Sri Lankan Breakfast Essentials

Breakfast in a Sri Lankan home, Tamil or Sinhala, is built on rice flour and coconut, and this page brings those staples together. String hoppers are called idiyappam in Tamil and indi appa in Sinhala: a soft rice flour dough pressed through a mould into fine nests and steamed. Pittu, or puttu, is rice flour rubbed with grated coconut and steamed in a bamboo or metal tube. Appa, the hoppers known as appam in South India, are bowl shaped pancakes made from a fermented rice and coconut milk batter, sometimes with an egg cracked into the middle. Kiri bath is rice cooked in coconut milk and cut into diamonds for the new year and other special mornings.

Flours come roasted or raw, and the choice matters. Roasted rice flour has been dry roasted after milling, so it needs only boiling water to form a dough for string hoppers and pittu, and it keeps longer in the cupboard. Raw rice flour is the one for appa batter, which has to ferment. Red flour is milled from red rice and gives a nuttier, earthier string hopper, while white is softer and milder. Puttu and idiyappam flour comes milled to the right fineness, and steamed wheat flour makes a wheat version of both.

Coconut runs through every plate. Coconut oil fries the onions for seeni sambol and greases the hopper pan, and when stocked we carry coconut milk for appa and kiri bath, Maldive fish for pol sambol, and roasted curry mixes for the kiri hodi or potato curry served alongside.

For string hoppers, add boiling water to roasted flour a little at a time with a pinch of salt, mix with a spoon until it clumps, then knead while still warm. Too dry and the dough will not press through the mould; too wet and the strands stick together. Keep opened flour in a sealed jar so it does not pick up damp.