Lamprais
A rice-and-curry parcel baked in banana leaf, developed by Sri Lanka's Dutch Burgher community — descendants of Dutch, Portuguese, and Sri Lankan intermarriage during Dutch colonial rule of coastal Ceylon from 1658 to 1796. Its name comes from the Dutch 'lomprijst' (packet of food), and the banana-leaf-wrapped rice concept itself likely traces to the Javanese snack lemper, carried over through Dutch East India Company trade routes — a genuine multi-layered fusion, not simply a Dutch dish. The telltale Dutch-Burgher marker is the frikkadel, a spiced meatball unlike anything in indigenous Sri Lankan cooking, and the final baking step that melds all the components together is what real lamprais does and shortcuts skip.
⚠ Contains: Egg, Gluten, Fish, Mustard. Always check your own ingredients — this isn't a guarantee for severe allergies.
Ingredients
- 3 cups basmati or samba rice
- 1 liter meat stock
- 600g mixed meat (beef, chicken, or lamb), for curry
- 300g ground meat, egg, and breadcrumbs, for frikkadel
- 2 onions, caramelized, for seeni sambol
- Dried Maldive fish flakes (or dried shrimp)
- 1 eggplant, mustard seed, and vinegar, for brinjal moju
- Banana leaves
Steps
- Cook the rice in the spiced meat stock.
- Prepare the meat curry, and pan-fry the frikkadels.
- Make the seeni sambol (caramelized onion relish) and brinjal moju (eggplant pickle).
- Layer all the components on a square of banana leaf and wrap tightly.
- Bake at high heat for 20-30 minutes until the leaf chars slightly.