Tradition rules at the Eid table
Yet another holy month of Ramadan is past, and Eid-ul-Fitr is upon us again after a month of fasting. The Eid table has all the Muslim community’s traditional delicacies: eagerly looked forward to fare such as the biriyani and the watalappam as well as endless variations on stuffed and coated dates.
Aaisha Faheem who has a food and fashion blog under the name @yeah.hope_ says “the only thing I look forward to is the biryani.” Sri Lanka boasts a diverse community of Muslims with roots in different parts of the globe and an equally diverse range of biriyanis to choose from, at Eid, but for Aaisha, the Sri Lankan “buriyani” with a “u” is the winner. “I love the flavours and all the condiments that come with it,” Aaisa explains, describing the onion and green chilli achchar (loaded with dates) and the maasi sambol made with maldive fish. “And there is always something fried,” she adds “if it’s a chicken buriyani the rice comes with chicken but also a portion of fried chicken on the side.”
A taste of home: Sweet sago porridge and buriyani from My Lankan Food Journal
“We start off in the morning by eating dates coated with ghee and other special items from the Eid table,” Aaisha explains. “And then we go to the mosque for our prayers and come home for breakfast which is a typical Sri Lankan Muslim breakfast.”
String hoppers, pittu, egg-drop curry, chicken or beef curry, pol sambol load the table for the first breakfast that the family eats together after thirty days of fasting. A sweet sago porridge, Sawwarisi Kanji, is brought out for dessert, to soothe the digestive tract and help it readjust to the sensation of spicy food in the day time.
And of course, not even a non-Muslim can speak of Eid-ul-Fitr without thinking of watalappan. “That is the epitome of Eid!” Aaisha laughs.
For home chef Nuzrath Shazeen Nazimudeen, author of the My Lankan Food Journal blog, one cannot speak of the Eid table before speaking of Nombu Kanji. This traditional rice porridge comprises meat and maybe some veggies cooked together with cardamoms and other spices. It is the first food that Sri Lankan Muslims consume, after breaking their daily fast with water and dates.
“We tend to have more protein in the kanji now, and focus on our ingredients, getting grass-fed beef and stuff,” Nuzrath says, “but those days it was not about the ingredients. I’m sure if I could ask my mum for a recipe now, she wouldn’t have one to give me! It was more about the love, there was an emotional value to the kanji, I can’t explain it…”
Each person in Nuzrath’s mother’s household in Wellawatte had a designated job when it came to preparing the kanji. One of the most important of these was keeping the old-fashioned radio with a dial tuned properly so the whole family could hear the call to prayer.
“Those days it used to be about being together, the neighbours coming and sharing little pots of whatever they made. And I remember as a kid, I would take a little bit of this and that we had made and share it with our neighbours too.”
As a migrant living in the suburbs of Melbourne, it’s important for Nuzrath that her children imbibe some of this spirit of Ramadan that she grew up with in Colombo. “Here you can’t just walk up to your neighbours and give them food,” she explains. “But there are a few people we know in the area, and we made a little extra this time and shared with them, and we also sent it to the prayer house.”
On Eid day, Nuzrath’s family too enjoys the typical Sri Lankan big breakfast with sago porridge. While they were in Sri Lanka this would usually happen at her mother’s or her mother-in-law’s house, but not in Melbourne she and her family join a Sri Lankan community Eid breakfast where they serve the same traditional menu.
“And then we have this big lunch – because we haven’t had enough food already, you know?” she laughs. She orders the biriyani, she confesses, but assures that she would never order watalappam. “It’s a crime to order the watalappam because not everyone makes it the way your mum made it,” she reminisces. According to her blog on traditional Eid lunch, in Nuzrath’s family, the watalappam gets even richer than usual – they top the steamed coconut-jaggery pudding with pani-cadju.
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