Introducing Sri Lankan cuisine to the world
Will Chef Devagi Sanmugam’s 20th cookbook be about Sri Lankan food? It’s a distinct possibility considering how much the Singapore based chef enjoys the local cuisine. She was here this time to serve as a judge at the World Spice Festival, but is no stranger to the island, having visited Sri Lanka five times before.
Chef Sanmugam says she’s looking forward to experiencing the island all over again and will capturing those moments on her blog and in her next cookbook. “As an author of 19 cookbooks, I want one of my cookbooks to be on the cuisine of Sri Lanka – the cuisine here is so traditional and lots of healthy vegetables and herbs are used – and I love the spicy hot food,” she says. She says the use of rampe or pandan leaves in savoury cooking sets Sri Lankan cuisine apart.
“We only use it in cooking of desserts,” she says, adding that the use of coconut milk for most curries (maybe that explains why most of the people here have good complexions – coconut is great for skin); the use of fish from the Maldives and fresh mallung all fascinate her.
She traces her interest in cooking to when she was eight years old and her family were tenants in the home of a Straits-Chinese family.
The experience added to her food map, reinforcing the notion that many different cuisines existed. A more pivotal experience though, came from her family’s kitchen. “When I was in my early teens, my family suffered financially for 2-3 years and we had to eat simple but healthy food and my mum was very creative in dressing up even a simple meal of rice porridge that was served to us almost daily so that we kids never got tired of it or complained that we were eating the same stuff,” she says. “I was very fascinated that one can do so much with food.”
Today, Chef Sanmugam prides herself on “creating interracial marriages between spices and herbs in my cooking and food.” She enjoys playing with flavours and attempts to include all “six flavours” – salt, sweet, sour, bitter, astringent and umami – in most of her cooking. “I love using lots of fresh herbs and vegetables and preferably cook fish – Sri Lanka is a seafood paradise!”
A T.V and radio personality, she has appeared on shows in the U.K, Australia, US, Malaysia, India, Japan, among other countries and has also conducted cooking workshops all over the world. She does “culinary consultancy” through her company Epicurean World which includes developing recipes and taking them from conception to supermarket shelves and restaurant tables. Often she works with a client’s very specific requirements, such as eggless bakery items and gluten free food. She also trains both cooks and staff for restaurants, contributes recipes to publications and styles food for photographs.
Setting up shop in Singapore has had its own challenges – from a high rent to a limited market, Chef Sanmugam says she’s faced many challenges. However, she keeps her fingers in many pies. She’d even like to be a part of introducing Sri Lankan cuisine to the world and says she’d like nothing more than for the fare to become more prominent and is even considering opening her own restaurant here for which she is currently looking for investors. “I want to bring Sri Lankan cuisine into a new level to the world – even in Singapore, Sri Lankan food is sold in some remote areas in a small stall and patronised by Sri Lankans only!”
Chef Devagi was sponsored by Sri Lankan Airlines, Sri Lankan Tourism Promotion Board, Mount Lavinia Hotel and Jetwing Hotels.
‘You’ve got to try New Orleans’ crawfish’
If you ever have a chance to visit his part of town, you should definitely try the crawfish – “it’s a staple in New Orleans. Everyone eats it,” says Chef Anthony Bradley. In New Orleans, crawfish season sees locals attacking piles the delicious crustacean: first savouring the buttery orange fat in the head and then moving on to the tail where the real meat is.
With family still living outside New Orleans, Chef Bradley has been cooking Cajun and Creole food for a long time. He says it can be misunderstood. “It’s not necessarily hot and spicy, as people assume it to be, it’s just full of flavour,” he says explaining that the popular dishes incorporate a lot of shellfish in particular. They also boast multiple influences and the presence of French cuisine in particular is obvious.
For the World Spice Festival, Chef Bradley cooked classics such as the black and red fish as well as different gumbos (a spicy soup) and rice based jambalayas. “A couple of items, we’ll serve up with a twist – like fried and roasted plantain with sea food risotto,” says Chef Bradley. A visiting chef at the Mount Lavinia Hotel, he cooked for their Slow Food Night and presented a creole and Cajun buffet at the Governor’s Restaurant for the week following the festival.
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