Karuna's Cooking Class, Unawatuna, Sri Lanka

John shredding coconut with an instrument of torture
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Karuna’s Cooking Class

Let Karuna, the best cook in Unawatuna, teach you how to make Sri Lanka’s traditional meals. The class includes a package of fresh curry that you make, a recipe book of the curry dishes you learned to make (which you actually write yourself). So reads the advertising.

Sri Lanka has made great cooks out of both of us!

To explain….

The beginning of fresh curry powder and our host Karuna
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There are a group of people here from Different Tours, or Voluntourism in the UK, who spend half their vacation vacationing and the other half volunteering. We met them in the lobby the other day, and we were talking about what they had done to date. One of the things was to take a cooking class. As the diving (and therefore snorkeling) was off the menu here, we figured, what the heck, let’s do it.

For the first time, this adventure did not involve getting up early – Yahoo! Off we went at 11 am to the secret Village of Unawatuna, hidden just behind the beach. There we found Sonja’s Health Food Restaurant, where Karuna operated from.

Tea and coconut - Sri Lankan style
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Karuna, now how do I describe her? She’s 40 (by her own admission) her family have lived in Unawatuna for at least three generations. She has 7 brothers and sisters still living, a mother, and an assortment of nieces and nephews (far more nieces than nephews by the way). She’s single and thinks she’s too old to get married. She’s also concerned about the fact that any man interested in her might be only interested in whatever dowry she could bring to the table. Karuna is a very affectionate lady. She doesn’t discriminate, with kisses and hugs (big ones) for both men and women alike. She has decided that John will be her husband in the next life.

Our tuk tuk squeezing down the alley on the way to market
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So, there we were, anticipatory, what happens now? Come on she says, and we climb into a tuk tuk with her. Karuna is not a small woman, and tuk tuks usually take two Western-sized bodies, but not today. The three of us were like sardines in a can back there, with Karuna’s hand alternating between my knee and John’s. We were off to market – so we thought. The road Gods prevailed and we couldn’t actually take the regular route, so we reverted to a tour around this secret village, and at one point, the three of us had to disembark to allow the tuk tuk to proceed (with the aid of a teenage guide) down this tiny road with a small canal running down one side of it.

Buying veggies from the market.
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Eventually we made it to market and Karuna picked a place to buy pineapples, a different place to buy vegetables, and then back into the tuk tuk to go to the seashore to buy two fish. We watched the fisherman descale the fish with this piece of wood that had some nails stuck into it. He cleaned and cut the fish with the sharpest knife and with such speed – we were impressed, as was the cat hovering around the stall for any leftovers. We would love to tell you what kind of fish it was, but no matter how many times we asked her, we couldn’t quite decipher her response.

Karuna and her husband in the next life
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Back at the restaurant, Karuna begins. We were handed two little books and pens to write down all our ingredients and instructions. This was a challenge to remember to write as well as “do”. It ended up with us sharing the same book and whoever wasn’t cooking was writing.

Our first step was to assemble all the items necessary to make our own curry powder from scratch - 50 grams of this, 30 grams of that. At this point, I have to tell you that Karuna is measuring these items using the lid of whatever jar they come out of.

Finished product
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All of the ingredients are placed on a tray and put in the sun for two hours to dry. (Apparently, if you have no sun, you can also put these things in the oven on a low heat for ten minutes, but it gives an entirely different flavor).

At the end of two (or three) hours, you mix the whole lot together, pop it into the biggest pestle and mortar you have ever seen and pound the crap out of it as John would say!

We moved on to making coconut pancakes with coconut that we shredded ourselves with a machine that looked like it came from some torture chamber.

The pancakes, however, were to die for. We had ginger tea and some cookies called kokis also made from pancake batter with this amazing cookie block.

Now it was time for the real cooking. We ended up making six different curries and an eggplant pickle – pretty cool eh? We were finished about 3:30 p.m. and Karuna asked us when we would like to eat dinner. We all agreed that later would be better as it was at least 102 degrees in the shade with no wind, and we were really hot, and perhaps it would cool down later (it didn’t by the way), so 7:30 pm was when we set to come back and enjoy the feast.

We went back to UBR and hung out. The gang we met started to come back and asked us how our meal was, we explained that we didn’t know yet. They had eaten theirs straight after they cooked it when they did the class.

We sat out and the pool and while I transcribed our scratchings from our books to the computer, John swam for a bit (did we mention it was really hot?) and then at 5 p.m. the hotel said they were going to release some turtles back into the water and did we want to help? Of course we did, so off we go to the beach to let the turtles go….. Free Willy….oh, that was a whale wasn’t it….

Okay, back to the story. We dressed for dinner, took our remaining bottle of wine (an Australian Syrah) and headed over to Sonja’s Health Food Restaurant once again. Waiting for us were all our curries, and Karuna had made rice and poppadums (like we needed more food). We opened the wine, toasted and tucked in. Everything was great. The pineapple curry was a little spicy, so we might drop some of the chili that went into that next time. The sweet potato was our favorite I think. The lentils were good as was the pumpkin. We definitely will use the green bean recipe again, just as a side dish for any meal. The fish was excellent, if a little boney, so we would probably use a different fish or even shellfish. The pickles were a great addition too – I must admit I was a little wary of pickles, but they weren’t like our pickles and were very mild.

A grand feast and way too much food. Karuna said her family would be happy to finish the remains. This would have been perfect but for one small thing – as our meal came to an end, a verbal fight began just outside the restaurant with some women. Unfortunately it got very loud very quick and Karuna joined in, and pretty soon the road was just a cacophony of women’s screaming voices. It was over quite quickly, but both John and I felt it was time to go. We paid Karuna for the class, packed up the rest of our wine and left to go back to our hotel.

We walked along the beach – there were so many stars in the black sky. The moon was a Cheshire Cat moon (ask Fiona if you don’t know that one). It was definitely one of those “moments in time”.

Back at the hotel the gang were having the hotel buffet dinner, and wanted to know about our curries. They had made five of the six we had, but had made a fish and a prawn curry whereas we made a sweet potato curry. I promised I would email the recipes (I had already typed them out). One more glass of wine, and then to bed. Another great day.