Know Your Spices
Spices are unavoidable in Sri Lanka, and make very good souvenirs to take home. But how well do you know your
way along the spice rack? Here are all the spicy details, Along with the Sinhalese Names.

Abba -Mustard
Black mustard seed is very pungent and acrid. It is used whole, powdered or finely ground, in every- thing from pickles and chutneys to meat, fish and vegetable dishes.

Enasal- Cardamom
One of the most expensive spices available, this plump, three-sided pod contains three clusters of dark seeds which have an aromatic fragrance. An exotic add!tion to rice dishes and confectionary, especially in the Sri Lankan national pudding, wata- lappam.

Goraka -Gamboge
The colour of liquorice, its sharp, sour taste is used to flavour and thickeMish, meat and veg- etable sauces. A good substitute for this spice is tamarind paste.

Kabarunattl -Cloves
The better-quality cloves are rich, reddish-brown and large. They are really undilated flower buds. Use with discretion. An aid to digestion, while clove oil does wonders for toothache.

Kurundu -Cinnamon
Once used for embalming Egyptian royalty and to scent the funeral pyres of emperors. The finest quality cinnamon for cooking is pale in colour with a pleasing fragrance. U~Tiole or broken cinna- mon sticks.

Kaha - Turmeric
Commonly used and held to be good for fighting infections, this tropical spice which grows as a root is cheap enough to be used in an unadulterated form if bought already ground.

Karapincha - Curry leaves
Always used fresh throughout Sri Lanka, but you can also buy them dried to take home (some super- markets now stock them in the West).

Kottamalli -Coriander
The ripe seeds are basic to the curry spices. The green bunches of leaves, also known as cilantro, have a very different flavour and are not often used in local food.

Sera - Lemon Grass
Also sold as sereh powder, this is a vital ingredient in Sri Lankan, Thai and Mexican cooking to flavour meat and fish

Sadlkka -Nutmeg
The fruits of the nutmeg tree have single-seed berries which produce two different spices, mace and nutmeg. Though not commonly used in Sri Lanka, they greatly improve the flavour of a curry. Mace is the lacy membrane covering the nutmeg that has been ground to a powder.

Suduru -Cumin
One of the pungent and distinctive flavours that make a curry. Best bought whole and ground before use.

Maduru -Sweet Cumin
Used in sweet dishes and various alcoholic liqueurs and sometimes called star anise. Uluhal -Fenugreek This hard, brown, square-shaped seed needs only a small pinch to flavour curries (the leaves are also used as a herb).

Velllche Misis -Chillis
Ripe chillis may be cream, yellow, orange or even purple-black and are easy to dry in the sun or in a slow oven. Used whole, powdered and freshly chopped in the same dish.

Favourite Fruits
But who's complaining? There is a cornucopia of pineapple, passion fruit, pomegranate, papaya, avocados which come with sugar and cream, as well as Jaffna's undisPlJted king of mangoes such as the giramba, pol-amba, ambalavi, vellaicolomban, bettiamba, dilpas sand, peterpassand or willard. Quite apart from exotic fruits you may have had back home, look out for the red, cherry like lovi-lovi fruit, mangosteens with flesh that tastes like Iychee or woodapple -good as a rich truffle pudding and a knockout drink too. Or try the sweet tasting star apples and rambutan - red and hairy on the outside but similar to Iychee on the inside.

Go for custard apples, cherimoyer or bullock's heart, which are a happy trio of relatives packed with white pulp and black seeds. Then there's the honey-sweet ripe jak, sev- eral kinds of guava which make divine jelly, and that maverick monster, the durian, whose reputation usually precedes it. There are two vital warnings about this most delicious nougat- tasting fruit. One: when ripe, its flesh stinks like hell. Two: it's strongly but improbably rumoured to be an aphrodisiac