This week I’ll be on a panel at the University of Greenwich called From Homeland to New Land, exploring what happens to food, flavour and recipes when we move from one country to another.
It has made me think about what we are really trying to preserve when we cook food from home.
Sri Lanka is such a vivid, sensory place. It is tropical, lush and full of colour. You see red rambutan fruit hanging from trees, dark green leaves against yellow mangoes, and spices drying in the sun. The heat, smells and colours begin the experience of food long before you sit down to eat.
Then you move to Britain.
The weather is different. The ingredients are different. The pace of life is different. What might once have involved several dishes, freshly ground spices and a table full of people may now need to become dinner after work on a wet Tuesday evening.
So, what are we trying not to lose?
Why colour and texture feel like comfort
I was thinking about what makes a plate of food feel comforting before we have even taken the first bite.
For me, it is the beautiful gold of lentils cooked with turmeric. It is throwing cumin into hot oil and watching the seeds change colour as their flavour moves through the oil. It is the deep brown of a roasted curry, the white of coconut sambol and always something green beside it.
Then there are the textures. Creamy dhal soaking into rice. Fresh coconut. Something crisp at the side of the plate. And the crunch of a poppadom—because who doesn’t love the crunch of a poppadom?
This is not only about making food look pretty. All those colours, smells and textures draw us into the meal. We choose what to mix together. One mouthful may be soft and mellow; the next has freshness, heat or bite. The meal asks us to pay attention.
So much of the food we eat without thinking is soft, uniform and easy to consume quickly. It can disappear while we are looking at a screen or worrying about the next thing we need to do. We have eaten, but we do not always feel as though we have had a proper meal.
A plate with different colours and textures gives us something to notice. Research suggests texture can affect how quickly we eat, but I think there is something more human happening too. We stop. We combine the different parts. We take part in feeding ourselves.
Perhaps this is why this kind of food feels so nurturing. It gives us warmth, aroma, colour and texture, but it also asks us to stop for a moment. We sit down, combine the different parts of the meal and pay attention to what we are eating.
For me, it carries memories too. The smell of spices roasting in a pan is connected to Sri Lanka, family, hospitality and that instinct to feed people properly. Comfort is not always about eating the richest thing we can find. Sometimes it is the feeling that somebody has taken care over the food—and, by extension, taken care of us.
A recipe carries more than ingredients
Food from home can carry much more than a list of ingredients. The gold of the lentils and the white coconut do not recreate the whole landscape, but they give us a way back to it.
Perhaps that is why these details matter even more when recipes travel. When we can no longer stand in the place where the food began, colour, aroma and texture help the recipe carry that place with it.
Of course, recipes do change. We substitute ingredients we cannot find. We adapt to the time we have. We make a quicker version because life here asks something different of us.
Does making it quicker mean it is no longer authentic? I don’t think it has to.
The important question may not be whether every step remains exactly the same, but whether we understand what cannot be lost: the balance of spice, the contrast of colour and texture, the generosity of the plate and the feeling it creates when we sit down to eat.
Helping that flavour survive the journey
Buying the jars is easy. Knowing which spices work together, how much to use and when to add them is the difficult part. Black pepper can stand up to beef. Mustard and fenugreek work beautifully with fish. Lentils need a gentler balance, and chicken needs another balance again.
One generic curry powder cannot do every ingredient justice.
That is one of the reasons I created Little Big Flavour Kits. Each blend is made around the main ingredient, with the spices already roasted, balanced and measured.
The kits make the cooking easier, but the aim is not to flatten Sri Lankan food into one quick, generic curry. It is to protect the balance and sensory details that make each dish what it is, while allowing it to fit into the reality of life here.
You still create the warm, colourful plate. You still hear the cumin hit the hot oil, smell the spices and decide what to put together in the next mouthful.
We simply help you know where to begin.
Stay spicy,
Aliza
Founder, Little Big Flavour Kits
