Madagascar Food

Romazava Stew - Madagascar National Dish**

Ravitoto - Cassava Leaves and Zebu, served with Rice

"Street" Noodle Soup

Somosa 

Zebu Tongue

Nicoise Salad

    

Spaghetti Bolognese

**From Bradt’s Travel Guide Madagascar

“A key ingredient to Madagascar’s national dish of romazava is brèdes mafana, literally ‘hot grass’. It has one of the most extraordinary flavours you are ever likely to taste. Eating this small plant–nature’s answer to popping candy–has been likened to the experience of sticking your tongue on the terminals of a battery then injecting your gums with local anaesthetic. Known to botanists as Acmella oleracea, its leaves and flower buds are used both fresh and dried. Brèdes mafana is a feature of Indian Ocean cuisine and can be found across Madagascar. You may have come across it if you have spent time in South America (especially in Peru and Brazil, where it’s called jambu) or southeast Asia, but it is little known in the northern hemisphere. The Malagasy call it anamalaho, kimotodoha or kimalao. Around the world, brèdes mafana has acquired some odd names, including paracress, toothache plant, spotflower, xux (the local word for wasps in Yucatán) and quemadera (meaning ‘burning’ in Colombia); the buds have been called electric buttons, buzz buttons, Szechuan buttons and sansho buttons.

What makes this food so unusual? All parts of the plant are packed with a fatty acid amide called spilanthol–most concentrated in the daisy-like flower buds (the buds may or may not be included in romazava, according to the chef’s taste). The effect of spilanthol on the diner varies from individual to individual, but typically the initial burst of fresh leafy flavour gives way to a slightly citrus aftertaste, then come the oral fireworks: a mixture of tingling, effervescence, chills and numbing, generally accompanied by a mouth-watering sensation–spilanthol induces excessive saliva production by affecting the oral nerve pathways.”