Melange of ethnic traditions makes Mauritian food a treat

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

Sitting along a rich trade route gave Mauritius its political value and influenced its history. The location is also the source of its culinary traditions, a rich melange of western European, Indian and Asian.

We were caught by surprise by the range and quality of the food here. From bread and pastries as good as any in Paris (remember, this was a French colony for a long time), to delicately spiced curries to top quality sushi, centuries of world travelers left their mark on our dinner plates. We were so impressed, in fact, that we spent half a day on a cooking course with one of the hotel chefs.

The Constance Prince Maurice has two restaurants, one in two large, thatched pavilions beside pool and overlooking the lagoon, the other on floating pontoons back amongst the mangrove swamps of the lagoon itself. The latter is only open for dinner. The standard package at the hotel is half board, with a generous buffet breakfast and a three course dinner included each night. Lunch, snacks and drinks are an additional charge. (Cocktails and wine from a fine list each night, of course, adds on quite a bit to the final accounting at check out.)

Lunch was rarely necessary, of course, given the size of the breakfast and the fact it was served 'til mid morning. All the traditional English options were there ... eggs, bacon, sausages, roasted tomatoes ... plus a dizzying array of French pastries and a nod to the Northern Europeans with platters of cold meats and cheeses. There was a chef making crepes, and another carving up an array of tropical fruit. But so far, so traditional. The only truly Mauritian thing on the breakfast table was smoked marlin. Delicate and sliced so thin as to be almost transparent, this is an ingredient I'd use a lot if it were available in Europe. But I've never seen it before, and doubt I will again any time soon.

It was on the dinner menu that the exotic and the multi-national really came into play. Options always included both Mauritian-inspired and traditional European, and sometimes it was very hard to make a choice. More than one evening mixed things up. Starting, for example, with gnocchi in a saffron cream sauce before moving on to prawns in a spicy tomato creole sauce. Or putting the green mango salad up front before rolling into the steak with Hollandaise sauce.

Several evenings had a particular ethnic theme. On Asian night we mixed satay ... served with its own table-top barbecue to finish the cooking yourself ... curries, sushi and sashimi. The Mediterranean buffet night featured a range of classic Italian and Provencal dishes, with a bit of North African thrown in for good measure.

Like any good restaurant, however, what distinguished all these meals was the quality of the raw ingredients. Mauritius is one of the world's leading producers of hearts of palm, which showed up not only in salads but cooked into terrines and sauces, or included in the canapes served with cocktails in the bar before meal time. The tomatoes were the best I've had anywhere outside of Italy, like a concentrated version of the varieties you get anywhere else. Local pineapples and passion fruits were both a revelation, and the barman's signature passion fruit mojito was my favourite cocktail of the entire honeymoon. And though the meat was good, it was, unsurprisingly, the fish that stole the show. Local prawns are like little lobsters and don't need much beyond a few turns on a grill to bring out their flavour. Several types of oysters farmed from the lagoon, swordfish and tuna were excellent, particularly the albacore tuna, which was unlike any variety we knew. White with a slightly pink centre when served rare, it was a whole new ... and utterly delightful ... experience.

It took less than 48 hours of exposure to this cornucopia of delight for us to decide to sign up for the half-day cooking class with the hotel chef. Priced at £130 per person, it was cheaper than classes of similar quality back in London. And far more exotic!

We met the chef and our four classmates at 9:30, piled into one of the hotel vans and headed for the local market, which had one of the most impressive ranges of fruit and vegetables I've ever seen. But the first sense to kick in wasn't sight; it was smell. The air was intoxicating with a combination of thyme, coriander and the sharp, unmistakable tang of freshly harvested tomatoes just out of the field. Much was familiar, but at least 20 percent deserved the chef's explanation: breadfruit, jackfruit, white cucumber, mysterious varieties of eggplant, zucchini and gourd. I had anticipated Mauritian food being hot, but there were many more herbs than spices for sale here. And almost no meat, with the exception of a few stalls crammed with a wide range of dried fish. Interesting, but covered with flies. Not very appetising! Far more appealing were the local pineapples, usually not much bigger than your two fists clamped together, skinned and carved in showy spirals before being wrapped in cellophane and a ribbon. Turns out what I thought was exotic presentation on the Prince Maurice breakfast table was just the standard way of packing the fruit at the local market. Clearly, a people with style!

Back at the hotel, one of the restaurant pavilions had been reconfigured as an alfresco kitchen, with portable cookers and prepping stations for all of us arranged in a square, with the chef's demonstration table on one side. We learned how to make tuna tartare ... a European dish made exquisite with local fish ... and seafood vindaye. The latter was a stir-fry style main course of mixed fish with a mustard and vinegar base. An unusual combination, but one we'll definitely try again at home. The course also came with a Mauritian cookbook, which offers lots of inspiration. But I'm not sure where we'll find ingredients like batfish, manioc or green papaya. But the hunt will be fun.