What's your heritage recipe?

Recipes, personal stories and histories that journey through time

Who taught you to cook? 

Did you learn from your mother? A grandmother? Perhaps your aunt? Was there a stash of recipes handed down to you containing all those treasured family favourites? 

I don’t remember how I learned to cook our food. By that I mean Sri Lankan food. Because my mother never actually taught me. 

What I did was spend time in the kitchen, sitting on a stool, in the corner, watching my mother make curries. We’d chat about this and that, and catch up on family gossip and all that time I was learning.

It was during those moments I soaked up what she did. Perhaps, by osmosis, I learned how to roast and grind the spices for the curry powder. Her actions became my actions, as her chicken curry became my chicken curry. 

I never quite got the just-so-taste of her dhal.  That took me years to master and always, something was lacking. Eventually, I had to corner her in the kitchen, watch her, and take notes on how her dhal was made. 

If you were to ask me what my heritage recipes were, it would be that chicken curry and that dhal.

‘What is your heritage recipe?’

This is the question I asked my three guests on the South Asian Heritage Month editions of my podcast, Tea with Tooting Mama. 

The question is loosely based on a segment in a Saturday morning radio show, where guests are asked for their inheritance tracks, music they inherited from a parent or relative, and a track they’d pass on to others.

I’ve simplified the question. What is your heritage recipe? A recipe that has been passed down through their families to them, and one they’d pass on.  

The answers fascinated me.

For Rosh, the founder of Hop and Roll, it was her Francis uncle’s black pork curry. 

I know this curry. My dad had a version, which like Francis uncle, he was famed for. 

The curry powder, which must be made specifically for this curry, is roasted to the colour of coffee grinds and gives the curry its distinct colour and flavour. 

This curry is loaded with cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, pandan leaf, lemongrass, and black pepper. cooked with goraka, sometimes called black tamarind, for its more sour and smokier notes. 

Just listening to Rosh I could feel myself salivating as I dredged up memories of eating this curry. 

There is nothing quite like a good Sri Lankan black pork curry, with its strong, pungent flavours punching on to your tongue, heat radiating through your body, beads of sweat on your brow.

For Krish, co-founder of the cult supper club, MUVs ALL DAY, it’s her mother’s chicken curry. Now, I have eaten that chicken curry, and it’s superb and yet it’s completely different from my mother’s chicken curry.  

These recipes have been passed down the generations in our respective families, never written, consigned to memory by those who make them. Only now are we preserving them for future generations to eat.

And finally, Thana from Ruci Foods. Having grown up in Sri Lanka her heritage recipe hails from Jaffna. Venthaya kulambu, sometimes known as roasted fenugreek seed curry, is a nourishing broth made to heal and revive you, convalesce you back to health. 

These recipes are more than a mere list of ingredients and methods.  Each is a story, a personal history, that has journeyed through time to reach us. Let’s treasure them, in our hearts and our tummies! 

Over to you. What’s your heritage recipe?

Do you have a heritage recipe that’s journeyed through your family? I’d love to know, and it doesn’t need to be Sri Lankan! 

You can leave a comment or email me. Let me know. 🙏🏾