In this way you try with all your might to motivate your child to persevere a little longer, so that he does not fail for the second time, and so you have a student son who is doing an internship at the Sri Lankan embassy. Coincidentally, at the end of his first week of work, the Embassy Festival took place, an occasion where Lange Voorhout in The Hague filled with food and music from all over the world. And so, on his actually internship-free Saturday, Pep stood in a colorful shirt, pouring Ceylon tea and making a mysterious pink drink called falooda for anyone who wanted it.
Well, I wanted to. I’m not a big festival goer, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to see my chick in professional action. Moreover, I had heard from a reliable source that there had been a lot of cooking going on in the basement of the Sri Lankan embassy throughout the previous week. What exactly, I asked. How did it smell? I had to come and experience that for myself.
Of course, this is of no use to you at the moment, because the Embassy Festival took place in the first weekend of September. But it will be held again next year, and I highly recommend you go. It is an accessible way to get acquainted with many different cuisines, from Hungarian to Philippine, from Lithuanian to Bolivian and from Rwanda to Bangladesh. You can taste a local specialty at almost every stall, so you can actually take a culinary journey around the world in one afternoon.
Back to the Sri Lanka stall, where Pep handed me a cup of tea and whispered what I absolutely had to taste. Wade, a fritter of yellow split peas with corn kernels in it. Cotlet, breaded balls with a spicy filling of potato and fish. Egg hopper, a rice flour pancake baked into a bowl with a fried egg in the middle. Kottu, something that can perhaps best be described as fried noodles, but where the noodles have been replaced by shredded roti sheets. It seems to be very popular with tourists.
There was also yellow rice with dal (spicy lentil puree) and stewed chicken. And that drink, falooda. I skipped it because I hate such sweet concoctions, but it is interesting. In addition to rose syrup, milk and vanilla ice cream, basil seeds are also added. When you soak these small, pitch-black seeds (also called sabja or tukmaria) in water, they form a thick gel, a bit like chia seeds do. They are known as a good source of omega-3 fatty acids and are also packed with fiber – and voilà, your excuse to give it a try.
I left the Embassy Festival with new flavors in my internal flavor library and new ideas in my upstairs room. When I got home, I pulled out a few cookbooks, searched the internet and found some reliable Sri Lankan cooking blogs and made a plan for a family dinner. And so, a few days later we enjoyed a Sri Lankan feast for which I had spent a whole day in the kitchen. It turned out to be well worth the effort; what a wonderful discovery, this kitchen.
The next day Pep sent me a text. The leftovers he brought in his lunchbox had been approved by his colleagues. I’m sure you’ll be fine with that internship.
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