Creole cuisine

[1] According to Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen, "a Creole society (...) is based wholly or partly on the mass displacement of people who were, often involuntarily, uprooted from their original home, shedding the main features of their social and political organisations on the way, brought into sustained contact with people from other linguistic and cultural areas and obliged to develop, in creative and improvisational ways, new social and cultural forms in the new land, drawing simultaneously on traditions from their respective places of origin and on impulses resulting from the encounter.

Creole food can be found in Louisiana (USA), Cuba, Brazil, Peru, the French Antilles, French Guiana, La Reunion (France), Jamaica, Annobón (Equatorial Guinea), Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cape Verde, Dominican Republic, etc.

This small island in the Mascarene archipelago can be found in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar and the African continent, and has long been a French territory.

Mauritian Creole dishes typically involves the consumption of seafood, fresh vegetables, pulses, beans, and corn.

It is prepared with key local ingredients such as potato, tomato, or corn, planted and harvested in their place of origin.

[13] Interestingly, besides their seeming ubiquity in Cuban creole cuisine, viandas are also known for their medicinal qualities, commonly being used to ease upset stomachs.

[13] In Mexico, the term creole differs slightly, since it refers to agricultural products native to Mexico that are considered to be vegetable relics, meaning, fruits or vegetables that are cultivated on a local scale (typical to a particular region), following the ancient techniques that pre-Columbian societies used, without variations in the cultivar (their size, color, and flavor are all the same).

[17] One of the signature dishes of Peruvian creole cuisine is ceviche, which is prepared with fresh fish that has been cured in lemon juice.