The Spice Factory

As someone who makes my own curry powder, I can appreciate the time and care it takes to convert raw spices into a complex, multi-dimensional flavor enhancer capable of transforming meats and vegetables into a sublime dish. Though these ‘spices’ are essentially nothing more than the fruits, seeds, roots, and bark of various trees, bushes, [...]

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“Rice & Curry” on NPR’s Talk Of The Nation

I had the pleasure of going down to NPR’s main headquarters in DC yesterday to appear on the show “Talk of The Nation,” to discuss what else?–rice and curry. As an old radio hack myself (from my days at WHRB in Cambridge, MA), it was great to get back into the studio and also check [...]

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Burma Superstar, Oakland

Whoa! Slow down. Wait a minute! Who forgot to tell me about Burmese food? I did, after all, date a girl from Myanmar once, and I have eaten at at least one Burmese restaurant in New York, but nothing I have experienced up to now could prepare me for my first real Burmese meal at [...]

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EXTRA!! EXTRA!! from The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka….

For The Love of Food and Heritage   S.H. Fernando who lives in the States and has cooked up quite a fan club with his cooking blog, in an email interview with Smriti Daniel discusses his book ‘Rice and Curry’ which he hopes will give young Lankans living abroad a taste of our local flavours [...]

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Skiz’s Original Spice Blends Featured on Maryland Public Television

I originally started making my own curry powder just for fun. As someone who’s always been interested in spices, it was a way to recreate the flavors I’ve known since childhood when my mother used to make rice and curry. Then I started to get really positive feedback from family, and then friends about my [...]

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Old Mandarin Islamic Restaurant, San Francisco

  I had not been to San Francisco since the first annual FoodBuzz convention in November 2009, and I was ready to get my grub on. Thanks to all the food TV these days, I had in my mind an image of a place that seemed eerily familiar–an Asian restaurant, off the beaten path, with some [...]

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The Rice & Curry Book Tour: Pt. 3, The Bay Area

While California grows much of the produce we consume in the U.S., the Bay Area (i.e. Oakland, San Francisco) in particular is a food mecca. What might be considered trendy elsewhere–terms like, ‘organic,’ ‘sustainable,’ and ‘seasonal’–is really taken to heart here because people take their eating very seriously. Due to a dearth of Sri Lankan [...]

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The Rice & Curry Book Tour: Pt. 2, NYC

New York is my town. I was expecting a lot of friends to come out for the book party and  was not disappointed. Chef Sara Moulton and her husband Bill Adler, a music industry veteran whom I have known for many years, both showed up, and it was great to have them there considering they [...]

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The Rice & Curry Book Tour: Part 1, DC

  It’s been a whirlwind couple weeks, first finding out that The New York Times chose Rice & Curry as one of their favorite cookbooks of 2011, and then beginning a mini book tour  that day in Washington D.C. I already posted the Sri Lankan Embassy’s press release regarding the book launch, which was held [...]

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Sri Lankan Embassy Promotes “Rice & Curry”

Embassy of Sri Lanka  Washington DC Press Release  SRI LANKAN EMBASSY PROMOTES COOKBOOK – ‘RICE AND CURRY’ –IN THE UNITED STATES New volume is honored As “Notable” by  The New York Times WASHINGTON – Ambassador Jaliya Wickramasuriya joined Washington-area guests last week to celebrate the release of Rice and Curry, a new cookbook by Sarath Fernando, a Sri [...]

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