Malagasy Cuisine

Malagasy cuisine is the food tradition of the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, shaped by the Southeast Asian, African, Oceanian, Indian, Chinese and European peoples who settled there. Rice, first grown by the earliest settlers alongside tubers and other Southeast Asian staples, is the cornerstone of the diet. Across nearly all the island a meal is a base of rice, called vary, served with an accompaniment called laoka, which may be vegetarian or contain animal protein and typically comes in a sauce flavoured with ginger, onion, garlic, tomato, vanilla, salt or curry powder. Zebu beef arrived with East African migrants around 1000 CE. In parts of the arid south and west, pastoral families may replace rice with maize, cassava or curds made from fermented zebu milk. Fritters and other street foods are found island wide.