- Hi, I'm Beryl, and today we
are trying Sri Lankan food. To be honest, I don't know that much about Sri Lankan food aside from what I've made on my channel. Of those dishes, I've
definitely enjoyed them. Oh my God. There's definitely a bit of a stereotype about Sri Lankan food that it's mostly just coconut and rice, but that can't be true, right? - Of course not. - No way.
- No. - It is so much more than that. - I knew that. Today, I have enlisted
the help of Charlie, Ru, Maya and Sanduni to help me order off of a Sri Lankan menu a little bit more like a local. I'm not gonna lie, I
got a little bit excited so we have quite a few dishes coming and I think they're here. Before I get unpacking,
I wanna mention that for this episode and episodes
past in my delivery series, I used to always mention everything that was ordered in the description. That was a little clunky,
but now on my website, I have a section devoted to this series. A freelancer from Fiverr worked with me to help me build all of these
guides so you could go back and get inspired to order
from different cuisines around the world in a
much simpler fashion. And I also wanna thank Fiverr for sponsoring today's episode. Fiverr is an amazing website
that helps connect you to freelancers around the
world in a wide variety of different fields from
writers like the woman that I'm working with
to website designers, voiceover artists, graphic
animators, honestly you name it in the creative field and
you can find them on Fiverr. My website is definitely
coming together with the help of some freelancers from Fiverr
and particular, Daniella, who's been the one helping me write up these delivery guides. But I've also worked with freelancers to help me write up my
recipe pages, my artist pages that you can now see all of the art that has been featured on my show. It's still a work in progress though. Hiring freelancers can
be a very daunting task, but it's nice on Fiverr because there are a lot
of community reviews and you can communicate directly with the people you wanna
hire before you hire them. So you can talk about the
project, talk about issues that you're having, why
you want their help, and they can help guide
you on the best way that they can work with you. As my website grows and
more recipes go up there, more delivery guides go up
there, I'll definitely continue to work with Fiverr because it
has made the whole experience not only less painful,
but actually enjoyable. If Fiverr seems like something that could be beneficial to you, I have a code which is BERYL24, and that one could be 10% off your order. The URL is here and it's
also in the description. Okay, now let's unpack the food. - Hi everyone, my name's Maya. I am from New York City and my parents are both from Sri Lanka. - Hello everyone, I'm Sanduni and I come from the flavorful straights of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The main item I had chosen
you today is chicken lamprais. So it's actually a packet of
rice packed with a banana leaf. So inside this banana leaf, it'll have this special kind of rice and also there will be a fish cutlet, there will be a deep fried
egg, there will be chicken. - So everything has its own flavor, but it's all kind of infused with this really delicious
banana leaf flavor, which is so unique. It's really fragrant. It's something that I've
loved since I was a kid. - [Sanduni] Please use your hand to get the real authentic experience. - And it's a really cozy
and delicious comfort food, so definitely one of my top picks. - This is so beautiful and the smell in my
kitchen, it is to die for. I'm very excited to eat out of banana leaf and yes, we will use our hands. This fried egg, this fried
egg is calling my name. Oh my God, Sri Lanka. Okay, this is a feast. Let's try the chicken. Ooh, there's a spice
on that, that is spicy. It's very good, but there's
a lot of heat in this dish. You know, I think when I
think about spicy cuisine around the world, Sri Lanka did not
necessarily come to mind, but you guys are not messing around. Let me get some rice. Anytime you cook anything
wrapped in a case, everything's gonna taste like so good. When I opened up the banana leaf, you could just see like all
of the warmth coming out. And this banana leaf has infused all of the flavors together. The deep fried egg is something that I learned about through my channel. I had it for the first time in a Thai dish and then I also had it
in a dish from Pakistan and now I'm having it from Sri Lanka. Deep frying hard boiled egg is something we should all be doing a lot
more of, caramelized onions... Oh, the caramelized onions just helped with the spiciness in my mouth 'cause there's like that sweetness to it. I feel like starting with this dish was actually really amazing because there are so
many different flavors, so many different elements to it that gives you a really good idea of what Sri Lankan food has to offer. If this is any indication
of the rest of the episode, I'm gonna have to get
yogurt for the next dish because it is spiced in a good way, but also in a very spicy
way, but I'm very excited. - Hi, I'm Ru and I live
in Colombo, Sri Lanka. So for the mains, I would pick
Sri Lankan rice and curry. Now this cannot get in
most Sri Lankan than this and I'm going to tell you what
my favorite combination is and that is red rice and then you add dark curry,
then you add dry fish beduma. Beduma is fried, so it's
basically dry fish fried with onions and chilies and
then add coconut sambol to that and that combination is like
my favorite comfort food. So this is something
that I look forward to when I visit my parents and my mom makes sure she makes it for me. I really hope you like it. Even talking about it
gets me hungry, try this. - I love that Ru gave us an
entire meal to construct. So we have the fish fry and then we have the
chana dal and red rice. The chana dal, I think many
of us would be familiar with. Just like lentils, I imagine it's gonna be
spiced a little differently, but the fish I'm very interested in. Also, I had to get some yogurt because your girl is... She's not that strong yet. She's not Sri Lankan
spice strong apparently. I'm gonna try the fish. Oh my god, that fish is so good. It's very salty and like dense. What kind of fish is this, whoa. I'm gonna put it all together with a little bit of the pol sambol. This is a bite. I love this. I'll be honest, I think
looking at the menu, I would not have been apt to
probably order this fish fry and this is one of the reasons why I think the show is so helpful. It really kind of forces me
outside of my, I don't know, I guess like comfort
zone to try something new and I feel like every
single time I have been so pleasantly surprised. The fish is just so crunchy and salty and with this spice of it,
it just balances so well. The dal is creamy and the rice has like a
little bit of bite to it. Oh my god, there's a lot of onions and tomatoes with the fish, which kind of gives it a
jammy type of sweetness, which I'm really enjoying. I get it, this is an amazing combo, yum. I'm just gonna have
one more piece of fish. I should probably slow down,
there's like more dishes, but I'm like really into this. - Hi, I'm Charlie. I live in England, but I'm half Sri Lankan and my family in Sri
Lanka are from Colombo, the capital city. For the mains, my recommendation
is black pork curry. Black pork curry is I think
quintessential Sri Lankan food. It is tender and rich and
super hot and flavorful. Sri Lankans don't really
do mild hints of flavor. It's all intense, punch you in the face and that's what I love about it. Black pork curry is
something that we often have when I go and visit the
aunties in the family, they go to a friend's house, it's like kind of a traditional
thing in my family to serve. It's delicious, it's flavorful and overall just a really good time. - I have Charlie's recommendation
of the black pork curry. He was right about the
flavors of Sri Lankan food. Nothing is subtle, I'm very
excited to try this one. It was a little hard to open,
I spilled it, whoopsies. Oh, hello, we've got some white rice here and I have it with a
bit of the pol sambol. Whoa, that pork was way
softer than I was expecting. When I was looking at
the pork and serving it, I thought it was gonna be
super hard, but it's so soft. Wow, that's very surprising. Looks can be deceiving. I would actually say like
compared to the fish fry and definitely compared to the lamprais, this one is a little bit more muted. There's kick to it. Like look, I'm not saying
nothing here is bland. Let's just start there. Actually, maybe I should
have calmed down for a sec. It's gotten especially like builds in the back of your mouth. Oh my God. I honestly wasn't expecting
Sri Lankan food to be this hot. Maybe it's just this restaurant. I guess to be fair on my channel, I've really only cooked like fruit dishes and breakfast dishes, oh boy. There's something about this dish that really feels kind of
like home cooking to me. The flavors are really balanced on it. I love how soft the pork is. I wonder how they cook it. It's really good and I think Charlie like hit the nail on the head. I mean, even with all of this, like Sri Lankan food is full of flavor. If you wanna go out for a meal that's going to like
delight your taste buds. All right, let's go to the next dish. - Possibly one of the most
iconic foods you could ever have in Sri Lanka would be hoppers,
particularly egg hoppers. The best way I could describe it is it's almost like the outside... The rim of the bowl is a crepe and the base of the
bowl is like a crumpet. - So there are a lot of
really great textures going on there and then you would eat that
with different types of curry, sort of as a rice substitute. Basically you have that
same bowl shaped crepe, but as it's cooking, you crack an egg and let
that cook at the bottom and it's a really delicious
sort of breakfast-y meal. - Look at this. Oh, it's so beautiful. I'm sure that the egg is not gonna be like a fun runny yoke anymore
because this was delivery, but here I have one without
the egg, these are... Whew, these were described so perfectly. These are definitely crispy on the edge and then the middle has
this softness to it. I love this idea. I feel like if you had a runny egg in the middle of this too, like that would just be amazing. Honestly, this was a reprieve. My mouth has been on fire. It's very cooling. Ooh, I like that. I'll have it with a bit of dal. We'll just keep it calm. The texture in this is
honestly incredible. The dough on this is a little sweet, not like pastry sweet, but kind of like how a crepe
has a little bit of sweetness to the dough. I love it, I love it with the egg. Honestly, for breakfast,
a little bit of dal and an egg hopper, sign me up immediately. That would be so good. The interesting thing that I learned was that there are two kinds of hoppers, so I'm gonna also try the next kind, which everyone will explain. - Another form of hoppers is something called string hoppers, which is a little different. You have this dough, which I
think is made out of rice flour and basically you have this like tool. So you push the dough
through kind of like Play-Doh and then you kind of
form these like stringy rice patties that you would
then cook and eat with curry. - I recommend that you
have this with pol sambol. It's the coconut shredded condiment that I think you've had before. It is delicious and fresh and vibrant. - Pol sambol and dal curry, I believe these two to be
a match made in heaven. - I love this, this reminds me actually of a South Indian dish where it's also I think
very similarly made where the dough is put into like a potato ricer type of thing and comes out in long strings
and then it's steamed. It's interesting how you
can see very similar dishes with different names
and how they're eaten. So again, we have the dish
that we're gonna eat this with pol sambol and with the dal. It is a match made in heaven. Pol sambol is so nice. I kind of tried to make
it once myself at home. I would definitely recommend buying it. This is 10 times better
than the one I made. It's coconut-y, so there's like
that kind of sweetness to it and there's a little bit of tanginess and a little bit of spice. I find this to be one of
my favorite condiments. If you like coconut, this is something that would be right up your alley. Eating with this one I think
is a little bit more difficult, but the texture of it
in my mouth is so nice. These two are obviously
incredibly different. I really like the kind
of springiness of this. The steamed dough kind of bounces
a little bit in your mouth and it has a really nice mouth feel, something that I'm not quite
used to eating on the regular. It's different and I like that. I got two desserts because they both sounded really good and my mouth is on fire so I'm excited. We gotta pay the puppy tax, yum. I think she likes the Sri Lankan food. - From the desserts, I think you have to try watalappam. - Watalappam is actually
coming from Sri Lankan Muslims and they are really good cooks
so you are in for a treat. - It's like a pudding
that's made from jaggery. It's got that kind of
rich molasses flavor to it with treacle, which is super
sweet and roasted nuts, particularly cashew nuts traditionally, kind of set into the pudding
and it's the best thing ever 'cause it's sweet and
it's tasty and it is soft, but it's also really refreshing. So after eating an intense
spicy Sri Lankan meal, all I ever want is a nice
little bowl of watalappam to soothe and comfort me. - We're gonna start with our little tart. It kind of reminded me of
a sticky toffee pudding. I mean I haven't tasted it, but just like the way it looks and smells. Whoa, it kind of tastes like one. There is a really interesting sweetness from the treacle and from the jaggery. The treacle has also
kept this really soft. This is definitely my type of sweetness and texture for a dessert
that there's like softness and crunchiness and that type
of kind of harsher sweetness. Like I think about sweetness like icing, like that's too sweet, right? The brown sugar sweetness is one of the ones that I really like. I find it to be muted sweet, and that is what I'm getting from this. I also love how soft it
is and crunchy it is. This is delicious. Also, it's saving me right now, like my whole body feels
like it's de-stressing from the spice and it's just kind of like balancing everything out nicely. Okay, the other dessert. - So for dessert, I would suggest you to have kiri pani. In Sri Lanka, kiri means curd and curd comes from buffalo milk. Buffalo milk is thicker and
creamier than cow's milk, and then pani is trickle. It's like honey, it's
like palm tree honey. After a heavy meal, now this
will balance things out. This cools you down a little bit and probably will get you
into a mood to take a nap. - I was very interested
in what Ru recommended because I don't think I've
ever had buffalo milk curd and like it's definitely
thick and more treacle, which I love. I don't know, it taste like yogurt, which is kind of what I
was eating this whole time. I don't find the flavor
to be all that different. The treacle on top though
makes this delicious. I really like this. I feel like this is something that you could make at home
just using Greek yogurt and then treacle and yum. Wow, I don't know if I could finish this whole bowl by myself. I do think I could finish this
whole little tart by myself. Either way, Ru's right, I need a nap because this feast was incredible and I'm very excited for all the leftovers that I'm gonna have this week. As always, check the description. In there, I have a link
that you can see everything that I ordered today as
well as everything else that everybody recommended. Charlie, Ru, Maya, Sanduni, thank you so much for helping me order. I feel honestly inspired and I am so excited to
eat more Sri Lankan food with my friends and family. This was such a treat. I'm leaving two other episodes
in our delivery series so that you can be inspired
to check out more foods from around the world. Let me know what other
cuisines you would like to see and I'll see you all next week. I'm definitely gonna go take a nap. Thanks again to Fiverr for
sponsoring today's video. Be sure to check out fiverr.co/BERYL24 to check out the services available to you and get 10% off with my code.
