Devilled macadamias

My new cookbook has just hit bookshops and, in almost the same breath, the restaurant upon which it is based is closing. What a perfect time to reflect upon this and share with you one of the recipes from the book. (Hopefully, it might even entice you into buying it…)

I can trace the genesis of Lankan Filling Station back to when I was a teenager travelling in Sri Lanka with my mum. I got to see where she was from, meet family and friends and eat all the food. The stand-out moment, though, was when I first ate a hopper and revelled in its beauty and singular flavour. Almost 20 years later, most of it spent in a kitchen, I began reflecting on that moment, and the idea for LFS started to take shape. It had a long gestation. The idea was thrown around and tested and changed, there were festivals, pop-ups, including one in Singapore, the most disastrous service of my life and a market stall that went on far longer than I meant it to.

Eventually LFS found a home: a little place on inner-Sydney’s Riley Street, a corridor of a restaurant, blessed with an excellent landlord and much goodwill. It started with intensity, always full to overflowing, noisy, bustling and constant. We had the allure of being the new exciting place with the actuality of being unlike anywhere else. Apart from some remote suburban clusters, Sri Lankan restaurants were few and far between at that time, and one with a modern sensibility
even rarer.

Then Covid struck and affected all industries and humans in some form or another, but for us was particularly unsettling. We had created something that was the antithesis of all that was recommended at that time, as part of the joy of the restaurant was the small space, the eating of food with the hands and the closeness of it all.

Since those grim times, there have been years of ebbs and flows. We still had glorious moments, of course, and the restaurant moved forward: changing, adapting, adding. The one constant has been the smell of spices so powerful they cling to my clothes but so pervading that I can no longer detect their scent. It’s only when I’m away for weeks at a time that I notice them, the smells welcoming me back and making themselves known again.

During these years of LFS came my first cookbook, Lanka Food, written partly to help untangle the mysteries of Sri Lankan food and in answer to all the questions I got when opening the restaurant. And then my next: a continuation of that story and a look at what happens when you start with traditional food as your base but let it evolve to encompass modern techniques, ingredients that are at your disposal and a background knowledge of food from other cultures.

Add into this mix life happening. The small everyday things and the very big ones:  for me, two pregnancies, the first of which tragically ended in a stillbirth at 38 weeks, which brought unimaginable grief and a sense of loss of the future. It was around that time that writing this little column came into my life, which was one of the many things that kept me afloat. Happily, my second pregnancy resulted in a tiny, perfect human who brings unending joy and has turned LFS into his playground full of adoring fans. The fact he probably won’t remember his first steps here is one of the many tiny strings of sadness I feel about closing at the end of the month.

Lankan Filling Station will leave traces, though, and part of its legacy are my two cookbooks, which show a glimpse of all the glorious things I achieved under this banner.

This recipe is simple but one that, for me, symbolises the restaurant. It’s a common and moreish snack that perfectly balances hot and salty. Instead of using the classic cashew – which in Sri Lanka can be bought plump and fresh in supermarkets – I have used macadamias. It’s nothing tricky, just a blending of traditional ideas with ingredients native to where I cook.