Sri Lankan Curries

A Sri Lankan lunch is rice with three or four curries, and the vegetable ones are often the most work. Young jackfruit has to be cut, cleaned of its sticky latex and simmered for an hour. Brinjal is sliced, salted, deep fried and then cooked again in a sweet, sour and spicy sauce. Cashew curry, kaju maluwa, means soaking raw cashews before simmering them in coconut milk with turmeric and curry leaves. These ready-made curries take care of all that, cooked in the Sri Lankan style with roasted curry powder, goraka and coconut.

The range includes polos curry and polos ambul, a sour version of the jackfruit curry, fried brinjal curry, cashew curry, brinjal curry and green jak curry. Serve them with red or samba rice, parippu, a sambol and a papadam for a full rice and curry spread, or use a single curry as an extra dish when you have cooked a meat or fish curry from scratch.

Warm gently in a small pan with a splash of water or a spoon of coconut milk, stirring so the bottom does not catch. Once opened, keep leftovers in a covered bowl in the fridge and eat within two days. Find them under ready meals alongside Indian ready meals and baked beans and tinned pasta, and if you would like to cook your own, see jackfruit and Sri Lankan vegetables and red rice.