I was asked recently whether kottu roti, a Sri Lankan dish of chopped god(h)amba (wheat-based) roti combined with vegetables and egg and sometimes meat, was a Tamil contribution to Sri Lankan cuisine.
When I was growing up in Sri Lanka there was no such dish. By most accounts from Sri Lankans it made its appearance on the streets of Kandy sometime in the 1970's.
It's origins, I hazard, are twofold.
The first is the godamba roti itself, a long established part of Sri Lankan cuisine, most usually associated with Tamils, and similar to Malaysian murtabak; made from an buttery and oily wheat based dough that is tossed and tossed till thin and almost translucent onto a flat hot plate. Here it cooks rapidly, being folded from time to time to make a layered flat bread. When an egg is cracked into it as it is cooking you get egg godamba.
Godamba roti like other rotis in Sri Lanka and India are used as you would other flat breads like naan or pita, mainly to scoop up another dish, say a curry or a a vegetable sabzi.
The other part of the creation of kottu roti is not so clear, but the process through which it is made, two heavy wide flat blades being used to chop up and mix pre cut godamba with other ingredients - meat, vegetables, spices - is exactly the way Pakistani kat-a-kat is made. This latter is usually a dish of offal that is tossed onto a hot plate and chopped as it cooks using two flat wide blades. Here also onion, chilies, spices are mixed in with sweeping and gathering and cutting motions of the blades. The name kat-a-kat comes from the sound of the blades hitting the hot plate.
I have no idea as to how the two came together in Kandy in the 1970's but they seem to have. Certainly there is no other dish like it in the 'classic' Sri Lankan menu.
Here's a video of making kottu roti https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSnqHbH19KA.
When I was growing up in Sri Lanka there was no such dish. By most accounts from Sri Lankans it made its appearance on the streets of Kandy sometime in the 1970's.
It's origins, I hazard, are twofold.
The first is the godamba roti itself, a long established part of Sri Lankan cuisine, most usually associated with Tamils, and similar to Malaysian murtabak; made from an buttery and oily wheat based dough that is tossed and tossed till thin and almost translucent onto a flat hot plate. Here it cooks rapidly, being folded from time to time to make a layered flat bread. When an egg is cracked into it as it is cooking you get egg godamba.
Godamba roti like other rotis in Sri Lanka and India are used as you would other flat breads like naan or pita, mainly to scoop up another dish, say a curry or a a vegetable sabzi.
The other part of the creation of kottu roti is not so clear, but the process through which it is made, two heavy wide flat blades being used to chop up and mix pre cut godamba with other ingredients - meat, vegetables, spices - is exactly the way Pakistani kat-a-kat is made. This latter is usually a dish of offal that is tossed onto a hot plate and chopped as it cooks using two flat wide blades. Here also onion, chilies, spices are mixed in with sweeping and gathering and cutting motions of the blades. The name kat-a-kat comes from the sound of the blades hitting the hot plate.
I have no idea as to how the two came together in Kandy in the 1970's but they seem to have. Certainly there is no other dish like it in the 'classic' Sri Lankan menu.
Here's a video of making kottu roti https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSnqHbH19KA.
No comments:
Post a Comment