Good to know

• Pastry is one of the pillars of Sri Lanka's "short eats" tradition — alongside patties, cutlets, and rolls — a category of savory snacks born from colonial-era baking techniques merged with local spices, sold at every bakery across the island.
• The most iconic filling is spiced tuna (fish pastry), made by sautéing flaked tuna with onions, curry leaves, garlic, ginger, leeks, chili powder, and turmeric before being sealed inside the pastry — though chicken and vegetable versions are equally popular.
• Unlike a samosa's thin, crisp fried wrapper, Sri Lankan pastry uses a buttery, laminated puff pastry shell, usually baked rather than deep-fried, giving it a flakier, richer texture more reminiscent of a Western hand pie.
• Pastries are a fixture at nearly every Sri Lankan social occasion — birthdays, tea parties, office meetings, and school lunchboxes — often bought fresh from neighborhood bakeries rather than made at home, since achieving the right pastry flakiness takes practice.

Key ingredients