food
MEMOIR
Our food is beautiful—and bookworthy When I couldn’t find a Sri Lankan cookbook published in Canada, I wrote one myself Written by RUWANMALI SAMARAKOON-AMUNUGAMA Illustration by EMILY DAKIN
I
learned how to cook Sri Lankan food from my mother, who immigrated to Canada in the mid 1970s. We moved around a lot, from Ontario to Alberta before finally settling in Port Coquitlam, B.C. With every move to a new town, my mother wasted no time in befriending families in the budding Sri Lankan communities—and her cooking was a big part of that. Most of our gatherings centred around food, and the dinners she frequently hosted showcased her unsurpassed skill at preparing popular Sri Lankan curries, desserts and other dishes.
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CHATELAINE • MAY/JUNE 2022
As a child, I observed her cooking from a distance, but, as the years passed, I found myself increasingly by her side, absorbing everything I could. I dedicated a notebook solely to scribbling down recipes that had been passed down from my grandmother. Watching my mother use traditional techniques, I learned the secrets to a recipe’s success; among them, how to use key ingredients—including pandan and curry leaves, cinnamon bark, turmeric root and coconut—in ways that make our food distinct. To build on our generational knowledge, I sought other stories
