Kiri Hodi

Sri Lanka's everyday coconut milk gravy, thin and turmeric-yellow, built on curry leaf and pandan

Origin: Sri Lanka

From the journey of Curry Leaf.

Kiri hodi means milk gravy, and it is the plainest thing on the Sri Lankan table and one of the most constant. It is coconut milk let down with water, coloured with turmeric, and simmered with onion, green chilli, garlic, fenugreek seed, curry leaves, and a length of pandan leaf, then sharpened at the end with lime or a piece of dried goraka. There is no meat, no ground spice paste, and nothing browned. It takes fifteen minutes and it goes over rice, over string hoppers, over pittu, and over milk rice at breakfast. What makes it Sri Lankan rather than South Indian is the pairing at its heart. Karapincha and rampe, curry leaf and pandan, go into the pot together and stay there, and that duo is the island's signature the way mustard seed and curry leaf are Tamil Nadu's. Where a Tamil cook flashes the leaf in hot fat for four seconds, a Sri Lankan cook simmers it for twenty minutes in coconut milk, and the result is rounder, sweeter, and much less sharp. The fenugreek seed is the detail most non-Sri Lankan versions leave out and should not. A teaspoon of whole seed, softening in the gravy, gives a faint maple bitterness that is unmistakably part of the island's cooking. The technique to respect is the split. Coconut milk boiled hard separates into oil and curds, so the gravy is brought to the barest tremble and stirred in one direction, and the thick milk goes in only at the end.

Ingredients

Gravy

  • 400 ml thin coconut milk (second extract, or tinned milk diluted by half)

To Finish

  • 200 ml thick coconut milk (first extract, or tinned)
  • 2 tbsp lime juice

Aromatics

  • 1 whole onion, thinly sliced
  • 4 cloves garlic, sliced
  • 3 whole green chillies, slit lengthways
  • 3 sprigs fresh curry leaves
  • 1 piece pandan leaf (rampe), 10 cm, knotted
  • 1 tsp fenugreek seeds
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 whole cinnamon stick, 5 cm

Seasoning

  • 1.5 tsp salt, or to taste

Method

  1. Put the thin coconut milk in a pan with the onion, garlic, green chillies, curry leaves, pandan, fenugreek, turmeric, cinnamon, and salt.
  2. Bring slowly to a bare simmer and cook, uncovered, for 12 to 15 minutes until the onion is completely soft.
  3. Stir occasionally and always in the same direction.
  4. Check the fenugreek seeds. They should be soft and swollen; if still hard, give it another five minutes.
  5. Add the thick coconut milk, warm through for two minutes only, and do not let it boil.
  6. Take off the heat, stir in the lime juice, and taste for salt.
  7. Serve hot, with the leaves and pandan left in the pot.

Notes

Fresh coconut gives two extracts: the first pressing is thick, the second, from the same flesh with more water, is thin. Tinned milk works well: use it undiluted for the thick and diluted by half for the thin. Pandan (rampe) is sold frozen by Southeast Asian and Sri Lankan grocers and freezes indefinitely. It is not substitutable and the dish is noticeably poorer without it. Goraka, dried Garcinia, is the traditional souring agent in place of lime; use a small piece added with the aromatics. It does not keep well and is made fresh in fifteen minutes. Serve over rice, string hoppers, pittu, or kiribath, with a fish curry or a sambol alongside. A boiled egg dropped in makes bittara kiri hodi.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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