Buffalo Curd and Hoppers!

Sri Lanka offers many delicious foods. The first one I tried was buffalo curd!!

Buffalo curd is a firm creamy tart plain yogurt made from...yep! buffalo milk!  It's made by fermenting and boiling the milk for 2 hours to reduce the water content. Then cooling the product to room temperature, sealing it with paper and putting it aside for 12 hours to set.

It's sometimes sold in stores in plastic pots, like margarine tubs.  But the tradition is to put it into baked clay pots called hatti. This gives the curd a distinctive taste and texture, that the plastic  cannot. People then use the pots for cooking.  


My first exposure to buffalo curd was at the Sunday market in Negombo.  We bought it in a small, single serving size clay pot. Adorable!  The spoon provided was a folded palm frond.  Really??? Yes!!!!

I wasn't so sure about the curd that first day.  I was jet lagged and the curd was warm and a little runny.  But I am now a huge fan!!  It's delicious, creamy and refreshing cold. Best eaten with bits of banana and nuts.  It's traditionally eaten with trickle - a coconut syrup.

Pictures
1- My little clay pot of buffalo curd.
2-3 There are a few brands of buffalo curd.  Milk in Sinhala is "kiri" the pot is a "hatti".  So in the stores, you can ask for kiri hatti.
4- A hopper with sambal on a banana (?) leaf.  A hopper is a thin rice batter cooked in a round pot so the result looks like a pretty bowl. Hoppers sometimes come with a cooked egg in the bottom.  This one just had a lump of cooked rice batter. Sambal is shredded coconut with lime and spices.
5 - Pittu with sambal.  Pittu is chopped up rice served with coconut milk.  Delicious!  The leaf was stuffed with lavari a mildly sweet paste.  We're not sure what it's made with.
6- A man in a tiny street kiosk making hoppers.