Rougail saucisses recipe

Rougail saucisses is one of my favourite Creole meals. Saucisse is French for ‘sausage’ and rougail normally refers to the hot salsa condiment that accompanies all dishes in Reunion – here it’s used for the name of a main dish because Rougail Saucisses is traditionally quite spicy.

Ingredients for 4 people:

• 750g of sausages (normal or smoked)
• 5 onions
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 8 tomatoes
• 4 or 5 chillies (optional)
• 1 piece of ginger
• 2 tablespoons of oil

Rougail saucisses cooking over an open fire at Le Maïdo

1. Boil sausages in a large pan of water for 15 minutes then chop into pieces.
2. Dice onions and tomatoes.
3. Crush and blend together salt, garlic, ginger and chillies to make a paste (use a pestle and mortar if you have one).
4. Fry the sausage pieces for 5 minutes in a pan, then put them to one side.
5. In the same pan, add the oil and brown the onions for one minute, then add the garlic and ginger, stir for two minutes, followed by the tomatoes and salt; mix everything together.
6. Finally, add the sausage pieces and stir.
7. Add a little water if necessary, then leave to simmer for 20 minutes.

Normally eaten with rice and lentils or haricot beans.

There you have it – a tasty and easy Creole meal from Reunion!

This post was originally published on the Welcome to Reunion Island blog.

Rhum arrangé

Most of Reunion's farmland is covered in sugar cane, which is transformed into sugar ... and rum!  Particularly popular locally is rhum arrangé which literally means 'arranged rum' but can be loosely translated as 'macerated flavoured rum'. One or several ingredients such as vanilla, bananas, cinnamon, geranium, lychees, ginger are added to a bottle of white rum and left to macerate for several weeks or months (the actual length of time depends on the ingredient(s)). It's drunk as an after-dinner drink and most homes in Réunion always have a bottle or two at least; most restaurants will offer you a shot after dinner. 

A week past Sunday we were at a restaurant at St Bernard (a district of La Montagne, Saint Denis) which is located in part of an old leprosarium. I hadn't been back there recently but I remembered they had the biggest collection of rhum arrangé I've ever seen, and I wasn't disappointed when I saw it again. The photos below show just part of the collection, which apparently numbers more than 300 bottles. As well as the usual ingredients there are some more unusual ones, such as chewing-gum or grass snake!

pomander-like rhums arrangés on the bottom shelf

part of the vast collection

note the large bottle of honeycomb rhum arrangé 
in the lower middle of the photo

Cheers! Santé !

Wasp larvae

Here on Reunion fried wasp larvae are a local delicacy which are often eaten around Easter time, traditionally during Lent. My husband and I don't cook them ourselves, but when we come across a nest full of larvae in our garden we call one of our neighbours who is quite happy to come and 'relieve' us of them!

Local wasps (Polistes hebraeus) on a nest (source)

The traditional method of harvesting a nest is to smoke off the wasps using a cloth on the end of a choka stem (or broom handle these days). The smoke makes the wasps fly away, but doesn't kill them and they will live to make another nest elsewhere. Nests can sell for €100-200/kg, that's including the weight of the nest itself, even though it's only the larvae inside that are eaten.

A small wasps' nest and some larvae

The larvae first need to be cooked in a small amount of water with salt and pepper added, then once they've turned white they should be taken out of the water, dried, and only then fried in oil with garlic. Due to the small quantity they're generally eaten as a snack or a starter rather than as a meal course. Bon appetit!

Fried wasps (source)

Further reading:

• Exotic food, guess what?

Garden production

First home-grown production from our prolific bananas since we arrived back on Reunion from South Korea.

mmm!

Maido Forest Adventure Park

Last week we went with a group to "La forêt de l'aventure" which is a site near the Maïdo with tree top trails. Great fun was had by all!

There are lots of zip lines.

The course consists of several trees linked by different acrobatic elements made of rope and wood.

But also lots of trickier obstacles.

It takes about 2 - 2½ hours to do the whole course.

This one involved launching yourself on a rope towards a net:

Afterwards we had a Creole picnic with lots of different carris.

rougail saucisses (a carri with sausages)

carri ti-jacques (with jack-fruit and smoked meat)

If don't know Reunion Island and want to find out more here's a link.

Buddhist temple food cooking Part 1

We were filmed for TV cooking temple food at Gilsangsa Buddhist temple in Seoul in December 2009, and the programme was broadcast on TV in May 2010 for Buddha's birthday.

Buddhist temple food cooking Part 2

Buddhist temple food cooking in Seoul, South Korea Video Part 2

From champacs on Vimeo.