Sri Lankan curry explained, for a first visit

A Sri Lankan rice and curry is not one dish but a plate of rice with several small curries around it: usually a fish or meat curry, two or three of vegetables, lentils, a sambol and a papadam. Many are hot by a visitor's measure, but some are gentle by nature, and you can always ask for less chilli.

What is a rice and curry?

It is the island's daily meal. Rice sits in the middle. Around it come the bowls:

• A fish or meat curry. Most often fish or chicken.
• Vegetable curries. Green beans, leeks, young jackfruit, pumpkin, whatever the season gives.
• Dhal. Lentils cooked soft with spices.
• A sambol. A fresh relish. Pol sambol is ground coconut with chilli, lime and dried fish.
• A mallung. Chopped greens, lightly cooked with grated coconut.
• Papadam. A thin, crisp wafer, for crunch.

You take a little of each onto your rice and mix as you go. In many places the bowls are filled again when they are empty. Nobody expects you to finish them.

What kinds of curry are there?

They are named by what is in them, and the list is long. A few you will meet on the south coast:

• Malu curry. Malu means fish. A fish curry called malu mirisata has the word for chilli, miris, in its name, and it keeps that promise.
• Kakuluwo curry. Crab.
• Polos. A curry of jackfruit.
• Kadju maluwa. A curry of whole cashew nuts.
• Parippu. Dhal, the bowl that is on every table.
• Kiri hodi. A pale coconut milk gravy, usually gentle, that often comes with string hoppers.

The spices are the island's own. Curry leaves, called karapincha, go into hot oil at the start. Rampe, the pandan leaf, gives a soft green scent. Cinnamon here is the true cinnamon that grows in Sri Lanka, and black pepper is used with a free hand.

How hot is it?

Hot, often. People who grow up here have a tolerance that most visitors do not, and a curry cooked for the family can be too much for a first-timer. Three things help:

• The sambol is often the hottest thing on the plate. Take a little and taste before you mix it in.
• Ask. Places used to visitors cook milder versions gladly.
• Rice is your friend. More rice, less curry, and the heat comes down.

The words for asking, and a list of dishes that are mild by nature, are in not spicy food in Sri Lanka.

Why is coconut in everything?

Because the tree is everywhere. Coconut milk and grated coconut are in almost every Sri Lankan kitchen, made fresh nearly every day. The milk is pressed from the grated flesh with water. It gives a curry its body and its sweetness, and it softens the chilli.

One thing to know if you do not eat fish, or cannot. Dried tuna, called Maldive fish, is used in small amounts in many vegetable curries and in pol sambol, for its savoury depth. A vegetable curry is not always a vegetarian one. Ask, and if you have an allergy read eating with allergies in Sri Lanka.

Two gentle curries at Ohana

Our menu does not have the full spread of bowls. We are a kitchen by the sea, and we cook two curries, both built on coconut milk and both kind to a careful palate.

• Sweet Prawn Curry, 6,700 LKR. Gentle on the chilli and rich with coconut milk pressed by hand to order, simmered with ginger, garlic and turmeric. The prawns cook in the sauce, and basmati comes alongside. The menu does not mark it as spicy. This is the one for a first curry, and for children who are curious.
• Mahi Mahi Pineapple Curry, 6,900 LKR. A grilled fillet of mahi mahi on coconut mashed potatoes, under a golden curry of coconut milk and sweet pineapple, fragrant with curry leaves, ginger and cinnamon. The sauce holds a little green chilli, and the menu marks the dish as a little spicy. The pineapple does the rest: sweet first, warm after.

Both have a vegan way. Vegan Sweet Curry, 6,200 LKR, has golden marinated tempeh where the prawns were. Tempeh Steak with Pineapple Curry, 6,400 LKR, puts a seared steak of tempeh under the same pineapple curry.

On the side, Steamed Basmati Rice, 800 LKR, takes up the last of the sauce. A Karapincha Mojito, 2,200 LKR, our mocktail with curry leaf in place of mint, is the fresh answer to a golden curry.

A coconut curry gravy also comes with Red Snapper for Two and with the Ohana Seafood Platter, so you can try it beside a grilled fish without ordering a curry at all.

How do you order your first one?

Start with a coconut curry, at lunch, with plenty of rice. Taste each bowl alone before you mix. Leave the sambol for last. Drink water or king coconut with it.

If you want the full spread, the small kitchens in Dikwella town and in Hiriketiya put out a rice and curry at midday. Our list of where to eat in Dikwella tells you where to look. And if you want the two gentle ones with a bay in front of you, come to our seafood restaurant in Dikwella.

Good to know

• Food at Ohana is not spicy unless the dish says so, and the menu marks how much.
• Lunch and dinner are served from 11:00 to 21:00, every day.
• Prices are in LKR, plus a 10% service charge. Filtered water is on the house.
• Every dish lists its allergens. Ours is one shared kitchen, so traces cannot be excluded.
• We are at Turtle Beach, Dikwella, less than five minutes by road from Hiriketiya.