Name: Kola kenda (Pennywort rice soup)
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: Sri Lankan
Ingredients: 1 cup tightly packed pennywort, or any green leaves of your choice; 1 small garlic clove, peeled; 250 g (9 oz/1¼ cups) raw red rice; ½ teaspoon salt; 100 g (3½ oz) dark palm sugar (jaggery), cut into chunks for serving; a squeeze of lemon juice; ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper; 750 ml (26 fl oz/3 cups) coconut milk

Preparation info

Serves
6

Difficulty
Easy
Ready in
45 min

Appears in

Lands of the Curry Leaf

By Peter Kuruvita

Published 2018

About

In every hotel in Sri Lanka you will see this soup at the breakfast buffet, rich green in colour, quite thin, with pieces of red rice in the bottom. Beside it you will also see a bowl of palm sugar, to nibble on as you drink the soup.

Traditionally enjoyed before breakfast, this soup is deeply adored by the locals, including truck drivers on their way to the fish markets at 4 am, and actually in the markets, where stallholders will have a jar or thermos of this healthy, warming soup