was perfect for making omelettes.
Towards the end of our stay our stove ran out of gas and only then we got ourselves to do some barbecuing. Here we have clockwise from the top-left: gourd (kind of sour zucchini), plantains (cooking bananas), tiger prawns, tofu, more gourd, lady fingers and pumpkin.
Our last meal, which meant we had to empty the fridge from all the left over food we had. We had some thalapath fish, mushroom-onion fry, pasta, curried pumpkin and vegetable fingers.
Siinä ne oli ne Sri Lankan ruoat. Nälkä ei jäänyt kertaakaan ja useammin kuin kerran sai pökerryttävän hyvää ruokaa. Toki matkaan mahtui huonompiakin ruokia, mutta keskiverrosti jäätiin reippaasti plussan puolelle. Kasvissyöjälle ei Sri Lanka ehkä tarjoa niin loputtomasti vaihtoehtoja kuin naapurimaa Intia, mutta ei kylläkään ehditty tällä parin kuukauden matkalla kyllästyä yhden ainoaan ruokaan. Useampaa olisi tehnyt mieli syödä vielä useammin, mutta päivät ja samoin ruokailukerrat on aina rajalliset.