Rice & Bread: Sri Lankan Style

By Shyamali Perera and Sylvia N Perera

Rice & Bread Sri Lankan Style is a part of a series of cookbooks that acknowledge the importance of year-round culinary traditions while showing how an island culture continues to shape modern food choices and cooking methods. This series of cookbooks contain a year's worth of recipes and menus for everyday meals, holidays, and special occas

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.G.Perera
• Release date: Nov 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780998525150

Shyamali Perera

Shyamali Perera was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. . Fleeing the Sri Lankan civil war, Perera and her family emigrated to California in 1989. She trained as a teacher at UCI and UCLA and worked as an educator for thirty years in Orange County. Since retiring from full-time childcare, Perera has dedicated herself to writing, with two children's books in publication and four due for release soon. Perera published Curry & Rice: Three Generations of Sri Lankan Recipes as an eBook in 2014 and a paperback in 2020, to coincide with the release of her Sri Lankan Style series of seven cookbooks. Perera lives in Southern California with her family and is currently working on her next children's book.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Ayubowan. Sri Lanka is a pear-shaped island tucked away in the Indian Ocean, below India. To the seventh-century Arabian spice merchants, it was known as Serendip, and to the European conquerors and explorers, Ceylon or the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka boasts of not only a variety of climates but also well-adapted cultural influences.

Sri Lanka’s history dates before the time of the Buddha when the aboriginal tribes of the Yakkas and the Nagas ruled the land and were a part of the ancient Asian civilization. It is chronicled in the Mahawansa that the Buddha visited Sri Lanka on several occasions in the fifth century BC to preach to these tribes amidst their ongoing wars. Although Sri Lanka has fought many battles during the past 2500 years, the island has been blessed with tropical beauty, an abundance of food and rare aromatic spices. Folklore and folk tales depict, that these rare herbs and spices as being brought to the island by the demigod Hanuman for medicinal purposes during the great battle between Ravana, the Yakka king, and the