Currying flavors

For S.H. “Skiz” Fernando Jr., life has always been all about creation. It used to focus on music: writing about it as a hip-hop journalist, making it as a DJ, producing it as the owner of two record labels. Now, as the author of a Sri Lankan cookbook and purveyor of his own hand-crafted curry powders, Fernando has taken his newfound passion for his native fare to the creative extremes.

Fernando is the only member of his family born in the United States, and as a child growing up in Baltimore, he ate Sri Lankan food— generally referred to as “rice and curry”— at least twice a week. But it wasn’t until his freshman year at Harvard University that he started to appreciate the tastes of his mother’s cooking. The school’s food was so bland and so unappetizing that he began to cook on his own. Unfortunately, he only knew how to make one dish, perhaps the most traditional Sri Lankan meal: chicken curry.

It didn’t take long for Fernando to crave more variety. He thought about going to Sri Lanka to learn the recipes of the country, but the timing just wasn’t right. After graduating from Harvard and then the Columbia University School of Journalism, Fernando established his own label, WordSound Recordings, in 1994. Things were going great until the music industry hit a standstill in the new millennium. So, in 2006, Fernando rented out his townhouse in Charles Village, packed up his things and jetted off to Sri Lanka for a year.

Living in a suburb of Colombo, the capital, Fernando would wake up three or four days a week around 7 a.m., visit the open-air market to choose the best ingredients offered that day then spend about five hours cooking using family recipes and old Sri Lankan cookbooks. He’d bring the dishes to his five aunts, who would critique them, pinpointing exactly what wasn’t right. All in all, he made each of the more than 80 recipes in his cookbook at least 20 times. “The experience was like cooking school for me,” says Fernando, 42. “My aunts had secrets you couldn’t find in any cookbook.”

He learned firsthand about the essential ingredients of Sri Lankan food: curry leaves, coconut milk, chili peppers and curry powder. He learned how to roast whole spices and then grind them— another characteristic of the country’s culinary practices. He learned how to create dishes that, unlike traditional Indian food, lack milk, yogurt and ghee (clarified butter).

Most Sri Lankan dinner and lunch entrées consist of a main curry— chicken, beef, pork, etc.— and a short-grain, red rice called samba. Recipes draw influence from a variety of colonists and foreign traders, especially the Portuguese. And the food is notably spicier than Indian cuisine thanks to generous doses of chili powder, chili flakes and whole green chilies, says Fernando. “Deviled shrimp,” for example, is a Malay-inspired, stir-fry appetizer made with peppers, onions, green chilies, crushed red pepper, garlic and several sauces.

For his “final exam” before concluding the cookbook, Fernando prepared about 15 dishes for his entire family— a party of 30. “On the whole, everyone liked it,” he says. “I knew I was ready.”

In 2008, Fernando self-published “Rice & Curry: Sri Lankan Home Cooking,” started a blog and began making and selling his own homemade curry powders on two websites: Foodzie and Foodora. In March 2009, he was featured on Travel Channel’s “No Reservations” show with Anthony Bourdain, where he led the crew to the country’s hot spots. He recently began airing a Pan Asian cooking series on YouTube, and though he is still producing and performing music, he has catered several dinner parties and hopes to do more. He is even toying with the idea of a restaurant, noting that many cities in the United States, Baltimore included, lack any authentic Sri Lankan culinary presence.
“In America, we are always looking for the next big thing,” says Fernando. “I believe that Sri Lankan food could be that next big thing.”

Visit riceandcurry.wordpress.com for Fernando’s blog. To purchase his curry powders, visit skizsspice.foodoro.com or skizsoriginalspiceblends.foodzie.com. For catering, e-mail him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).