Book review: 'Rambutan: Recipes from Sri Lanka' by Cynthia Shanmugalingam

In Rambutan Cynthia Shanmugalingam guides the reader through the tastes, smells, sights and troubled histories of Sri Lanka. The book is a beautifully written and deeply affecting exploration of the importance food can have in developing a sense of belonging and identity.

Shanmugalingam’s parents left Sri Lanka in the 1960s and she was brought up in Coventry. Rambutan is interspersed with accounts of how Shanmugalingam set about learning to cook the dishes her mother had prepared intuitively throughout their childhood. Stories of her family and their visits to Sri Lanka are fascinating and often humorous, while also showing how food provided an anchor for those displaced by conflict. She explains how her mother would send her father out for fresh curry leaves, because combined with salt she would be sure to rustle up a delicious meal.

Which brings us to the recipes, thoughtfully introduced and beautifully photographed, and interspersed with candid family snaps as well as Shanmugalingam’s accounts of her family and travels. Intense, alluring flavours jump from the page. Take a sticky, soft, fried aubergine vinegar moju topped with bright pink pickled onions; or Jaffna crab curry, which Shanmugalingam describes as a “layered flavour bomb”, bringing together spices, coconut and delicate crab meat, ready to be sucked from the shell. There’s a deep yellow roast pumpkin curry, “simple, mild and fragrant”; and a shrimp and seafood kool stew, which is “spicy and fishy and delicious”, along with a collection of fresh sambol and vadai doughnuts, studded with onions and spices.

As a guide to Sri Lanken cuisine Rambutan is comprehensive. Having been on her own journey to learn these dishes Shanmugalingam is an informative and thorough guide, introducing ingredients that may be unfamiliar and providing a detailed explanation to new techniques as well as menu (and feast) suggestions. There is so much in Rambutan to inspire, but be sure to read the words between the recipes and remind yourself of the power of food.

Rambutan: Recipes from Sri Lanka by Cynthia Shanmugalingam (Bloomsbury, £26)