This is a buth packet. Not a Lamprais.

 

Back to an old, familiar theme. We had buth packets for lunch the other day. Whilst it wasn't particularly good, it was good enough to keep the hunger pangs away till it was time for dinner.

There's the ever popular Rice and Curry buth packet and then there's the Lampraise. In concept, they are identical. In execution and experience they are ideological extremes.

    Here's a more confusing thought. All lampraise are buth packets but not all buth packets are lampraise! I've gone on at length about what a genuine lamprais is, but not about what a buth packet is so this is to address that error. 

    A buth packet is a "normal" rice and curry meal, packed in a plastic wrap (cellophane, it used to be called) and wrapped up again in a piece of paper. That's it. "But what" I hear you say, "is a normal rice and curry"? That would be a good question.

    Over here, we believe in a good, heavy mid-day meal and generally, it is rice based. With the rice you get a meat curry, either fish, chicken, pork or, well, meat. One curry. The rice is cooked the normal way, the curry is cooked like any curry would be over here. In addition to the curry, you would get, generally, two or three vegetable dishes, which would be a 'white' dish (lightly spiced) and a fried dish that would have chili. Buth packets would also have a bit of rice puller like lime pickle or a papadum, or a pickled relish of some sort.

    The whole phenomenon of a buth packet, believe it or not, is relatively new. When I was a kid, for example, the working population that came to the capital usually had their lunches in tiffin boxes. A method still used in India to great effect. Over the years, we as a city grew and the tiffin boxes gave way to restaurants and "Lalli Kade's" - road side eateries. For the labour work force, development meant a rise in the cost of living and so, people started selling buth packets to them. Pretty soon, the buth packets became ubiquitous in the city. To this day, the best buth packets are rumored to be available outside the Colombo port, with Stevedores and Harbour Pilots clamoring to get a good, value for money lunch. 

    That is the true secret of what a buth packet is. It is a filling, value for money meal. 

    Taste DOES matter and people whose but packets are sub-standard soon find themselves out of the business, in a hurry. 

    This is a test post, so please bear with me. I will be changing this on the fly as I learn to add and subtract more features to the blog.