Sri Lankan

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Lamprais (Stock Rice and Curries Baked in Banana Leaf)

A banana-leaf parcel from Sri Lanka's Dutch Burgher community: rice fried in butter and cooked in meat stock, with a meat curry, an aubergine and plantain curry, meatballs and an onion sambol, each made separately, wrapped in one leaf and baked.

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Kiribath (Coconut Milk Rice Pressed and Cut into Diamonds)

Sri Lanka's festival rice. The rice is cooked soft in water first, thick coconut milk goes in after and is cooked down, and the hot rice is pressed flat, left to cool and cut into diamonds. Rice cooked with coconut milk usually stays in separate grains; this one has to hold together as a block to be cut. Letting the water reach the starch first, leaving the surface starch on, and pressing it while hot are what do it. Served with lunu miris, a hot onion relish.

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Kottu Roti (Chopped Roti Stir-Fry)

Sri Lanka's signature street food: cooled roti chopped on a hot griddle with vegetables, egg and meat using two metal blades. A ladle of curry gravy at the end is what moistens it — and that clanging outside a kottu shop is exactly this chopping.