Comoros
Vanilla, cloves and coconut folded into the day's catch — the perfume islands cook the way they smell.
These are the islands that scent the world's perfume — ylang-ylang, cloves and vanilla grow up the volcanic slopes — and the cooking tastes of them. The dish to find is langouste à la vanille, reef lobster simmered in a sauce built on the islands' own vanilla, sweet and heady at once and unmistakably Comorian.
Everything else leans on the sea and the coconut. Fishermen go out every day, so grilled tuna and reef fish are the everyday protein, eaten with rice, cassava and green banana softened in coconut milk — madaba, cassava leaves cooked down the same way, alongside. Snack on mabawa, charcoal-grilled chicken wings, and fish sambusa from a Moroni stall; wash it down with tangy tamarind juice, since this is a Muslim archipelago where alcohol stays scarce. Spice-island cooking — and you can taste every clove.
- Langouste à la vanille (lobster in vanilla sauce)
- Mabawa (grilled chicken wings)
- Madaba (cassava leaves in coconut)
- Pilao (spiced rice with meat)
- Sambusa (fish samosa)
- Mkatra foutra (fried flatbread)
- Tamarind juice
