Temple-Side Breakfast · Herbal Rice Gruel
Kola Kanda
Photo: AntanO / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
It's traditionally eaten with a lump of jaggery on the side, bitten between sips to balance the grassy, faintly bitter porridge.
Red rice is boiled down with coconut milk and the blended juice of gotu kola or other medicinal leaves into a thick, jade-green porridge, ladled from clay pots at roadside stalls near Kandy's temples every morning until the pot runs dry.
Why it's made this way: Rooted in Ayurvedic ideas about medicinal leaves, the porridge was valued as a cheap, healthy start to the day, and it remains a common breakfast at roadside stalls in Kandy and across the island.
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