Peter Kuruvita - Interview - Buy the book: Serendip

You don't see a lot of Sri Lankan food in Sydney. How come? The thing about Sri Lankan culture is that you eat from home and that really, nothing else is as good. So because of that, Sri Lankan people don't need a Sri Lankan restaurant. And a lot of the time it's not written down, so it's a great opportunity. I could write 10 volumes of recipes just on vegetables. So that's just scratching the surface and it's really a personal touch of my experiences in Sri Lanka. In Australia people haven't discovered the beauty of it and the very different flavours of the cuisine so hopefully this [book] will help.

Your book is as much cookbook as it is autobiography. What was it like in Sydney, coming from Sri Lanka? We left Sri Lanka very quickly in the 1970s due to political issues. My mum wasn't allowed to earn money, terrorism was starting, people were getting killed in the streets, bodies were floating down the river... it was a pretty bad time. So dad packed us all up. Australia was beckoning and we had friends here. So we left very quickly without much, then got to Sydney. We came from this beautiful family environment and we ended up in a red brick house on Colony Avenue in Doonside.

That must have been a big culture shock for you
It was massive. And then on top of that, I was the only dark kid in school. It was a horrible time full of racism and fighting and hardship for my parents. My parents, both educated people - one was an engineer, one was a teacher - both had to go back to school. Both were told their qualifications weren't good. So we left Doonside and moved to Oatley. School got a little bit better but by then I was already a very angry boy. I was very close to going to jail.

How do you go from almost landing in jail to becoming a chef?
School wasn't my forte – I just hated it and the teachers hated me just as much. I'd been thrown out of wood work, metal work, and tech drawing by third form, and so the form mistress said to me, "If you want to get your school certificate, you have to do one of these five electives: cooking, needlework, metal work, tech drawing, and wood working."  Three were out, I was certainly not going to do needlework. So it was cooking. I just blasted it – I was top of the form. That was the best thing I did at school and everyone was amazed that I could do these things.

Where to from there?
One day my dad pulled up outside the local restaurant, the Crab Apple Restaurant, and says, "go in and ask for a job. You've been cooking at school haven't you? Go ask for a job." I was there for two years. I was cooking main courses within three months. Then, after that, I answered a two-line ad in the paper and it was for Rogues Restaurant, and in those days - I started in 1979 - it was the best restaurant in Sydney. So, I was lucky to fall into it, but I've never looked back. It'll be 30 years this year. And I've never looked back or thought of doing anything else.

Back to Sri Lankan food, are there any good restaurants?
There's a couple. There's one called The Blue Elephant in Crow's Nest, there's Janani in Homebush. One of the places you can go to try great Sri Lankan food as a take-away option is in Homebush West, just near Flemington Railway Station. There's a little arcade and a place underneath it called Spice Land, which does all the spices, and then above there's a little place called Rams, and he does all the classic Sri Lankan take away food and it's just brilliant. And there's another guy called Sunil with a spice centre in Thornleigh. If you are in the city, you'd probably go to Fiji Mart - he's got a small but growing selection of Sri Lankan food. If you're in the west you go to Spice Land and if you're in the north you go to Thornleigh. And between those three, you can get anything and everything Sri Lankan and any ingredients that are in that book, too.

What are the most essential things in Sri Lankan cooking?
You've really got to start off with your curry leaves, pandan leaves, the basic spices. You can buy spice mixes and that's a good way to start.  Here you're looking at cumin seeds, fennel seeds, coriander seeds and curry leaves. Coconut is a vital part, then you've got your chilli, cumin and coriander powders. But start off with, say, 10 or 12 of the basics and just buy small amounts. So say there's 10, it would be cumin, chilli, coriander, curry leaf, clove, cardamom, cinnamon, and black pepper. If you could start with those 10, you've got a great base to begin being a curry chef.

So what's the next story?  
It's weird, after writing something like this there are so many things that you think about what you didn't put in and I've just been jotting them down as short stories, just the titles of them. I was thinking yesterday as I was driving here, when we were in Sri Lanka, everything was hard to get, like nice soap.  And I remember that my mother's sister who's Austrian used to send us parcels. And just opening the parcels, the smell I remember, the European smell of clean soap, it was so amazing. And going to the post office where you'd have to go to get it, the guy would unpack your box on the other side of the counter going "I'll keep that, and I'll keep that" and there'll be no charge. There are so many stories. When I started cooking there were five good chefs in Sydney and most of the other places were serving crap and I've seen a lot. I don't think I could ever write it without getting sued.

Your mother's Austrian, but you don't mention that much in your book.
The Austrian side of things really soured because my mother had a really hard life. In World War II, her mother was killed while holding her hand by a grenade. Her father remarried, and it was a classic nasty stepmother story: he married a tyrant of a woman who treated her really badly. She had a horrible time, and then got to London at the age of 17 to learn how to be a teacher because she wanted to get away from her parents, and the first thing she was told was "watch out for those black fellas, they're dangerous." She got lost in London and knocked on a door and there was my father. He was 20 years older than her but didn't look it. They hit up a relationship and got married and they were together till he died.

Personally I find Europe boring, expensive, and really not worth going to. I'll take my kids there but if I never go back to Europe again on my own, I'd be more than happy. It's not me. I'm Asian. Australia allows you to be that. I love the excitement and the adventure. If you go and see a monument in Asia, they don't have any signs or fences around it. It's like if you go there and fall and die, it's your fault.  And it's exciting - I love the excitement of it.  The European part of me, I'm happy that I've got it, but there's nothing there that I'm really interested in. It's just me. But I feel for my mum.

Tell me all about your Sydney.
My Sydney I know like the back of my hand. I love driving it. From the age of 16 and a half, when I first got my license, you used to see people driving around the Walsh Bay wharves [where Flying Fish is now]. This was a derelict, wrecked area. This is where we used to race our cars around the docks. And we used to walk through these places after TAFE.

I love surfing. I moved straight to Bondi at the age of 17, and it's always been my home. I have a place there, and Bondi is where I surf as many times as possible every week. I've had a restaurant in Bondi, so that's really my home.

Serendip: My Sri Lankan Kitchen by Peter Kuruvita (Murdoch), RRP $59.95.

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