Cooking Sri Lankan Food trying not to feel Homesick in Quarantine

Spending Quarantine in a foreign country thousands of miles away from home is quite challenging than you think. The worst part is missing the delicious food prepared by your mother and your family members brag about it while calling home.

The main problem with all our friends who were stuck with me in India was the food. Because they do not use the key ingredients which Sri Lankan cuisine use such as coconut milk all the food tasted absolutely same. Also the limitation to eat from restaurants made the food problem worse. The hostel food got worse day by day as the number of students in hostel decreased and Sri Lankans were the last standing. We were fortunate enough to have a supporting staff in hostel which gave us permission to use the hostel kitchen to make our own food.

Considering all these drama we thought of making our food in Sri Lankan taste at least once a week therefore we wont miss our homes. Here are some of the food we made in our quarantine period.

Yellow Rice

The day we made yellow rice which is turmeric rice with ghee was a fun day. We made potato curry, Chicken curry and buttered Beans along with papadam. Because there were 10 of us who gathered to create this massive feast we organized all the steps giving each task to friends such as cutting and cooking each dish. I personally made the potato curry and the beans thanks to my grandmas teaching. Ofcause friends helped along the way guiding what lacking and needed to be added. It was such a fun experience making a single platter spreading the rice on a single banana leaf and eating alongside with the friends. Here are some pictures we captured along the process.

Cutlets

Few week after we made the rice platter we came up with the idea of making cutlets. For those who doesn't know what cutlets it is a ball made with a mixture of friend potato, chilly and any type of meat or fish preferably tuna wrapped with egg yolk and bread crumbs and deep fried. While our hostel is a pure veg hostel we had to make most of them only with veggies and had to sneak in some tuna to make non veg cutlets for us. The veg cutlets were for the teachers and other staff who were looking after us in the quarantine period and we thought of showing gratitude towards them for sacrificing their families and staying with us taking care of us.

Coconut Roti with onion sambol

This is one of the staple breakfast or a snack in Sri Lankan culture and we always crave for it at home so we made it too. This was a sudden plan which we thought in an evening while drinking our tea. In the quarantine period we used to play volleyball till late 11.00 p.m. After that we were exhausted all the time and this quick meal was a great idea. We made them in the room itself using our induction cooker. The coconut roti is made with flour and scraped coconut mixed together with hot water and making a dough. It is then rolled in your size of your liking and put on a hot pan to get cooked throughout. We paired the roti with a glass of black tea.

Vegetable Roti

Vegetable roti is a roadside snack which can be seen at any corner of Sri Lanka. One of my friend gave the idea to make them but the problem was non of us knew how to make them.😂 YouTube came to our rescue and we checked out many videos related and finally settled on Ape Amma Elavalu Roti Recipie . It was a tiring cooking experience because it took us nearly five hours to finish up. But the result was more that we expected. Our hostel staff really enjoyed as much as we did.

These are the top picks of our quarantine food diary. We made atleast one curry throughout the season and these were the most memorable of all. Making food with friends taught us many qualities such as,

• Companionship
• Sharing
• Delegation of work
• Communication

Ultimately the experience made us learn new food recipes and cook them in a low budget because still we depend mostly on our parents. Hope you all had a pleasant quarantine period as well.