Malagasy cuisine

Trade with Arab and Indian merchants and European transatlantic traders further enriched the island's culinary traditions by introducing a wealth of new fruits, vegetables, and seasonings.

The many varieties of laoka may be vegetarian or include animal proteins, and typically feature a sauce flavored with such ingredients as ginger, onion, garlic, tomato, vanilla, salt, curry powder, or, less commonly, other spices or herbs.

In parts of the arid south and west, pastoral families may replace rice with maize, cassava, or curds made from fermented zebu milk.

Although the classic Malagasy meal of rice and its accompaniment remains predominant, over the past 100 years other food types and combinations have been popularized by French colonists and immigrants from China and India.

[5] Game was regularly hunted and trapped in the forests, including frogs, snakes, lizards, hedgehogs and tenrecs, tortoises, wild boars, insects, larvae, birds and lemurs.

Early Malagasy communities may have eaten the eggs and—less commonly—the meat of Aepyornis maximus, the world's largest bird, which remained widespread throughout Madagascar as recently as the 17th century.

[7] While several theories have been proposed to explain the decline and eventual extinction of Malagasy megafauna, clear evidence suggests that hunting by humans and destruction of habitats through slash-and-burn agricultural practices were key factors.

In its place were scattered villages ringed with nearby rice paddies and crop fields a day's walk away, surrounded by vast plains of sterile grasses.

[2] Zebu, a form of humped cattle, were introduced to the island around 1000 CE by settlers from east Africa, who also brought sorghum, goats, possibly Bambara groundnut, and other food sources.

Because these cattle represented a form of wealth in east African and consequently Malagasy culture, they were eaten only rarely, typically after their ritual sacrifice at events of spiritual import such as funerals.

[2] Foods were commonly prepared by boiling in water (at first using green bamboo as a vessel, and later clay or iron pots),[14] roasting over a fire or grilling over hot stones or coals.

[6] Fermentation was also used to create curds from milk, develop the flavor of certain dried or fresh tubers or produce alcoholic beverages from honey, sugar cane juice or other local plants.

[16] Ralambo's father, King Andriamanelo, is credited with introducing the marriage tradition of the vodiondry ([vudiˈuɳɖʳʲ]) or "rump of the sheep," wherein the most favored cut of meat—the hindquarters—was offered by the groom to the parents of the bride-to-be at an engagement ceremony.

In 1696, a trading vessel en route to the American colonies reportedly took a stock of local Malagasy rice to Charleston, South Carolina, where the grain formed the basis of the plantation industry.

[19] Trading ships brought crops from the Americas—such as sweet potato, tomato, maize, peanuts, tobacco and lima beans—to Madagascar in the 16th and 17th centuries;[2] cassava arrived after 1735 from a French colony at nearby Réunion Island.

[21] Similarly, pineapple and citrus fruits such as lemons, limes, oranges, consumed by sailors to ward off scurvy on long cross-Atlantic trips, were introduced at coastal Malagasy ports.

[22] The prickly pear cactus or raketa ([raˈketə̥]), also known in southern Madagascar as sakafon-drano ([saˈkafuˈɳɖʳanʷ]) or "water food", was brought from the New World to the French settlement at Fort Dauphin in 1769 by Frenchman Count Dolisie de Maudave.

At the turn of the 19th century, King Andrianampoinimerina (1787–1810) successfully united these fractious Merina groups under his rule, then used slaves and forced labor—exacted in lieu of taxes for those without means to offer material payment—to systematically work the irrigated rice fields around Antananarivo.

In this way, he ensured regular grain surpluses that were sufficient to consistently feed the entire population and export products for trade with other regions of the island.

[25] By this period, coastal cuisine had likewise evolved: early 19th-century voyagers reported eating dishes on Île Sainte-Marie prepared with curry powder (including a spiced rice resembling biryani) and drinking coffee and tea.

[32] Colonization of Madagascar by the French meant the end of the Malagasy monarchy and its elaborate feasts, but the traditions of this elegant cuisine were preserved in the home, where these dishes are eaten regularly.

Baguettes were popularized among cosmopolitan urbanites, as were a variety of French pastries and desserts such as cream horns, mille-feuille, croissants and chocolat chaud (hot chocolate).

[35] The French established plantations for the cultivation of a variety of cash crops, including not only those already exploited in the 19th century, but new foreign fruits, vegetables and livestock, with varying degrees of success.

[40] By the 1880s, a community of roughly 200 Indian traders had been established at Mahajanga, a port on the north-west coast of Madagascar, near Bombetoka Bay at the mouth of the Betsiboka River.

Upscale restaurants offer a wider variety of foreign cuisine and Malagasy dishes bearing French and other outside influences in preparation technique, ingredients and presentation alike.

[56] In the arid south and west, such as among the Bara or Tandroy peoples, staples include sweet potato, yams, taro root and especially cassava, millet and maize, generally boiled in water and occasionally served in whole milk or flavored with crushed peanuts.

[62] By contrast, Romatsatso ([rumaˈtsatsʷ]) is a light and relatively flavorless broth made with onion, tomato and anamamy greens served with meat or fatty poultry.

[52] The national dish is the broth called Romazava, which in its simplest form is made of beef with anamalao, anantsonga or anamamy, although ingredients such as tomato, onion and ginger are commonly added to create more complex and flavorful versions.

[65] The most common is mofo gasy, meaning "Malagasy bread", which is made from a batter of sweetened rice flour poured into greased circular molds and cooked over charcoal.

[80] Koban-dravina ([ˌkubanˈɖʳavʲnə̥]) or koba ([ˈkubə̥]) is a Malagasy specialty made by grinding together peanuts and brown sugar, then enveloping the mixture in a sweetened rice flour paste to produce a cylindrical bundle.