What I'm Eating

I love the idea of a snack.  I will take any excuse to add additional foods to my daily regiment of meals.  Lately, I have been filling up the conspicuous gaps between breakfast, lunch, and dinner with various Indian snacks.

One of the major highlights for me has been Katha Murtha.  I have found this snack mix in several different incarnations, all with the perfect blend of sweet, spicy, sour, and salty.  I particularly enjoy the fact that the individually components are miniscule, so each bite contains 1,000 pieces.  One of my favorites is a commercial brand imported from India that features a bitter turmeric spice blend with lentils and sago, a powdery substance made from crushed palm.  Another comes from Anand, an Indian sweets shop in Quatre Bornes, and is heavy on the cinnamon.

Anand is also a great source for “sweets”, a term I have use more frequently as these treats are somewhere between cake, cookie, candy, and, at times, pudding.  Sadly, I don’t know the names of many of these tasty items.  One of my favorite qualities of the sweets is their vibrant colors, especially the bright yellow saffron varieties.  There is also some kind of an edible silver coating on many of the snacks.  At Anand, I was also able to get one step closer to solving the “barfi” mystery, though I still have not pinpointed all of the specific ingredients.

Ubiquitous on the island are the myriad hawker stalls.  Street food is a fact of life for many Mauritians and an assortment of stalls dot the island.  Of the number of eats to be found, the most prevalent are “dholl puree”, an Indian pancake-like wrap with split pea; “samousas”, smaller, crispier, potato-filled versions of the samosas you find at home; and “gateau piments”, a deep fried chili pepper fritter.  The best feature of these finds is that they are incredibly affordable with no single item costing more than the equivalent of US$ 0.25.

I will try to post some pictures.

Kebab is one of the most universal culinary artifacts in the world. Though they take on many different forms and ingredients, I have never been to a city where one could not find a kebab stall. While I do miss my beloved Turkish “doner”, I think that the Mauritian kebabs have recently earned a place in my heart (hopefully not the arteries).

There are 3 things that set Mauritian doner-style kebabs apart for me:

First, is the spice blend on the meat. Though it is not the same for each vendor, many of the kebabs here have a touch of cinnamon and clove. Not much, but just enough to appeal to the curiosity of my tastebuds.

Second is the sauces. For me, sauce is often the highlight of the meal and often kebabs lack any form of condiment. So, imagine my delight when I discovered that Mauritians use not one but two on these sandwiches. The addition of the creamy mayonnaise based sauce and heaps of spicy green chili puree are really satifying.

Finally, is the vegetable component. It may be hard to believe, but cabbage is one of my favorite foods. I was delighted to discover the shredded bits of this leafy green in my sandwich.

Sadly, I think that the kebabs from a local truck have been the major source of many recent upset stomachs. However, I’ve weighed the pros and cons and think that indulging in the occasional sandwich is worth suffering through the dyspepsia.

One of my major problems is that I don’t pay attention to things when I am excited.  Another is that I can be painfully shy at times.  Combine the two with the fact that I have no real food knowledge of any kind, and you  get a complete inability to determine the names of the things I am eating.

Yesterday was Arrival of Indentured Servants, a fairly self-explanatory national holiday.  At the beach, Jon and I stopped by the Hare Krishna tent and grabbed some “onion fritters”:  deep fried dough balls with onions, a touch of curry, and some other spices, topped with a fresh mint chutney.  They were delicious but too hot for the rate I was eating them at.

After that we went to the fruit cart for  some “chinese potato”.  I’m not really sure what the name for this is either, but it comes raw and marinated in a slightly sweet brine and tastes something like a potato crossed with an apple crossed with a turnip.  It’s ok, but I think I’ll stick to the pineapple covered in salt and chilies.

You can get about 30 million types of fruit just about any place you go on this island. Everywhere you look, there a kid with mango slices or old ladies with a crossection of a giant cucumber or a police man with a wedge of coconut. The real champ, though, is the pineapple. Unlike our behemouth football sized varieties, these pineapples make a perfect portable treat. You will often see them in fruit stalls with their spiney coatings carved away in a decorative spiral and their palmy frond tops trimmed down to for a convenient little handle.

One of my new favorite sources of the sweet and tangy treat is the (what I’m now calling) the fruit-scooter. Since I arrived here, I’ve seen the fruit-scooter man almost every day, but for some reason, I’ve been too timid to check out his wares but after today, I will be flagging him down every chance I get.

The fruit-scooter is pretty much just what it sounds like: a man riding a scooter, selling a variety of fruits from a compartment on the back. Whenever he comes around, everyone leaves their shops and comes running for a chance to get some of his fruit.

The main reason for my previous fascination with the fruit-scooter was not the variety of his tempting goods, nor the mystery of the many sauces and condiments I’ve seen him add to the treats. No, I first fell in love with the fruit-scooter because of the relentless beeping of hilarious clown-car style horn as he drives around the neighborhood.

Anyhow, as we were leaving the apartment today, the large ever-present pool of taxi drivers were congregating around the fruit scooter so curiosity drew us in. On the recommendation of one of the drivers, we each get half of a spiral peeled pineapple covered in salt and chili sauce. The taxi driver tried to warn us that the sauce was very spicy, but we were in it for the adventure and gave the fruit man the go ahead. Jon also got a giant slice of cucumber covered with a sweet, unidentifiable sauce. Both items were delicious if not beguiling. I’ve never really considered putting hot chili on my fruit before, but now I can’t imagine a pineapple without it. The 3 snacks were a total of 25 Rs (about 85 cents US).

Next time I hear that funny little horn, you can be sure that I will be running down the street, chasing after that fruit-scooter like everyone else.

The day I arrived in Mauritius was Eid-al-Fitr. My escorts from the embassy were excited to inform me that I was in luck because during Eid everyone eats Briani and it would be very fortunate if that were to be my first meal hear. Unfortunately, all I did was sleep that first day and my meal was one of convenience rather than celebration.

Anyhow, about a month later, I was heading into Quatre Bornes for the day and asked Alyssa, a former Fulbrighter, if she and her husband would like to meet my husband and I for lunch. She suggested we get some Briani and I was all for it. I had assumed that we would be going to a restaurant, but when we get to my friend’s house, she grabs a large cooking pot and heads down the street.

My next assumption was that we were heading to one of the many food stalls that line the busy textile market, but I was wrong again. We walk about a block when I notice a bustle of people queuing up behind open hatch of a red van. Sure enough, this turns out to be the source of our lunch.

The back of the van contains several gigantic metal pots overflowing with the scent of meats and spices and the middle section of the van has been turned into a makeshift dining room.

Alyssa hands the man her pot and asks for 4 servings of chicken (poulet) briani. The man then scoops heaps of seasoned rice, potatoes, and chicken into her pot and asks if she want chili sauce. “Wi. Buku.” Yes. A lot. The man then fills one little plastic bag with a tomato, onion, and herb mixture (similar to pico de gallo) and another with a spicy paste of green chilies and tamarind.

The whole deal cost about 160 Rs, or just over 5 USD, for all 4 of us and needless to say, it was incredible. The rice was perfectly seasoned, the potatoes were hearty and tender and the chicken fell right off the bone. For me, the real treasure was the chili sauce. It was spicy, sweet, and sour in perfect proportions and I’ve been looking for a suitable source of the stuff here in Flic-en-Flac.

Look: I don’t know what the original Barfi is, but the ice cream Barfi is amazing. The vanilla ice cream is rendered almost unrecognizable by the addition of so much coconut powder, that the whole thing takes on a paste-like consistency. Add to this the fact that it is also flavored with cardamom and saffron and jammed full of raisins, almonds, and agar (a gel like substance made from seaweed) strips and you’ve got one delicious mystery on a stick.

It’s been a while and lots of awesome food things have happened.  We’ll start with Chinese Fondue…

Chinese Fondue is one of the most fun meals that I have had in a long time.  It’s pretty much a hot pot, but somehow it has taken on the “fondue” moniker.  The hot pot is divided into 2 types of hot broth (one is white/clear and sweeter, the other red and a little spicy).

A big selection of items are chosen to acompany the meal.  We had chicken, beef, prawns, crab, tofu, fish balls (as my friend stated “not actual fish balls, balls made from fish”), wontons, some kind of white fish, and a variety of greens such as bok choy and cabbage.  So you take what you want, fill up you little wire basket, and put it in the pot to cook.  It’s really hard to keep everything in the basket, so I just dumped whatever I wanted in then fished it out later.

The meal comes with like a million toppings like fresh ginger, cilantro, chilis, soy and other sauces, etc.  and everything comes out so tender and delicious.  When all of the stuff is gone, you get a pile of noodles to throw in the broth (which is now infused with all those flavors) and you eat it like a soup.

I want to eat that right now.

…what is it?

Whatever it is, I have a paste made of combava and hot pepper that’s really improving the quality of my (cost effective) ramen-noodle type dinners I’ve been eating.

Last Sunday, I was invited to lunch at the house of a former Fulbrighter, Alyssa, and her partner, Laval, and I’m quite glad I was.

As it turns out, Laval is an excellent cook and I was lucky enough to have 2 delicious meals prepared by him.  First, was bbq chicken with watercress and grilled sausages.  Simple, but delicious.   The meal was perfectly prepared and featured an assortment of wonderfully complementary condiments, including homemade mayonaise and a hot pepper paste.  From now on, I will only eat mayo that has been made by hand…that is probably not true.

To top off the meal, we had grilled pineapple with coconut ice cream (garnished with cinnamon and a mint leaf).

Dinner featured a trio of creole dishes:  watercress soup, pumpkin, and poisson salet (sp? I might have to fix that later).  The poisson salet is salted fish and this particular style was served with a tomato sauce.  These dishes were served with rice (of course), hot peppers, and achard limon, a preserve made with a combination of spices and lemon rinds.

If I were rich, I’d try to convince Laval to be my personal chef.  Alas, I have to be satified by the great experience I had.  I am really grateful to them for not only feeding me, but also keeping me company, giving  some useful information about Mauritius and the Fulbright program, showing me some sights, and just being generous hosts and incredibly interesting people.

I haven’t been able to get money out and all of the cash I brought was used to pay rent and deposits on the apartment. So…all I ate today was a small bag of dried nuts and rice snacks that the new landlady gave me as a welcome gift.  They were perfect.