Rougaille of seafood .Mauritian creole

[eman]

Very nice! Looks like a shrimp creole, just w/ different spices?

 

[moikel]

Very nice! Looks like a shrimp creole, just w/ different spices?

I figure thats the French x Indian deal. What spice would go into a shrimp creole in your neck of the woods?

I dont really go for the dreaded fusion food that a lot of celebrity chefs promote,it can go horribly wrong. I much prefer food like this that grew out of migration,inter marriage etc over a few generations.

Interestingly every curry,(kari in creole) I have seen from Mauritius has curry leaf in it which is very Southern Indian & Sri Lankan .Another piece of the puzzle.

 

[venture]

Interesting, as all your posts seem to be.

I'm not too sure about the Chinese in the Creole, and the Creole and Cajun can be different.

Curry is always a problem or a blessing depending what you get and how it turns out.

Keep up the intersting posts.  I enjoy them greatly!

Good luck and good smoking.

 

[moikel]

 Indian Curry can be rubbish because its just tastes all the same. I blame the English for that.I dont eat much Indian food for that reason.But if you can find regional Indian food or Indian influenced done from Fiji or West Indies or Mauritius or Malaysia then it gets interesting. Sri Lanka another deal all together.

Mauritian creole has some chinese influences ,mostly cantonese,great migrators way back,Gold rush here 1850s. I have no idea why they went to Mauritius.

If I  can find curry leaf here in winter I will do a Mauritian curry,just so people(including me) can see the difference.

 

[moikel]

Interesting, as all your posts seem to be.

I'm not too sure about the Chinese in the Creole, and the Creole and Cajun can be different.

Curry is always a problem or a blessing depending what you get and how it turns out.

Keep up the intersting posts.  I enjoy them greatly!

Good luck and good smoking.

http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipe/157/prawn-curry

If you go to this site Peter Kurivita does a classic Sri Lankan prawn curry.He has a high end seafood restaurant here but when he does his "home cooking" its his heritage Sri Lankan stuff. 

He has done a TV series where he went back to Sri Lanka to cook.

Its a real eye opener to see how good it is.

 

[moikel]

Curry leaf. Indispensable in Sri Lanka &Mauritius curry. I am going to find out where to buy a bush that I can put in herb garden.

 

[moikel]

Curry leaf Murraya koenigii ! Found one up at garden store.

. Just need to find the warmest spot in garden for it.

 

[eman]

Here it would be the  trinity. onions, bell peppers celery add garlic. black pepper, red pepper, salt, bay leaf.

 Ahron turned me on to the sirracha garlic sauce, so it will be added next time i make this.

 

[moikel]

I havent been to the southern states of the USA,so its just what I  see on TV. I do know the difference between cajun & creole. I figure Creole would apply to where ever the French colonized or settled that also had some African influence. I dont think it needs to be rigidly defined. My late father spent 1956-58 in the states & Canada .He used to sing (badly) "Jambalia ,catfish pie ,seafood gumbo ..." 

I do like food that has a foot in 2 different cultures or that grew over time as the country itself changed. Pure french food is a bit heavy for me & I am heavy enough

.

 

[shoneyboy]

 

[moikel]

Thanks I am going to do that chilli mudcrab still.Just need the right window.

 

[moikel]

Got the window but I had to go 3,500 k to do it.We brought back 12 or so big buck crabs everyday without trying.Bag limit 10 per head no more than 30 a boat. 

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• moikel
• Oct 22, 2012

At the fishing camp they used to just kill them clean them .Then steam,cool them off often until next day then spread them on a big plastic table outdoors & hand out bits of steel rod as crackers..

I had taken my own dried smoked chilli, I found sweet chilli sauce ,garlic,spring onions,ginger,some fruit juice,fish sauce & some hot peri peri sauce. Its boat or plane for all supplies so couldnt run down to the market.

They cleared me some space & let me loose with a big wok over a gas burner & away I went.3 nights in a row must have got it right

.

I just fried onions,garlic,ginger,chilli added cut up crabs turned it around then added the rest got the balance right  a slug of white wine put a lid on the wok let it bubble away until I figured they were done. Bit hard to cook on a wok at stupid hot & take photos at same time . Great fun just the same. I will do these little Mauritian creole crab cakes as we roll into summer here.

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• moikel
• Oct 22, 2012

 

[dls1]

Interesting thread, Moikel. I'm rather late in finding it, but glad that I did. Over the years, I've spent a fair amount of time on Mauritius as well as it's nearby estranged sibling, Reunion Island. The rougailles of Mauritius and the rougails of RI are very similar and are a daily staple and served in a seemingly infinite number of ways - as a component of a meat or seafood dish such as yours, as a side dish or accompaniment, as a stand alone dish, and even as the filling in a roll. The dish is simply a chunky/coarse spicy tomato sauce of Malagasy Creole origins. Beyond a tomato base the common ingredients are onions, garlic, ginger, thyme, parsley, coriander (cilantro), and hot chili peppers. The folks on RI often add cloves to the mix. I've never encountered curry powders in the dish, though I suppose one could add them if desired. Though in the same family of the Louisiana Creole sauce, it's very different dish.

The blend of the cultures and foodstuffs on the island is the result of of it's colonization, and it's keepers and inhabitants along the way. Mauritius has no native population. It was an undiscovered and uninhabited island until the 1500s when the Portuguese explored it. With the exception of hastening the extinction of the dodo bird, they didn't do much and left early on. In the 1600s, the Dutch settled the island, and laid the groundwork for the sugar cane industry. After a period of time, they lost interest in their venture and the French assumed control in the early 1700s. The French established a major naval base there, and greatly expanded the cane industry. For labor, slaves were brought in from nearby Madagascar and East Africa. During the Napoleonic wars, the British took control of the island, and significantly expanded it's military facilities. Other than that, the Brits didn't do much to impact or tamper with the island except to abolish slavery in the mid 1800s. Most of the slaves fled the cane plantations, and many of those remained on the island. This action created a major problem for the plantation owners so they came up with a scheme to import huge numbers of indentured laborers from India with terms that had them working their butts off for 5 years, after which they regained their freedom and a small plot of land. Some Chinese voluntarily followed the Indian flock to the cane fields, but more came, and doing what the Chinese did best in those times, they developed the infrastructure of the supporting retail industry as shopkeepers, etc. Independence from the Brits was attained in the 1960s.

Today, curries and rougailles dominate the food choices on the island. Chinese food is sparsely available in restaurants owned by those of Chinese descent, which serve primarily Cantonese cuisine. Traditional French or British cuisine is essentially non-existent. This isn't surprising since Indo-Mauritians make up 68% of the population and the Creoles come in at 27%. The Franco-Mauritians and Sino-Mauritians split the remaining 5%.

All in all, it's a very interesting part of the world, especially for those seeking new and unique foods. I think that I need to get back there soon.

 

[moikel]

I have Mauritians around me but havent been there.There seems to be more creole here maybe they migrate more. Fairly active little community in a great big multi cultural city like Sydney. I like the natural fusion of cuisines rather than forced so that french,indian,african mix is my thing. My Doctor gets all wistfull when she talks about it because her Dad went back there to live out his days.

 I did a little side by side of West Indian curry goat & Fijian goat curry in another thread . Same sort of thing 2 different transplanted groups of indentured labour on 2 different tropical islands.