Sri Lankan Cooking: 64 Fabulous Recipes from the Chefs and Kitchens of Sri Lanka

I gave it a ★ ★ ★ ★ ★. It’s just what I want in a cookbook. The cookbook is with colored pictures. If you’re not familiar with some of the ingredients, it’s pictured with description how to use it. The ingredients are in red letters and the instructions are in black letters. It makes it easier to spot when reading. I like the acknowledgements and index in the back of the cookbook. The book acknowledged those chefs from well known luxury hotels in the country. If you’ve been to one of those hotels, then you know it’s top of the line. There’s addresses with phone numbers if you wish to order ingredients. The cookbook also tells you a little bit about the country and it’s culture.

A fantastic simple guide to recreating some of the great food we enjoyed when travelling all over the beautiful country. A chefs book really as you have to improvise and add ingredients to cover for the simplistic list and cooking instruction but a go-to book for inspiration.

"Sri Lanka, the fabled land of sapphires, rubies and other precious stones, is home to one of the least known Asian cuisines" begins this lovely book. Some fascinating history follows this expressive opening from the fact that Sri Lanka used to be called "Ceylon" (see page 16,'Banking on Tea' to learn more about Ceylon tea), to the various influences on its culture and cuisine and so much more. From there it moves into a fascinating array of striking dishes. From Butter Rice to Tamarind Claypot Fish, Coconut and Cashew Nut Chicken, Dhal Stew and Coconut Spice Cake, exotic flavors about. A good Asian grocery nearby would definitely be a plus to this book. While there are substitutions given for some of the more exotic ingredients such as banana blossoms, jaggery, pandanus leaves and more, some of the substitutions aren't necessarily something you'll find at your regular grocery store.One small issue I had with the book is that only English translations of the recipe name is given. Generic terms like "Curried Meatballs", "Spicy Eggplant" and "Coconut Cinnamon Cashew Slices" are given. It would have been nice to have the Sri Lankan name as well.This is a beautiful book with a mouth-watering array of dishes to try. I would certainly recommend you give it a try.I received a copy of this book from Tuttle Publishing for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

hope you also published all vegetarian Sri Lankan cooking ?

Great, easy to follow recipes. Beautiful pictures.

DELISH,,,THANKS

The description of this book doesn't disclose it, and the "search inside" preview pages doesn't make it apparent, but this is a (badly) revised reprint of The Food of Sri Lanka ISBN 9625937609.[...] So if you have the latter like I do, don't waste your money on this "new" book.Both books have the exact same recipes and exact same pictures.The difference is, they appear in a completely different order in this new book. This was a major overhaul in that the order of recipes got a major shakeup, and not just a few recipes being moved here and there. It's almost like change just for the sake of change. I can't see any special benefit or improvement from the new order except to make it "look like" a new book.The old version had both the actual Sri Lankan name of each recipe and an English description of the dish as a sub-title. This book however completely did away with the Sri Lankan names. What idiocy! Now the recipes have weird non-identifying generic names such as, Sweet Coconut Slices, Coconut Spice Cake, Coconut Cinnamon Cashew Slices, Young Jackfruit Pickles... I can go on and on. If you just want an English description of a recipe, this book is for you. But to me, the disadvantages of this are two-fold: First, if you talk to a Sri Lankan and mention for example, Sweet Coconut Slices or Coconut Spice cake, they will have no clue what you are talking about. What's more, these names could fit several different dishes, so rather than talk about the food you wanted to talk about, you'll end up in a conversation of deciphering which dish you are referring to. Second, knowing the true name of a dish allows you to research further into any dishes that you like. For example, one can look for other versions of the same dish on the internet to see if you find something that you like even better. As is common, pretty much all traditional dishes of any country have several different versions of it, the most popular ones usually having as many recipes as there are cooks in that country. This is natural because traditional recipes are passed down through generations and not learned from a standard cookbook. But you cannot find any further information on most recipes you like with this book, because the actual names of recipes have been left out. So you'll end up searching for generic terms like "sweet coconut slices," which could not only describe several different Sri Lankan dishes, but also many dishes of other nations.I haven't bought the other 'new' books of this series, but I can only guess they have the same "improvements" done to them. This is why I think this book was badly revised and this is a case of not leaving what is already good, alone.My copy is going back to Amazon. I hope they cover return shipping as the description failed to disclose that this is a rehashing of a previous version of the book. If they don't, at least I hope this review will prevent another person from being mislead into thinking this is a new book on Sri Lankan cuisine that they do not own.If the publisher just re-printed the books of the old series, most of which are now out of print, they would have done a much better, and cheaper job of it.

Some of the recipes are not accurate and I'm a chef as well so managed to fix it.