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→Cooking in Madagascar
Each population adapts to its environment and therefore in the dry and pastoral south, the population draws strength and vigour by consuming a great deal of curdled milk from its many herds, while in forested areas you can enjoy the benefits of wild honey which serves as an accompaniment to rice. But the staple food can change when rice production is deficient, when it will be replaced by cassava cooked without added sugar or other products and also tubers such as sweet potato or tarot and corn, cooked or grilled on the fire.
It is the restaurant tables, which provide an idea of the country's culinary variety with each region having its specialty: frog legs from Ambatolampy, freshwater fish and duck from Alaotra Ambatondrazaka, strips of fried beef fillet ''[[varanga]]'' from Antananarivo, crayfish from Ambositra. Those wanting to taste all the varieties of seafood (squid, lobsters, crabs, shrimps, prawns, fish, oysters, mussels) prepared by imaginative chefs with all the sauces possible, can satisfy their gustative curiosity in the restaurants of the coastal cities: the discovery of a country's gastronomy is yet another aspect of tourism. And to put tourists at ease, and not totally changing their eating habits, local restaurateurs are increasingly adapting to this context by providing menus of Chinese, Indian, French food etc. in their establishments in most of the larger towns in Madagascar.
If classic menus can be found, there are also some local specialties, some of which should intrigue tourists such as the following recipe which can be counted among pastries, except it is not baked in an oven: these are the large brown rolls, sold open air, on small street-side tables in the capital: the ''koban-dravina'', a specialty of the Antananarivo area. As the use of the oven is not familiar to everyone, certain artisans have discovered a method of making a kind of local cake, the mixture cooked in water in a large pot for two days over a large wooden fire and constantly stirred. Here is the recipe: rice flour mixed with sugar and whole, unroasted peanuts. The mix is then carefully wrapped in banana leaves and firmly tied with fibres from the bark of a plant before being placed in the cooking pot with water. These rolls wrapped in banana leaves browned by cooking are sold retail and sliced at the request of the customer.
''Text from "Passport for Madagascar" - September, October 2013 - 78th edition''
== Cooking in Madagascar ==
Each nation has its own culinary culture distinguishing it from others. The Malagasy have also their own, based on rice.
Their dishes are simple and healthy as they usually consist of meat boiled in broth or brèdes (edible leaves), or grilled to accompany the dish of rice. However, these traditional preparations also follow the modern trend with the widespread use of cooking oil which has replaced tallow for over a century and we are constantly finding new ways to adapt them.
More and more ways are being found to enhance and give a new flavour to some tubers such as ''voamanga'' (sweet potato), ''saonjo'' (edible arum root) and ''oviala'' (kind of wild yams or fruit such as breadfruit). The tubers are cooked very simple in water and the easy peeling off of their skins while eating them is the greatest of all pleasures.
Bread made its appearance very much later with the arrival of Europeans. People here have worked some of the flour as ''tavolo'', rice, corn, to make cakes or ''koba'' and their dough mixed with mashed banana and sugar is cooked in water for minutes and wrapped in broad leaves, such as banana, ravinala or longoza.
However, there is another variety of ''[[koba]]'' requiring a more sophisticated technique and more hours of cooking. The basis of this preparation is always rice flour mixed with sugar and crushed peanuts, then everything is spread on banana leaves, placed next to each other, then wrapped and tied with the fibres from these leaves, producing a volume of 50, 60, 70 to 80 centimetres long which will be placed in a pot of the same length or in halves of metal drums. As an economy measure, several can be prepared at the same time as over two or three days. When all water has evaporated, the ''koban-dravina'' is ready for eating: this sweet, dark brown cake is then cut into slices, with its envelope of leaves, and, gradually as it is eaten, reveals with each slice how the mixture is composed. Because of its long preparation, it is understandable why the slices are cut so thinly by the traders in the market place.
''Text from "Passport for Madagascar" - 56th edition, January/February 2010''
