Mauritius

Menu: Bouillon crabe and gateaux piments (crab soup and chili cakes) | Recipe Source: mauritianfoodrecipes.com

A country’s recipes are a reflection of its history, and Mauritius is a country more colorful than most. Its vibrance and diversity are proudly on display in its culinary offerings- which feature a mixture of Asian, French, Indian, and African influences that mirrors the island’s population- and the result is an array of dishes that are reminiscent of… well, everywhere. The first bite makes you think of a Punjabi curry. The second bite somehow tastes faintly like tom kha soup. The third tastes familiar too, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it’s reminding you of. And by the fourth bite, you don’t care. Mauritian cooking is simply that good.

And where exactly, you ask, is Mauritius? It’s smack in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with Madagascar as its closest neighbor. From the 1500s onward, ownership of the island was passed back and forth between the Dutch, the French, and the British, none of whom (surprise surprise) had the best interests of the locals at heart. Today, however, Mauritius is owned by the Mauritians. It’s a Creole-speaking country with an astoundingly diverse population, robust tourism, a unique array of flora and fauna (including several species that occur nowhere else in the world), and a high-income economy (it’s actually one of the most competitive and well-developed countries in Africa).

Fun fact: Remember that random lesson we all had in second grade science class about the extinction of the dodo? The flightless birds only had one known home: Mauritius.

Thoughts: This was one of those recipes that was just a joy to cook (aside from squeezing all the meat out of the crab legs… that will never be a joy, but it’s always worth the effort!). The crab soup was like a more aromatic version of a lobster bisque, and the chili cakes were nearly identical to falafel, but with some noticeable zing from the peppers. I will absolutely be making this one again!

Ready to cook?

Crab soup: www.mauritianfoodrecipes.com/all-recipes/crab-soup-bouillon-crabe/

Alterations:

• The recipe calls for 8 cups of water, a common direction for soup-making that I always tweak. Swapping half the amount of water for a low-salt or no-salt chicken broth always yields a more flavorful soup (in my opinion, at least), and I actually ended up making a salt-free chicken stock from scratch the night beforehand and used that instead!
• I couldn’t find any fresh curry leaves at the stores near me so I ordered dried ones from Amazon. This recipe calls for fresh leaves to be chopped, but since the dried ones have the consistency of a bay leaf (brittle, hard, not yummy), I pulsed them into a powder using my coffee grinder and added them in that way instead.
• Rather than using a can of diced tomatoes, I used 400 grams of whole Campari tomatoes that I diced up myself, but solely because I had a bunch in the fridge leftover from meatballs & marinara night and I didn’t want them to go bad.
• When it came time to add the 1 tbsp of tom yum paste, I took one sniff of the jar, fell in love, and ended up adding about 1/4 cup of it instead!
• And lastly, like always, instead of using kosher salt to season the soup, I used a bouillon paste.

Chili cakes: www.mauritianfoodrecipes.com/all-recipes/chilli-cakes-gateaux-piments/

Alterations:

• Same note as above regarding the curry leaves!
• After hand-combining all of the ingredients, the mix was too wet to be formed into a ball (I think I soaked the peas for too long). I added gluten-free flour incrementally until the mixture was ball-able; it was somewhere around 1/3 cup in total, I think.
• Lastly, after England’s turn in the Cooking Around the World project, I swore off deep frying with vegetable oil for the rest of my life. I only use lard now, so that’s what I fried the chili cakes in! And as always, it worked great.

Also, not remotely relevant to the task/meal at hand, but one of the cacti that’s always in the background of my cooking pics has had a bud on it for over a month and it finally opened up today!!!!!!!!