Mouthful of Mauritius
Influenced by
French, Dutch, English and Indian cuisines and spiked with robust African
flavours, Mauritian food is both familiar and exotic
Alone boat bobs along the clear blue of the sea. Is
there a patient fisherman on board, looking to catch a quick-finned, elusive
blue marlin? Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and The Sea is on my mind as I watch
from the powdery white sands of Le Saint Geran, psosibly Mauritius’ most
secluded beach. Far away from Cuba, where Hemingway’s story is set, the warm
waters of Indian Ocean lap around me. The man in the boat is more likely to be
a tourist engaged in line fishing. Yet, it is not the brilliant shades of blue
— turquoise merging with indigo — that inspire contemplation. It is the marlin.
One of the world’s quickest and most beautiful
fishes, the blue marlin is the holy grail for sport-fishers. While it is
overfishing in the Atlantic that may have given cause for worry, here, in the
bountiful waters of eastern Mauritius, it is not endangered. Sighting it is
common — both in the deep blue and on your table.
The evening before, chef Vikash Coonjan at Prime
One&Only, Le Saint Geran, one of Mauritius’s hot spots, had paired for us
fresh seafood with other local ingredients, and wines from South Africa, the
neighbouring country. On his menu was smoked marlin, thinly sliced, cured
almost like a gravlax (the Norwegian technique of curing salmon with a dry
marinade of sugar, salt and herbs), served with an unusual dash of local honey.
There was tuna rubbed with sesame, inspired by Mauritius’ Indian heritage, and
then there were sauteed scallops topped with a frothy emulsion scented with
vanilla from the island’s plantations. Everything was a homage to the country’s
natural bounty and its mixed cultural heritage. That is what makes Mauritian
food so exciting. A robust mix of culinary cultures — Dutch, French, English
and Indian — and the potent, abundant African ingredients give food that is at
once familiar yet exotic.
The humble Indian dish, dal-stuffed paranthas, has
metamorphosed into Mauritius’ unofficial national dish, the dholl puri.
Available everywhere, from roadside stalls to fancy restaurants, the dholl puri
comes topped with green chutney made from local green chillies.
In the mid-19th century, Indian indentured labourers
from Bihar and Maharashtra came to the island to work in plantations set up by
British colonialists. Dholl-puri was their quick and easy mid-day meal.
Mauritius has come a long way but the legacy of colonial enterprise can be
glimpsed everywhere.
Like rum, the island’s spirit. An offshoot of sugar
cultivation, it is the spirit that defines Mauritian food and drink, splashed
liberally not just in cocktails but also in desserts, curries and roasts.
Then, there is vanilla, one of the world’s most
expensive spice. There’s nothing plain about the pods harvested from a variety
of orchids that were brought to Mauritius from South America by the French. It
is still grown in some plantations but large amounts are imported from nearby
Madagascar. Despite the fact that it is quite expensive even in Mauritius, it
is widely used in cocktails, desserts and in gourmet fish preparations. In the
local wet markets, it is possible to get a single pod for around ₹200. The colonial influence is
also present in the wide use of French cooking techniques but the dishes are
also spiked with the potency of African lemons, chilli, thyme, cinnamon and
spices, making them unique and different from the restrained European fare.
Cooking Vacation
It is this cultural mishmash reflected in cuisine
that makes Mauritius compelling. While most Indian tourists head to the island
for their honeymoon or for stereotypical beach vacations and water sports, it
is a unique experience to enjoy the island and its culture through food.
Instead of gorging on exotic eats, a more immersive experience can be a cooking
vacation. For those passionate about cooking, it can be frustrating to not be
able to lay your hands on pots and pans when confronted with this kind of
cornucopia and cook their way to a deeper understanding of a diverse culture.
Luckily, there is a booming interest in food and
millennial travellers are undertaking journeys to partake of interesting
gourmet cultures. Luxury travel and hospitality in many parts of the world,
including Europe and South America, therefore, is increasingly focusing on
customised cooking vacations.
In Mauritius, the recently relaunched One&Only,
part of the highly regarded boutique hospitality company set up by South
African business magnate Solomon Kerzner of Sun City fame, stresses on
personalised services and experiences, including cooking. On the island, it is
the only resort that can tailor a cooking vacay for you, including classes by
top chefs who have worked in Michelin-starred establishments in Europe. Since
dabbling in local ingredients is exactly what I love, I enrol myself in a
cocktail class with an emphasis on Mauritian rums, in a French desserts class
(using local ingredients) and in one where chef Coonjan teaches me to cook
Indian food, the Mauritian way.
One morning, we make our way to a local wet market
accompanied by a bunch of Europeans, all interested in learning how to cook
curry and to buy vegetables and spices for the day’s cooking. The market has
everything: from vanilla and thyme (Mauritius’ favourite herb) to chillies
pickling in vinegar in old rum bottles and different varieties of gourds,
tomatoes, cauliflower. We go from stall to stall bargaining, collecting our
supplies, and I bring back a packet of curry powder.
As every food enthusiast in the subcontinent possibly
knows, there is neither curry nor curry powder in any Indian cuisine. Though
modern kitchens use spice mixes that range from generic garam masala to sambhar
powders to chaat masala, food in India has been traditionally cooked using
individual spices. Curry powder is a British colonial invention. It is ironical
that it should have made its way to another former colony, Mauritius, and
established itself as a fixture in local kitchens.
Chef Coonjan, himself of Indian heritage, tells me
that every home used to have its own version of the curry powder till
convenience retail took over. That afternoon, we make chicken using the curry
powder, which tastes like a mild version of sambhar powder sans any heat.
Without black pepper and without the indiscriminate use of red chillies in its
cooking, Mauritian-Indian food is fragrant without being hot. To accompany the
chicken, Coonjan teaches us to make stir-fried bitter gourd flavoured with
Dijon mustard! Nothing illustrates the cultural mix better than karela cooked
with French mustard.
Then there is the heart of palm salad, one of
Mauritius’ most famous dishes. Though hearts of palm — the soft, nutty, white
core of certain varieties of palms — are used in other cuisines as well,
including in South and Central America, in Mauritius, only fresh hearts (no
canned stuff is used) go into a popular salad called millionaire’s salad. It
possibly got its name from the fact that the hearts are fairly hard to get.
Once a tree is harvested, most of its bark gets wasted to reach the core. The
palm hearts are dressed in lime vinaigrette and a burst of flavour added with
cilantro and perhaps chilli and some onions. It’s a dish you could live on throughout
your holidays.
Pastry chef Simon Pacary used to work at a
one-Michelin star restaurant in the south of France before Mauritius’ French
heritage and tropical charms brought him over to preside at L’Artisan that
serves freshly baked French breads and desserts with a tropical twist.
Caviar and Colada
His signature recipe, perfected in France but tweaked
in Mauritius to work with the island’s flavours, is a stunning “caviar
illusion”. Served in beluga tins, it is a beguiling dish. There’s no caviar at
all, instead just a clever layering of crumble, lemon cream and black-coloured
sago, which once left a fancy diner with black teeth in Pacary’s old restaurant
because the sous chef had forgotten to rinse the sago properly and wash away
the extra colour. That is the first warning I get before Pacary sets me to
work.
While the mock caviar may be for visual appeal, it is
really the lemon cream that is at the heart of the dessert. It’s a useful
confection to learn, versatile in its use. A good lemon cream can instantly
elevate any boring dessert — you just have to pipe it on a trifle, fill a
choux, or top cakes and crumble with it.
Pacary gives detailed tips on how not to let the milk
split when you add alcohol and lime to it and how not to let the eggs cook when
you add these to the boiling milk (keep whisking vigorously). These are the
basics to making the recipe.
The real punch to this particular lemon cream comes
from two Mauritian ingredients — vanilla rum and fistfuls of African mint. The
rum is rich with the fragrance of real vanill, not the syrupy synthetic
fragrance. This gives the dish its depth of flavour.
No food or cooking experience in Mauritius can be
complete without its rum. Today, there are just three distilleries producing
the agricultural “rhum”, made in old-fashioned pot stills. These allow the
flavours of sugarcane to be retained unlike the industrial rum where the spirit
is distilled till it is clear of natural fragrances and flavours. Since
sugarcane grows along with vanilla, lime and other plants, many of these notes
seep into the craft rhum, which makes it an excellent base for cocktails.
Even otherwise, Mauritian rum is flavoured with
coconut, spices and vanilla, making it slightly sweeter and smoother than what
we may be used to drinking. Pina Coladas are the tropical drinks to have here,
full of fresh pineapple and coconut. However, in my cocktail class, I discover
a twist to a mojito, using vanilla-rum, lots of mint and a secret ingredient —
tamarind syrup.
The tamarind syrup is reminiscent of the saunth that
we use in India to spike our chaats. In Mauritius, it is sweeter because the
tamarind is less tart. It’s strange to put it in a cocktail but when we sip the
concoction, it’s in cheery acknowledgement of the fact that the best cultures
are those that encourage a melting pot.
Anoothi Vishal
ETM17DEC17
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