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Jack of all fruits the “Vegan Sensation “

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4 years ago

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Sri Lankans began planting jackfruit trees to gain food self-sufficiency during British rule, and they’ve since helped islanders avoid starvation.

My mother grew up in a house of eight people in Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, 100km north-east of Colombo. During the island’s severe droughts in the 1970s, most of her family’s humble, home-cooked meals consisted of boiled jackfruit served in a clay pot with a handful of freshly grated coconut. This simple, carb-rich meal fused with natural fats fuelled enough energy for the farmer-family to toil day and night in the dry plains.

Today, Starbucks serves jackfruit in wraps, while Pizza Hut offers it as a topping. The London Evening Standard called jackfruit “the new kimchi, kale and cauliflower all rolled into one”.

Pinterest named it “the hottest food trend of 2017”, and more recently, The Guardian declared it “a vegan sensation” thanks to its shredded meat texture.

But for my mother, her memories of growing up are studded with her eldest sister’s myriad jackfruit dishes. She’s particularly fond of kiri kos, a creamy jackfruit curry cooked in coconut milk. For kiri kos, my aunt plucked unripe jackfruits. Decades later in the early 2000s, it was the same tree that pleased my jackfruit cravings as a child. My mother recalls the days where I sat side by side with her as she removed and discarded the sticky white sap – koholla, as she called it in Sinhala – from ripe jackfruit, gobbling up each yellow, egg-like pod.

I loved the strong smell of the ripe fruit. People in the West often describe it as “stinky”, but for me, other Sri Lankans and those living between many parts of India and the rainforests of Malaysia where the fruit naturally grows, this seasonal smell of ripe jackfruit brings immense joy.

Jackfruit is the world’s largest tree-borne fruit and it has a spiky skin that changes colour from green to yellow as it ripens. We use unripe jackfruit in our cooking and eat the ripe fruit raw, just as we eat a ripe mango or an apple. While the West is now touting it as an ethical meat alternative, for centuries, this humble fruit has been revered by Sri Lankans, as it has repeatedly saved the island from starvation.

Across Sri Lanka, the jackfruit tree is known as bath gasa (“rice tree”). Sri Lankans are rice eaters and pre-colonial Sri Lanka took pride in the country’s vast reservoirs and irrigation canals that harnessed monsoon rains, supplying water for paddy cultivation. But when British forces occupied the island starting in 1815 and subsequently stripped farmers of their land, they made it difficult for islanders to grow rice and instead expanded plantation crops such as tea, rubber and cinnamon for their export gains.

In 1915, a member of Sri Lanka’s independence movement named Arthur V Dias, who had been sentenced to death by the British for his perceived role in an uprising, was freed from prison. Upon his release, Dias dedicated himself to helping Sri Lankans fight British rule and he realized that islanders would soon face food shortages as rice cultivation continued to decline.

During his independence movement marches in Sri Lanka’s central highlands, he also saw the destruction of the island’s native jackfruit trees. When he learnt about the harrowing food shortages caused by World War One across Europe, Dias sought to establish food security and self-sufficiency throughout Sri Lanka.

“One person can’t build a tank for paddy cultivation, but Arthur V Dias realized he could plant jackfruit trees, which [would] be the same as rice and eradicate starvation in Sri Lanka,” said Damith Amarasinghe, a history teacher at St Mary’s Maha Viduhala in the town of Uswetakeiyawa.

Dias came up with the ambitious goal of planting one million jackfruit trees across Sri Lanka. A planter by occupation, Dias imported jackfruit seeds from Malaysia and gathered healthy seeds for germination. He visited villages to distribute seedlings and mailed seeds to far-flung corners in the country. Over time, Dias’ campaign paved the way to many successful jackfruit plantations across the country and earned him the heroic nickname of Kos Mama, or Uncle Jack.

Today, Dias is considered a national hero, and like most Sri Lankan children, I first learned about Dias in a school textbook. His jackfruit campaign also helped establish food security in Sri Lanka during World War Two while nearby places such as Bengal and Vietnam experienced horrific famines in the 1940s. Amarasinghe explained that jackfruit was also known as the “starvation fruit” in Sri Lanka during the 1970s, fleetingly transferring me to my mother’s memories of her childhood.

In the 1970s, a combination of inflation, droughts and a food shortage pushed Sri Lanka to the verge of collapse. A 1974 New York Times article quotes Sri Lanka’s then-prime minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike as saying the dire economic situation has “almost squeezed the breath out of us – we are literally fighting to survive”.

But thanks to Dias’ campaign in the early 1900s, people had jackfruit growing in their backyards. Amarasinghe explained that those saplings – which had become tall, fruit-bearing trees long before the 1970s – are what got people through the crisis.

“My grandmother hailed from a well-to-do family, but the government only allowed them to purchase 2kg of rice for a week. During these years, it’s jackfruit that kept them fed,” Amarasinghe told me.

Most recently, Amarasinghe says that jackfruit also became a staple during Sri Lanka’s months-long curfew to control Covid-19. During the initial weeks of the pandemic, many people in rural villages lost their incomes and it took weeks or even months for government welfare programmes to reach these remote hamlets. Without access to money or food, many villagers resorted to boiling jackfruit – just as my mother’s family did in the 1970s.

But jackfruit isn’t just a starvation fruit. The island’s deep love and gratitude for jackfruit has birthed a host of flavourful delicacies, and we welcome every bit of it into our diverse cuisine. Tender baby jackfruit without seeds go into a flavourful curry known as polos ambula. The curry’s labour-intensive process involves slow cooking the young fruit in a clay pot over an earthen fire for at least six hours. As the hours pass, the baby jackfruit slices simmer in a spice-infused coconut broth, soaking up the flavours of cloves, cardamom, dried tamarind and other aromats.

Ripe jackfruit pods are slimy and taste better with a sprinkle of salt. Seeds don’t go to waste in our homes; we eat them boiled. When combined with a ground mix of pan-fried rice and shredded coconut, boiled seeds make for a dark curry called kos ata kalu pol maluwa. My mother loves seeds as a snack, smoking them over a charcoal fire.

My favourite is my father’s kos ata aggala, pan-roasted and ground jackfruit seeds blended with scraped coconut, sugar and a hint of pepper that are formed into balls for sublime taste and a subtle crunch. He makes them for evening tea when I’m home as a token of his love.

This jack-of-all-fruits’ versatility runs beyond the kitchen. “It’s hard to think of another tree with so many uses,” said Diwani Welitharage, a pharmacist who cooks with locally sourced ingredients in her spare time. Welitharage cites jackfruit trees’ popularity as timber and the many uses of its leaves and flowers in Ayurvedic medicine to treat diabetes. Rich in carbs, jackfruit is also a good source of dietary fibre and vitamin C.

Welitharage uses jackfruit flour in muffins and cakes, and fries sliced jackfruit pods into chips laden with sugar. Similarly, many Hela Bojun restaurants – an initiative by the Ministry of Agriculture allowing women to cook traditional Sri Lankan cuisine and earn a living – prepare kos kottu. Kottu, a popular street food and hangover cure, is a greasy mix of leftover flatbread, sliced vegetables, eggs and meat. The female-run Hela Bojun stalls dish up a healthier vegan kottu using boiled jackfruit pods.

Though jackfruit is traditionally cooked at home, this humble fruit is increasingly found in many upscale restaurants across the country.

“One day we had additional baby jackfruit, so I thought of preparing cutlets [a croquette-like snack] with it for guests who are vegetarian or vegan,” said chef Wasantha Ranasinghe at Upali’s by Nawaloka, a popular restaurant in Colombo that serves authentic local dishes. His tender jackfruit cutlets, served with a homemade spicy chilli sauce, soon became a hit among the epicureans frequenting the restaurant.

Curious to see how jackfruit fares at hipster cafes, I visited the chic Colombo restaurant Cafe Kumbuk, which plates tacos with fried baby jackfruit alongside mango salsa and guacamole. “Living in Sri Lanka, I realized jackfruit is such a widely available, versatile fruit that can be cooked and enjoyed in so many ways,” said cafe founder Shana Dandeniya, who returned to Sri Lanka a few years ago after growing up in the UK. “To me, it’s one of the greatest local superfoods we have access to, and we should champion it more.” – BBC


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Life style

Meet the author rewriting the rules of children’s fiction

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1 day ago

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2026/09/13

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Representation matters:

By Ifham Nizam

“There are no books written about pirates with prosthetic limbs, sporting blades, or racing wheelchairs—that is, until now,” says award-winning international children’s author Jann Weeratunga, whose Polly’s Piralympics series is challenging conventional ideas about who gets to be the hero in children’s literature.

For Weeratunga, representation is not simply about placing a disabled character somewhere in a story. It is about putting that character at the centre—leading, competing, winning, making friends, overcoming challenges and, most importantly, having adventures on their own terms.

Her books are designed not merely to be read, but to be experienced. Through interactive pages, children can colour, draw, write and respond to the stories, leaving something of themselves behind as they explore themes, ranging from disability and bullying to friendship, resilience and family.

At the heart of her growing literary brand is Polly’s Piralympics, a series in which disability is not presented as a limitation, but as part of a character’s identity and adventure.

The inspiration came from an unexpected moment during the closing speech of the 2012 London Paralympic Games by Sir Philip Craven. He recalled a young boy looking at an illustration of a pirate with an eye patch, a hook, a parrot and a wooden leg.

When his mother asked who the figure was, the boy replied that because the man had only one leg, “he must be an Olympian.”

The story moved Weeratunga deeply.

That moment of innocent perception—where disability was associated with sporting achievement rather than limitation—sparked the idea of Polly and her extraordinary Piralympic world.

In the series, Polly, a bird-napped African parrot, finds herself bullied in a Scottish pet shop before being rescued by Captain Hake. Their shared one-eyed view of the world becomes the beginning of an unusual friendship. Captain Hake teaches Polly the ways of a pirate, while Polly creates the Fellowship of Pirates and the Pirates Paralympics.

Soon, pirates from around the world are competing in events ranging from three-legged races and climb-the-rigging gymnastics to walk-the-plank diving and even a MasterChef competition.

It is an imaginative world, but behind the humour and adventure lies a serious message about inclusion and leadership.

Weeratunga recalls one school visit that brought home to her exactly why the books mattered.

A student with a prosthetic leg embraced her and said: “Thank you for writing these books for me, Auntie.”

The words left her overwhelmed.

“That was why I had written these books,” Weeratunga reflects.

Her journey towards becoming an author, however, began long before Polly sailed into the world of children’s fiction.

Earlier in her life, Weeratunga was a Scout Leader in the UK, where volunteering became a way of life. She subsequently spent a decade in Sri Lanka, falling in love not only with a Sri Lankan, but with the country itself.

After her husband died just four years into their marriage, she joined five other women to establish a small school in Senarathwela to teach English to those who wanted to learn. Many of her pupils, subsequently, found employment at the newly opened Victoria Golf Course.

When she returned to Sri Lanka in 2025 and revisited the village and golf course, she found a landscape transformed by new roads, homes, shops and businesses. But the people she had taught remained.

“The village is unrecognisable, with new roads, homes, shops and businesses, but my dear pupils were still there as Caddies, Caddy Master and Golf Pro. I was so proud of them,” she says.

Her connection with Sri Lanka deepened further during one of the country’s darkest moments.

On Boxing Day 2005, while holidaying in the UK with her recently widowed mother, Weeratunga was woken by the words: “Something terrible has happened in Sri Lanka.”

She rushed to the television and witnessed the devastating aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

That very day, she established a non-profit organisation to raise funds and take relief to Sri Lanka. With support from local McDonald’s franchises, schools in Ferndown, the Mayor of Ferndown, freight companies and her friend Mr Wijekoon, a local Grama Niladhari, she helped rebuild lives in Arugam Bay.

The experience was hands-on and deeply personal. A family’s home had been swept away, and days were spent persuading surfers to help construct a future for her adopted family.

A Montessori was established on the hill, within the Buddhist temple grounds, while evenings were spent crafting, building and working with a small but effective generator.

Meals of rice and curry, prepared by the family’s sisters, using provisions donated from Senarathwela, brought the long days to a close.

When Weeratunga returned to the family, in 2025, she was able to see how far they had come.

Jann Weeratunga

Today, living in South Africa, she continues to draw inspiration from the landscape around her.

“Travelling—it leaves you speechless and then turns you into a storyteller,” she says, echoing the famous words attributed to Ibn Battuta.

And storytelling has become her way of opening conversations with a new generation.

While Polly’s Piralympics remains the flagship of her children’s publishing brand, Weeratunga’s wider collection explores a range of issues that matter to children and parents.

Terry and the Bully gives children practical and empowering ways to stand up for themselves, transforming a difficult subject into a story through which young readers can explore courage and self-confidence.

In Evie Visiting Grandma, children encounter the sensitive experience of visiting a loved one who now lives in a residential home. Rather than avoiding a potentially difficult subject, the story gently opens the door to conversations about ageing, family and change.

Terry the Toucane explores another universal childhood experience—the challenge and beauty of being different. Its central message is simple: being different should never prevent us from developing deep and lasting friendships.

Then there is Captain Bluebird, a resilient and entertaining adventure exploring what happens when Captain Bluebird receives a brand-new ship.

Across the collection, Weeratunga combines entertainment with meaningful life lessons, while her interactive approach gives children an opportunity to become participants rather than passive readers.

They can colour illustrations, draw pictures and respond to pages, making each reading experience personal.

That approach also gives the books an added value for parents and educators. They can become conversation starters—helping adults discuss subjects that children may find difficult to raise directly.

For Weeratunga, this is part of the larger purpose of her work.

Her books seek to fill a gap in children’s literature where diverse characters are not simply included for the sake of inclusion, but are given agency, personality and leadership.

In Polly’s Piralympics, disabled characters are not watching from the sidelines. They are the stars.

They lead.

They compete.

They win.

They champion their own adventures.

And that, ultimately, is the brand Weeratunga is building: children’s stories in which every child can find a place, a voice and perhaps even a little courage to become the hero of their own story.

Representation matters.

For young readers in Sri Lanka, Weeratunga’s books are now available through Sarasavi Bookshop, Vijitha Yapa Bookshop, M. D. Gunasena and Expo Graphics, Battaramulla.

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Life style

An evening where health say as one

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1 day ago

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2026/09/13

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Rajiv and Clan kept the evening alive with their vibrant music

By Zanita Careem

Music, laughter and a generous spirit filled Raflfles Hotel Colombo as Heart to Heart sing along brought together a vibrant gathering for an evening of melody, friendship and giving. The elegant ballroom reverberated with familiar lyrics as guests joined in, sang along and simply let their hair down. Adding to the infections atmosphere was the talented Rajiv and Clan, whose lively performance kept the energy soaring and had the gathering singing to some much loved favourites.

Keeping the evening moving with plenty of wit and warmth was the compere Mirzab Sherifdeen who ensured there was never a dull moment between the music, laughter and spontaneous sing-along moments, Guests were also treated to prizes galore adding an extra element of excitement to an already festive evening. There was cheers as winners stepped forward to collect their prizes, while friends and families aplauded and celebrated every winning moment.

Yet beneath all the sparkle was the meaningful purpose of Heart to Heart Trust Fund, founded by Dr. Rajitha Y de Silva and Dr. Ruwan Ekanayake, bringing people together in support of a cause built on compassion and care.

The dedications and the volunteering was evident throughout the evening with their commitment adding a special warmth to this special event.

Adding to the evening’s indulgence was a sumptous spread of cuisine by the Raffles, Hotel with an enticing selectiom that kept guests happily returning for more. From savoury favourites to tempting desserts, the food complemented the festive mood perfectly.

As the final song faded and the evening drew to a close, there was a quiet sense of gratitude. Behind the music, laughter, prizs and beautiful memories was a cause built as compassion, a cause that has continued to touch lives through the dedication of Dr. Rajitha de Silva and everyone who has stood beside him in the journey of Heart to Heart.

And as guests left Raffles Hotel with the last melodies still lingering in the air the most beautiful note of the evening remained – the sound of hearts earning for hearts. At the very heart of Hearts to Heart is Dr. Rajitha whose compassion has become the soul of the initiative. Dr. Rajitha’s work reminds us that medicine is not only about repairing what is broken. It is about giving people the courage to believe in tomorrow. And perhaps that is the greatest gift he offers. This spirit was beautifully reflected throughout the evening.It was a beautiful evening of music, friendship and generosity, with every contribution going towards a worthy cause- keeping alive a legacy built one one simple but powerful belief that every heart deserves a chance to beat on.

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Life style

Taste of Ceylon leaves a lasting flavour

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1 day ago

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2026/09/13

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The scene at Taste of Ceylon

Taste of Ceylon opened its doors at Beira Kitchen, Courtyard by Marriott Colombo, on September 3rd; a festival of Southern, Central, Uva and Northern regional food, brought together on one table.

Four Regions, One Unforgettable Table

Each night, guests moved between four distinct culinary worlds. From the South came the deep, coconut-rich flavours of malu abulthiyal and Negombo pork curry with pineapple, alongside a lively fish polla roti action station. The Central province brought Kandalama lake fish, black octopus curry and carrot kalupol; dishes rooted in the region’s lakes and forests. Uva’s table leaned rustic and warming, with village chicken stew, prawn curry with murunga, and a coconut pittu drawing steady queues. And from the North came bold, unmistakable flavours of Jaffna crab curry, Jaffna mutton curry, and a dosai action station that quickly became one of the evening’s most talked-about corners.

Layered around the four regional stations was a spread that told its own story of Sri Lankan hospitality, from belimal herbal welcome drinks and a bread corner stretching from curry leaves rolls to kurakkan viyana rolls, to a dessert corner where watalappan, wood-apple coconut wandu and king coconut jelly sat alongside a full spread of traditional Sri Lankan sweets like kokis, athirasa and aluwa.

What the guests had to say

The feedback on opening night carried a common thread: guests were struck by just how different each region’s food tasted, side by side, on the same table. What could easily have blurred into “just Sri Lankan food” instead came through as four distinct culinary identities; the fire of the North, the coastal warmth of the South, the earthiness of the Central hills, and the rustic comfort of Uva, each unmistakably its own.

A Word from the team

Reflecting on the festival, the team at Courtyard by Marriott Colombo shared that Taste of Ceylon was designed from the start to be more than a menu. It was meant to be an experience guests could travel through, one region at a time, without leaving Beira Kitchen. Judging by the response over the four nights, that’s exactly how it landed.

There were many rave reviews and as the Taste of Ceylon experience at Beira Lake drew to a close, the flavours, aromas and vibrant spirit of Sri Lanka lingered on.

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