If only I’d planned ahead a more I would have come up with a special new thing to celebrate getting to 100 days, but with everything going on it passed me by. Instead, I made something new – the Mauiritian ounde.
We spent a very happy holiday in Mauritius in 2017, and fell in love with the food. The street food in particular was so delicious, I long to eat it again: heavily influenced by Indian and French cooking, the food is full of flavour and colour, and just so flipping tasty. I came upon this recipe for ounde, a sweet ground rice ball, whilst scrolling through recipes on Instagram (a favourite past time of mine – a bit like window shopping). I found Shelina Parmaloo, a former winner of UK Masterchef, who had done a few Instagram TV videos on Mauritian recipes. I really wanted to try more, but I only had the ingredients to make the ounde so I got to work.
The main ingredient is ground rice, which Parmaloo uses by blitzing normal rice in the food processor. I tried this, and I think my processor is maybe not powerful enough, because I just ended up with chopped up rice. Nevertheless, I continued, and gradually brought everything together whilst video-calling with a friend. It was a very low-fuss, easy, recipe that consisted of ground (or near enough) rice, sugar, milk, cardamom, and some dessicated coconut.
They came together beautifully, despite my ground rice fail, however it did mean that they weren’t as smooth as they should be.
I tried one whilst it was warm, and it reminded me of an Indian kheer I sometimes eat for breakfast. They were subtly sweet and lightly spiced – they had a great flavour. I’m not entirely sure that they’re for me though, the texture is a bit too soft for my tastes: I prefer something with a bit of bite. I’m happy I gave them a try though, and I’ll definitely make sure to have more ingredients in next time to try some more Mauritian recipes.
New Day, New Thing 