The Jams of Nostradamus and Other Sugar Secrets in Mauritius

This article appeared in Mail Today on February 17, 2014.
To check out the original, click on http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=1622014.
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.

Link to my previous Mauritius story:
http://indianrestaurantspy.blogspot.in/2013/12/mauritius-diary-rhythms-of-creole-music.html

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

HAD Michel de Nostradame, who attained eternal fame as the seer Nostradamus, not written down his prophecies, generations would have remembered him as a pioneering confectioner. For, it was he who explained to the world, in his lesser-known work, Traite des Confitures (Treaty of Jams), how sugar can be used to preserve fruits, thus giving birth in 1555 to the business of making jams, jellies and marmalades. Nostradamus was an apothecary (or pharmacist) and in those days, candy used to be made by people who dispensed medicines.

New Grove is a delicious rum, best drunk with
just ice, produced at the first sugar factory of
Mauritius. At l'Aventure du Sucre, you could
pick up bottles of the cognac-like rum made
from first-crush sugarcane juice, known
locally as fangourin. 

For a lifelong collector of useless information, this was my a-ha moment at L'Aventure du Sucre -- the famed sugar museum, and high point of my visit to Mauritius. The Indian Ocean nation, which exists in our imagination as a green ideal with sun-kissed white beaches and aquamarine seas, has beauties tucked away everywhere. And these may not always be of the kind gifted by a bounteous nature. L'Aventure du Sucre is one among them.

At first sight, it may appear like any other reconstituted sugar factory -- Mauritius had 259 of them in 1858, but today, just five produce more sugar than all of them combined -- till you notice the 35m chimney towering over it like some phallic ode. Look around, and treat your eyes to a vast expanse of dense greenery and sugarcane plantations, swaying in the gentle breeze, overseen by a wind-sculpted hill in the distant horizon that stands wrapped in a quilt of flitting grey clouds like a forlorn sentinel on a sleepless vigil since the Jurassic Age.

You're in Pamplemousses, one of the oldest and greenest districts of the island, not very far from the Port Louis, the national capital, and named after the tree that bears a fruit that looks and tastes uncannily like grapefruit. I owed this bit of general knowledge to the glass of pamplemousses juice that I had at breakfast. I had loved the symphony of fruit and acid, sweet and sour -- it was a like a concert by nature to liven up jaded palates.

Pamplemousses is famous the world over for the Sir Seewoosagar Ramgoolam Botanical Garden, the oldest in the Southern Hemisphere, and best known for its humongous Queen Victoria water lilies. Not being botanically inclined, I did not visit the 37-hectare park -- just as well, because there was so much to learn about Mauritius and the sugar economy at the sugar museum.

The museum's marketing manager is a young Mauritian of Indian origin, who, like his other compatriots, spoke in Creole and English, listened only to Bollywood music, and had a foggy idea of India, created in his mind by the playlist of the FM station he heard on his way to and back from work, and yet he nurtured the dream of visiting the country of his forefathers. "Aap Bharat ko mera salaam dena," he said with a natural-born exuberance and not because of what he had learnt from the correspondence classes in marketing management that he took from an Australian university. Back home, the line may have sounded corny, but when you hear it in rain-washed Pamplemousses, you feel your eyes turning moist and you hear the rustle of the Tricolour flying in full mast.

The Dutch introduced sugarcane in Mauritius, the French and the Brits exploited its commercial possibilities, and Indian indentured labourers slaved away in the plantations on five-year contracts. The men were paid five rupees a month and the women, four, and of this paltry sum, one rupee would be held back, ostensibly to pay for their return journey. They were lured by the promise of finding gold in the isle, but instead of digging for gold, they worked as coolies in sugar plantations.

The first Indians officially arrived on November 2, 1834, at the Immigration Depot, or Aapravasi Ghat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site tucked away in one corner of the chic Caudan Waterfront in Port Louis. Eventually, 450,000 of them arrived till 1923, the year when indentured labour was abolished, and once the five years of their contracts got over, they and their descendents chose to stay on to build a multi-ethnic society where four distinct communities -- Indian, Chinese, African and French -- stay in complete harmony with each other. Sugar today contributes to a third of the export earnings of the country and is grown on 80 per cent of the arable land. I looked at the man taking me around with renewed respect. His ancestors, and those of other young people like him I had got to meet during my stay, had built a thriving sugarcane economy literally in the middle of nowhere.

One sugarcane, the marketing manager said, has a life span of eight years, and each time it is cut, it produces 20 litres of juice, which in turn converts into two kilos of sugar. The bagasse left behind in the crushing process provide green fuel for gas-based turbines producing electricity, the waste is turned into fertiliser, the molasses are processed to make industrial rum and methanol, and the leaves are dried to produce the ubiquitous decorative roofing material that you'll find across the island.

The first-crush sugarcane juice, fangourin, also goes into the making of Mauritian agricultural rum (rhum agricole) -- and the museum's shop has one of the finest, New Grove, a heady liquor bursting with floral aromas and tropical fruit notes, all jasmine, lychee and honey, made at the island's first sugar mill and rum factory. It also has a selection of 12 kinds of sugar, so I had to find out the difference between the demerara and the muscovado, which were among the six at my hotel's breakfast buffet. I learnt that both are brown sugar, or raw sugar crystals, with different levels of molasses content and different production processes -- in the case of demerara (best for coffee), the raw molasses crystals are dried in a centrifuge, but the muscovado (perfect for baking) is dried in natural heat, sometimes in the sun.

Did someone say Mauritius is only about the sun, sea and sand? Add a fourth 's' -- sugarcane -- and you'll see another side of the emerald isle.

MAURITIUS DIARY: Rhythms of Creole Music & Heavenly Rum in Indian Ocean Paradise

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IN AN atmosphere surcharged with the electricity of youthful energy and the magic of music, on a breezy Mauritian night brimming over with possibilities, I had my first swig of a rum that had all the distinctive characteristics of the island nation -- smooth, gently heady, bursting with the seductive flavours of spice.

It was the all-night concert, the high point of the Festival International Kreol 2013, on the grounds of a convention centre named after Swami Vivekananda at Domaine les Pailles, a 3,000-acre gastronomic hub ten minutes away from the country's capital, Port Louis, on the foothills of the Moka Range. My fluorescent yellow wrist band gave me access to the grand stage where the singing stars of the Creole-speaking nations performed to a cheering, waving, singing crowd of about 10,000 young people.

It was like being at the Woodstock of the Indian Ocean. It was Saturday (November 30) night and I was savouring the experience of the backstage, my body swaying instinctively to the rhythm of the music. The gentleman next to me was the Mauritian Minister for Tourism and Leisure, Michael Sik Yuen, dressed casually in jeans and an airy shirt (imagine Chiranjeevi hanging out anonymously in the shadows of a major international event!). I did not have to know Creole, the lingua franca of the Indian Ocean nations, to soak up the spirit of the evening. It helped, of course, to be right behind the bongo player, whose knee-length dreadlocks and rugged aquiline features made him look like a character out of Pirates of the Caribbean. He was a powerhouse of assured energy.

(Top) My fellow traveller and acclaimed blogger, Nisha 
Jha (www.lemonicks.com), shot this picture of yours
truly at the rum display at the St Aubin reception hall.
(Above) The bar at Saint Aubin's restaurant is 
well-stocked with the many variants of its 1819
rum. My personal favourite was the smooth 
vanilla-flavoured rum.

In the middle of this celebration of the binding power of music, Devendra Babooa, Research and Development Manager of the Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority (MTPA), guided me to a tent that served as makeshift bar. The smiling, mild-mannered man presiding over the operation was the MTPA's financial honcho. He said he had been drafted for the job because everyone else was busy chaperoning the 150-odd journalists who had come for the event. I tried to remember a more chilled-out bean counter back home, only to give up and surrender myself to the pleasures of Mauritian rum (or rhum, as the people of this Francophone nation like to call it).

Mr Bottomline served me a generous pour of Bougainville Vieux Domaine, a rum produced by the Oxenham family at a facility on the Saint Jean-Phoenix motorway, and named after the intrepid French admiral and circumnavigator of the globe, Louise Antoine de Bougainville, who established the settlement of Port Louis in 1764. Poured out of an elongated 500ml bottle, the rum was as smooth as silk, full of the sweetness of sugarcane that the island is famous for.

My next was the Spiced Rum 1819 from Saint Aubin, a rum distillery in southern Mauritius. 1819 signifies the year of the founding of the sun-dappled sugarcane plantation, which produces the fangourin, the precious first-crush juice that goes into the making of the rum. Saint Aubin is home to the tropical island nation's first 'agricultural rum', produced entirely with sugarcane juice, and not molasses. Sexed up with oranges and cinnamon, the rum has been made to be drunk by itself, without the intervention of Coke or any other such needless props. I drank quite a lot of it, and before I knew it, the bottle was empty. My enthusiasm for 1819 must have been shared by many others, for the stock at Mr Bottomline's command soon ended in a heap of empty bottles. So did the Bougainville.

Saint Aubin was on my itinerary for Sunday (December 1) prepared by the MTPA, my hosts. As travel blogger Nisha Jha, the other journalist invited from India by the MTPA, and I neared the carefully manicured gardens of the distillery, I couldn't help noticing the chimney that appears on Saint Aubin's labels. It's the chimney of the old sugar mill that has made way for a museum that recreates the sugar milling process.

Our Saint Aubin experience started at the Vanilla House, where I learnt that vanilla is an orchid that grows best in the company of anthurium, which offers protection from the harsh sun and heavy rain. Of the 100 species of vanilla, only three are cultivated and Mauritius is one of the few countries where it is possible. It's this vanilla that had gone into the Spiced Rum 1819, which had won my heart.

Our next and final stop was the restaurant of the rhumerie, set in a colonial building with a long pillared verandah where the owners of the sugar mill and distillery once lived. The building, last renovated in the 1990s, was first built closer to the mill in 1819. The construction material used was wood from dismantled ships that had suffered endless explorations.

In the 1970s, the showpiece house moved to its present location overlooking a garden straight out of Beautiful Homes. It is here we had our meal of palm heart salad and smoked marlin (a Mauritian delicacy), followed by an underwhelming vanilla chicken served with rice, dhol (light masoor dal with celery and scallions), apalam (papad) and a delectable bilimbi, or tree sorrel, achard (pickle) spiked with whole mustard.

For dessert, we had the most memorable vanilla pod ice-cream with fruit salad -- fresh vanilla pods can transform ice-cream in a way that you can only appreciate when you have one at the Saint Aubin restaurant! The shots of intensely flavourful vanilla rum (it tasted as heavenly as XO cognac) and the slightly rough coffee rum (it had the seductiveness of a Kahlua but not its sugar attack) more than made up for the chicken, and the ice-cream, of course, walked away with the top prize.

We could have just hung around, but the rum gave our heads a sense of lightness that could only cured by a welcoming pillow. It was a Sunday, so the traffic was light, and it didn't take us long to settle down for an afternoon siesta. When you're in Mauritius, take it easy, my friend!

GOURMET’S MAURITIUS: Island Nation Beckons with Treats for All Tastes & Pockets

This is the first of a series of 25 articles on eating out in Mauritius, an island nation that is so close to us culturally and has so much to offer to the traveller. This, I hope, will also be the first of a series of food guides, drawing on the wisdom of frequent travellers and chefs, offering in-depth information on savouring the culinary secrets of some of our most favourite destinations around the world.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

MAURITIUS is a culinary melting pot that is yet to be explored fully by high-spending Indian travellers who visit the island nation for reasons as varied as hosting a big fat Indian wedding to attending an incentive powwow for a company’s sale staff. From authentic dim sum (some say the best outside Hong Kong and Guangzhou) to African, Creole, English and French specialities, to street Indian, to gourmet Indian a la Michelin-starred Vineet Bhatia, Mauritius has something to tantalise every taste bud and, contrary to what people believe, every pocket.

From tandoori to Creole cuisine, Mauritius is a gastronomic
showcase of the best foods its diverse culture has to offer

The country’s kitchen reflects the diverse culinary influences and histories that the ancestors of its citizens brought with them at various points of time. The grand views that the restaurants command and the legendary friendliness of the Mauritians combine to double the dining pleasure in that idyllic country.

To dig deeper into the Mauritius dining scene, I posted a request for information on the landing page of the Delhi Gourmet Club (DGC), a Facebook community of over 4,500 people who live to eat, and I was impressed by the steady trickle of nuggets that came my way. Anand Kapoor, who works for a UK-based design house and also runs the non-profit Creative Services Support Group (CSSG), drew my attention to a guide to good eating in Mauritius published by a leading U.K. newpaper, The Telegraph. Kapoor, who has just published a lavishly illustrated cookbook titled Taste with seven Michelin-starred and celebrity chefs, is well-travelled and knows his food well.

I will start my series with the opening advice of The Telegraph guide’s author, Nicki Grihault, daughter of Alan Grihault, the acclaimed authority on the dodo. “Lunch,” writes Nicki, who knows Mauritius as intimately as her father knows the dodo, “tends to be a more popular, and less expensive, time to eat out, as Grand Baie is the only area with a happening evening dining scene and to a lesser extent, Port Louis.” Grand Baie is an ocean-kissed village in the north of the island and Port Louis is the national capital.

Keeping that advice at the back of our mind, let us set out for Mauritius with this list of the ten favourite restaurants of another DGC member, Siddharth Mohan, a senior executive with a leading management consultancy and a regular visitor to Mauritius. Mohan’s Top Ten are:

1. Domaine Anna for delicious butter garlic freshwater prawns in the middle of sugarcane fields. (That must be an amazing view! The restaurant is on the island’s longest beach, Flic en Flac, or Black River.)

2. Le Chamarel, which is perched high on the Black River mountains, for its outstanding vistas while you tuck into Smoked Marlin Carpaccio. (The restaurant should not be confused with the Air Mauritius Airbus A340-313X named Le Chamarel.)

3. Varangue Sur Morne, a rustic gamekeeper’s lodge also in Chamarel, for fine Creole cooking and stunning surroundings (these two words will keep appearing in most descriptions).

4.  L’Aventure du Sucre for unpretentious Mauritian French cuisine steeped in the history of an Old Sugar Mill, where you can find out all you need to know about the history of the island, its sugar industry and the many types of sugar it produces.

5.  The dhaba-style Dewa on Rose Hill for a taste of the dholl puri (maida rotis staffed with chana and served in pairs with a bean curry, ‘achard’, or pickles, and chutney) and the local galette, which is a deep-fried cake made with mashed cassava and cream.

6.  The chic Le Pescatore at Trou aux Biches on the island’s north-west coast for fish so fresh you can smell the aroma of the sea water while eating away … it’s pricey, though.

7. For tea-time crepes, chicken sandwiches and the best Pina Colada to enjoy the sunset, head for the beach-side restaurant at La Pirogue Resort set in 14 hectares of tropical plantations.

8. Chateau Mon Desir overlooking the historic ruins of Balaclava, River Citron and Turtle Bay for the most fabulous charm of its old-world dining experience.

9.  Ocean Basket, an outlet of the famous South African chain, for the oh-so-many prawns in a dish at the upmarket Bagatelle, Mall of Mauritius.

10. “And if you are very, very lucky,” concludes Mohan, “home-style grilled lamb chops at an 18th-century French mansion surrounded by exquisite gardens. Entry by invitation only.” This is the mystery entry in this Top Ten. To find out, keep following the posts that follow in this series.

Here’s the link to Nicki Grihault’s most informative thumbnail guide…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destination/mauritius/56532/Mauritius-restaurants.html