Ms. Shanmugalingam’s recipes are full of easy-to-love flavors like coconut and tamarind and sway mostly Tamil in keeping with her family’s heritage. But she doesn’t shy away from Sri Lanka’s troubled political past—and present—either. Dishes like a Sinhalese black pork curry, adopted by her grandparents while weathering decades of civil war in a southern stronghold, speak to the need to flee, adapt and integrate. “Food is political,” she said. “And it’s important to recognize that.”

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