Nilesh's Posterous

Post Thanksgiving Dinner (Indo-Mauritian Food)

Like the french saying says "Jamais deux sans trois" (Never Three without two), with a pre and current thanksgiving dinner, it could not have concluded the thanksgiving period without a Post Thanksgiving dinner. Jay and Aruna hosted a post thanksgiving dinner at their place among a few Mauritians and rather than traditional american thanksgiving food, we had traditional Mauritian food. Went in early and helped Aruna cooked the Dal Puri.

Dal Puri is the yellow looking bread on the food plate and it's rather time consuming to cook. You first have to boil some kind of peas, crush it in into fine granules, fill each dough ball with a bit of the crushed pea, close it, flatten it and then cooked in a flat iron pan. While Caroline and Aruna did the dough, filling and flattening, me and Alex were assigned to flat iron cooking duties, spreading the flattened dough with oil and turning then after they puff up.

Thanks Jay and Aruna for hosting such a great dinner with such great Mauritian food !

Filed under // dinner food hayward mauritian food mauritians thanksgiving

Posted

Mauritian Dinner at Jay and Aruna's place in Hayward

This past Saturday, I was invited to Jay and Aruna's place in Hayward for a traditional Mauritian dinner. Aruna's mom, well as Pravin's mom and dad were visiting and they had decided to cook the traditional '7 carris' (7 dishes) as we call it in Mauritius with Puri. We usually serve these dishes for weddings or for religious ceremonies. We even had the fake banana leaves to eat it on. In the past it used to be real banana leaves, but with them getting scarce, now even in Mauritius they use the artificial leaves. But we had more than 7 dishes I think (we usually don't count the starch and the side accompaniments). Here are the dishes they cooked.

Rougaille - the red stuff, typical mauritian tomato dish
Sousou - the light green stuff, stewed chayotte
Songes - the black stuff, stewed leaves of taro
Cari Bari - Split peas fritters in curry
Dal
Giraumon - yellow stuff, pumpkin dish
achard Piments - Picked green chillies and apples
Takar - Tamarin Relish
Gros Pois - Lima Beans curry
Puri - Puffed deep fried bread

Filed under // dinner food hayward mauritians mauritius

Posted

Mauritian Dinner at Jay's

I was invited to a dinner at Jay and Aruna's place a few weeks back. Jay and Aruna are Mauritians living in the bay area as well, in Hayward. Aruna had decied to cook Dholl-puri which is this mostly Mauritian type bread... i guess closest I can describe it to something in the american diet, is a tortilla stuffed with ground yellow plit peas. Preparation of dholl puri is tedious.. split peas have to be crushed and grinded, flour dough prepared and then mixture stuffed in the middle and then the whole thing roller pressed to keep the split peas in the hollow middle layer and when heat is applied, its suposed to puff up - anyways.. hard to describe accurately.. you need to try it to know :) We had a nice vegetarian dinner, followed by entertainment provided in house by the children present :)