Sinhala & Hindu people in Sri Lanka celebrate the New Year festival on April 13 & 14 each year. This is the major traditional festival for Sri Lankans. Preparations for the New Year are done well in advance before the festival. People clean and repaint households to welcome the New Year. As well as people buy new clothes for whole family members to celebrate the new year with a fresh start. Preparing special traditional food items is a must in the New Year celebration.
One of the major aspects of the New Year is arranging an elegantly decorated New Year table. The New Year celebration starts with boiling milk in a new clay pot. It symbolizes prosperity and brings good luck to the entire family. There are lots of traditional customs are used in New Year celebrations. It gives an opportunity to play traditional sports and games call as “Sinhala Jana Kreeda”.
The lighting of the hearth and preparing Milk Rice in a newly purchased clay pot is the most important part of the New Year festival. After preparing Milk Rice, New Year welcomes with an elegant New Year table filled with lots of sweets. When the Auspicious time arrives, all the Sri Lankans taste their New Year meal at the same time.
Here we going to give you an idea of the Sri Lankan New Year table. The major star of the table is Milk Rice, where a number of traditional Sinhala sweetmeats decorate the table. Let’s have a look at traditional food items at Sri Lankan New Year table.
Traditional New Year Food Items
1. Milk Rice
Milk rice or Kiribath is the major food item in Sri Lankan New Year festival. It is a popular traditional festive dish for any auspicious moment. This dish prepares by steaming rice and cooking it with thick coconut milk with the required amount of salt. It needs to cook until porridge-like and then cut into diamond shape pieces. Since it is very delicious with milky taste, all the Sri Lankans love it. Even babies and toddlers enjoy it.
Milk Rice makes a nice combination with Chili paste or Lunu Miris. Lunu Miris is a relish made with onions and red chilies and salt. All these ingredients add to a mortar and pestle and crushed well to make this condiment. Finally, a bit of lime juice adds to enhance the taste. Lunu Miris is an essential item on the New Year table and the perfect spicy condiment for milk rice.
2. Pani Walalu
Pani Walalu or Unduwel is one of the extremely delicious New Year sweets in Sri Lanka. It can literally convert to English as ‘Honey Rings’. It is made by deep-frying coils of Ulundu & rice flour mixture and then soaking them in honey or sugar syrup. Since it enriches with coconut milk and treacle, it brings a mellow, sweet taste. These crunchy deep-fried delicacies filled with sweet sugar syrup make kids happy during the New Year.
3. Kokis
Kokis is a deep-fried, crispy Sri Lankan traditional snack made from rice flour and coconut milk. It is an essential item for the Sinhala New Year celebration. This savory treat adorns the Sri Lankan New Year table of every household. Kokis make from rice flour and coconut milk, without adding any sugar. Therefore, it isn’t sweetened as other delicacies. It is a good option for people who don’t like sweetmeats.
A special mold of a decorative shape is used to make Kokis. This mold coats in a thick batter made from rice flour, coconut milk, and beaten eggs. A pinch of sugar and salt adds to the mixture as well. The batter-covered mold dips in boiling coconut oil, and the Kokis allow to deep fry until golden brown. Kokis is one of the most popular traditional snacks in the country.
4. Kavum
Kavum or oil cake is a deep-fried Sri Lankan sweet made from rice flour and Kitul treacle. It is a traditional and essential item in celebrations of the Sinhala New Year. Its inside is soft and moist, while the thin caramelized crust is crunchy. Once you bite into it, you can taste the sweet, soft feeling and oily, crunchy taste same time. This is a wonderful sweet that adorns the New Year table of every Sri Lankan household.
5. Mung Kavum
Mung Kavum is a deep-fried Sri Lankan sweet made from a combination of Mung beans flour, rice flour, and Kitul treacle. It is a traditional item in celebrations of the Sinhala New Year. It has a taste of Mung that comes from Mung beans flour and it is very delicious. This is a major sweet that adorns the New Year table.
6. Mung Guli
Mung Guli is a traditional Sri Lankan sweet which is almost similar to Mung Kavum. Both are almost similar, while mung kavum is diamond in shape and mung guli is a ball. Mung guli cooks with rice flour, treacle, and mung bean flour, so the taste includes the flavor of mung beans. The outer layer is crispy, and the inside is melting in the mouth.
7. Athirasa
Athirasa is completely the same as the taste as Kavum, but it has a different shape. Unlike Kavum, it has a flat round shape. It is also a deep-fried sweet made from rice flour and Kitul treacle. This is quite easy to prepare than Kavum and it is a quite popular traditional food item in the New Year table.
8. Aasmi
Aasmi is a traditional deep-fried sweet snack, which is served specially on Sinhala New Year. It makes with a combination of rice flour and coconut milk, mixing with the juice extracted from cinnamon leaves. The addition of this particular cinnamon leaf juice is essential for Aasmi making. Then flour mixture deep-fried in coconut oil and topped with sugar syrup or treacle.
This delicious and irresistible sweet is one of the most popular New Year snacks in the country for a long time. Aasmi gives the taste of mild sweetness and crispiness. When Aasmi is topped with sugar syrup it gives different colors, and even more attractive for kids.
9. Dodol
Dodol is a dark, almost gel-like candy made from jaggery, coconut milk, and rice flour. This delicious confectionary is one of the essential New year sweets in Sri Lanka. Unlike other homemade sweets, Dodol is usually bought from sweet shops. The process of Dodol making is quite strenuous and it needs the support of a few hard-working people. Therefore, Dodol makes in large amounts by sweet manufacturers.
To make the Dodol, jaggery and thin coconut milk are mixed and boiled in a large pan until the mixture is reduced to half the original amount. Then rice flour and thick coconut milk add and stir continuously. Spices and cashews are added, and then it’s simmered again. Dodol is ready once it’s become thick and jelly-like, then it is poured into a tray and cut into pieces. This is an extremely delicious sweet, which decorates Sri Lankan New Year table.
10. Weli Thalapa
Another sweet prepared to adorn the festive New Year table is Weli Thalapa. It is one of the extremely delicious traditional Sri Lankan sweets loved by both kids and adults. Weli Thalapa is a combination of rice flour, coconut, and treacle.
Weli thalapa is made by steaming rice flour beads and then mixing it with treacle and cutting it into small pieces. Since treacle is the binding agent of steamed flour beads, it needs to add lots of treacle to make this sweet. The pieces of Weli thalapa are filled with sweet treacle and it is a perfectly delicious sweet for the New Year celebrations.
11. Naran Kavum
Naran Kavum is one of the most famous New Year sweets in Sri Lanka. This is a yummy sweet that mainly includes scraped coconut, sugar or jaggery, and rice flour as ingredients. Since it very much resembles Mung Guli in appearance, sometimes it calls a Pol Guli. This is very popular in the Avurudu season as an easy, tasty alternative for Konda Kavum.
Making Naran Kavum is quite easy and enjoyable. Generally, sugar is the main sweetener but jaggery can be used for sweetening too. The sweetened coconut call as ”Pani Pol” is used to making balls and deep-fried after covering them with the batter. This is one of the best delicious traditional sweets on the New Year table in Sri Lanka.
12. Aluwa
Aluwa is a traditional sweet popular as a New Year food in Sri Lanka. Roasted rice flour, treacle, cashew nuts, and cardamom are the main ingredients of Aluwa. This mixture is cut into diamond-shaped pieces. Sometimes, Aluwa can be made using sugar syrup instead of treacle. This sweet calls in different names in each part of the island. It may call as Kaju aluwa, Kiri aluwa or Pani aluwa. Always, Aluwa is white in color and so delicious.
Aluwa making is quite easy than many other traditional Sri Lankan sweets. But it needs to bring the flour and treacle mixture to the correct consistency before shaping and cutting. If you learn this hardest part, making Aluwa at home is an enjoyable process.
To sum up, these sweet treats are the major traditional food items on Sri Lankan New Year table. There are more varieties of sweets, particularly in different regions of the island. If you happen to be in Sri Lanka during the New Year festival, remember to taste all of these delicious sweets. Enjoy the Avrudu sweet treats in Sri Lanka!
Text by Magnificent Sri Lanka. Images from Wikimedia Commons, Dreamstime, Lakpura, Food Corner, and Twitter. All copyrights are reserved by the original authors.
