Adventures in Cultural Misappropriation – Madagascar

Recipes in this post:

Malagasy lasopy

Vegetable Biryani

Madagascar vanilla fruity clafoutis

Our first culinary visit into the heart of Africa, or at least off the coast of Africa where David Schwimmer plays a hypochondriac giraffe.

I don’t do any research for these things, but Rachel does, and apparently Madagascar cuisine is slurped up from both the Indian and French cultures. The end result is a soup that wouldn’t surprise me on an Indian menu, a rice dish I’ve absolutely ordered from our local kebab place, and a French-ish dessert.

Malagasy lasopy is a puréed vegetable soup. You basically take a bunch of vegetables, boil em in broth, and whiz the whole thing together in a food processor. The recipe calls for water and an animal bone instead of broth, but fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. You can probably do this with literally any vegetables, I stuck to the recipe.

Even with no seasoning/spices besides salt and pepper, the soup is a pretty good hit and gets good flavor from the turnip and green onions.

The biryani is a warm spiced rice dish. I substituted vegetable bouillon for the chicken bouillon, and I couldn’t find ginger garlic paste so I made my own. You’ll be horrified to know that my grocery cart at one point had both a jar of pickled ginger and a jar of “garlic paste” which apparently also had, like, parmesan cheese in it? Then I decided to avoid a complete Ugly Food meltdown and actually google the recipe for ginger garlic paste in-store and picked up a ginger root and effing did it. I ended up accidentally making like a cup of ginger garlic paste (only needed a tablespoon) so I ended up using it for a stir fry the next day.

Anyway, pretty good. It tasted about the same as restaurant biryani, although it made a lot more (and cost a lot more – not sure if it evened out price wise). Suggested wine pairing: Diet Mt. Dew.

The clafoutis dessert is kind of, I dunno, a flat custardy cake? At least mine was. I think the pan I used was too big. The recipe just said “tart pan,” man! Be clear in your recipes!

Anyway, it still tasted good as hell.

lol

And then the animals, who all had been pampered in the Central Park Zoo previously, learn a lesson about survival and not eating each other, and it sucked. I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT, I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT, I LOKENTO MOGE IT MOTR IT, I LIKENTO MOOOOBE ITTTTT