Formerly Ceylon, this little island situated at the southernmost tip of the Indian sub-continent has a wonderfully varied cuisine, reflecting not only the traditions of the indigenous people, the Sinhalese, but also the different nations which either colonised the island or came to trade and stayed for many generations.

While the cuisine is rice based and spice orientated, there are many flavours which arrived with the Portuguese, Dutch and British.

Various sweetmeats are a legacy of the Portuguese. Go to a birthday celebration in Sri Lanka and many of the delicious cakes and pastries you will be served are directly traceable to the seafaring and conquering Portuguese. Some introduced dishes which Sri Lanka made its own are: lampries (from the Dutch lomprijst), a popular party meal especially when there is a large number to be catered for. Love cake (Portuguese), a rich confection of sugar, eggs, semolina and cashew nuts, is the traditional birthday cake in Sri Lanka. Foguete (Portuguese), tubes of pastry fried and stuffed with preserved fruit, then dipped in heavy sugar syrup to crystallise, are a favourite sweetmeat. Bolo folhado (Portuguese), a many-layered pastry with finely chopped nuts and sugar between each layer, is a test of a patience and skill. Rich cake (Dutch) is a fruit cake served at weddings and Christmas. It uses no flour and is moist, sweet and full of brandy soaked fruit.

Apart from these occasional and festive foods, the main meals eaten by the population are based on rice accompanied by fish, meat and vegetable curries and sambals based on coconut and chillies or other strong-flavoured ingredients such as dried and salted fish. Everything is brought to the table at once and there are no separate courses as in a Western style meal. It is perfectly correct to take a little of everything and taste it against the neutral rice. There will probably be a 'dry curry', that is, with a rich thick gravy which is cooked for hours until concentrated flavour clings around the main ingredient. Another will be a soupy curry with coconut milk gravy to moisten the rice. Midway between these two are curries which have a moderate amount of fairly spicy gravy and are not to be taken with the same abandon as the mild, soupy type. Sri Lankan food is incendiary - an average 'red' curry to serve 6-8 people will use around 30 hot red chillies!

Sri Lankan curries are classified by colour, and the aficionado then knows what flavour to expect as well. Red curries are hot and spicy. White curries are mild but still flavoursome and, depending on the potency of the green chillies (used whole, to flavour the gravy), could also be a bit fiery. If avoiding hot flavours simply don't eat the chillies floating in the milky sauce. 'Black' curries are not actually black but a rich coffee colour, achieved by roasting the curry spices until really dark brown. This roasting changes the flavour in a way which is unimaginable until you've tried it, and a Sri Lankan black curry is well worth trying. A black curry usually has enough chilli to make it exciting, but because of the complex and intense flavour of the roasted spices the chilli may be omitted or greatly reduced. These curries are most typical of Sri Lankan cooking, so purchase Sri Lankan curry powder or make your own.

Sri Lanka's most popular staple foods apart from rice are preparations made from rice flour which are usually served for breakfast. There are crisp, bowl-shaped rice flour pancakes called 'hoppers' or 'appe'; cylinders of coconut and flour known as 'pittu', which get their shape from being steamed in a hollow section of bamboo; small lacy, circles of rice flour paste pressed through an incredibly fine mould, then steamed on bamboo mats, which are called 'stringhoppers' or 'iddi appe'. Each of these also have their traditional accompaniments. They are never served as accompaniments to rice but replace rice in the meal.

On festive occasions these special foods may be served at a meal other than breakfast, and then the usual accompaniments are changed. The coconut sambal which is a constant partner to stringhoppers at breakfast time is supplemented by mulligatawny, chicken curry, frikkadels, seeni sambal and a herbed scrambled egg dish known as ogu ruloung or ovo roering (other reminders of Portuguese and Dutch times).

Desserts are an imported notion, but small sweetmeats are popular for snacking on between meals. Typical are sesame balls and potato alluwa.

Being one of the world's producers of top quality tea, a lot of tea is drunk, almost always with sugar and milk. Every day begins and every meal ends with a cup of tea.

Throughout the country, cooking is done in shallow, round-bottomed clay pots called chatties placed on rough, soot-blackened brick hearths in which wood fires burn. Even in modern city homes, most of which boast a gas or electric cooker, the day to day meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner are cooked with time-honoured methods, clay pots and wood fires.

Cooking spoons are made from coconut shells polished smooth and with wooden handles attached. Spices are ground early each morning for the day's needs. Implements used for this task are a large oblong stone on which another stone shaped like a bolster is held in both hands and rubbed back and forth, a few drops of water being sprinkled over the spices from time to time until a smooth paste results. A powerful electric blender does almost (but not quite) as good a job in a Western kitchen, requiring less time and muscle power but more liquid in order to facilitate blending.