Madagascan Food: A Guide to the Dishes of Madagascar

Madagascar sits in the Indian Ocean off the southeast coast of Africa, and its food carries the story of everyone who ever landed there. For Malagasy families in Britain, cooking a pot of rice with a good laoka beside it is the simplest way to feel at home, a taste that reaches back across the ocean to the island.

There is real comfort in Malagasy food, in the steaming mound of vary at the centre of the table, the slow-simmered romazava, the deep green of pounded cassava leaves, the sweetness of coconut and vanilla. When a Madagascan family in the UK simmers romazava, pounds ravitoto or fries a round of mofo gasy in the morning, they are keeping the island close and sharing the gentle, unhurried hospitality it is known for. That warmth, built around rice and a shared table, is the heart of Madagascan food.

What Madagascan Food Is

Madagascan food, known as Malagasy food, comes from Madagascar, a large island in the Indian Ocean off the southeast coast of Africa. The island was settled over many centuries by people arriving from across the ocean and the continent, and its cooking reflects that mixed heritage, blending African, Southeast Asian, in particular Malay and Indonesian, Indian, Arab and French influences into a distinctive cuisine you will not find anywhere else. Few African cuisines have quite so many threads running through them, and that is exactly what makes Malagasy food so interesting to explore.

That blend shows up on the plate. From Southeast Asia comes the central love of rice and coconut, carried across the Indian Ocean by the island's earliest settlers, from India and Arabia come spices and pickles such as achard, and from France come baguettes, pastries and a strong coffee culture. Yet Malagasy food is gentler and less fiery than many of its neighbours, letting the flavour of good rice, fresh greens, meat and coconut come through, with chilli added at the table by those who want it rather than cooked hard into every pot. The result is a cuisine that feels familiar in places and quite its own in others, home cooking built on fresh, local produce, slow-cooked meat and generous helpings of rice. It sits within the wider world of African food.

Vary and Laoka the Heart of Every Meal

Rice, called vary, is the absolute staple of Madagascan food, and it is no exaggeration to say it is the centre of the meal. Many Malagasy people eat rice at almost every meal, often three times a day, and a plate is built around a generous mound of it. Madagascar has one of the highest rates of rice consumption anywhere, and a meal without rice can feel, to many, like no meal at all.

Alongside the rice sits the laoka, the accompaniment that gives the meal its flavour. Laoka is the general word for whatever is served with the rice, and it can be a meat, fish, vegetable or bean dish, from a simple plate of greens to a rich, slow-cooked stew. A meal might have one laoka or several, depending on the day and the occasion, but the rice always leads and the laoka follows. This pairing of vary and laoka is the everyday shape of Malagasy eating, the rice steady and plain, the laoka bringing the seasoning, the sauce and the character to each meal. Understanding it is the key to understanding the whole cuisine, because nearly every dish that follows is, in the end, a laoka to be eaten with rice.

Romazava the National Dish

The national dish of Madagascar is romazava, a beef and leafy-green stew that appears on tables across the island. It is made by simmering beef, sometimes with other cuts or meats, together with a mix of local leafy greens such as anamalao and anantsonga until the meat is tender and the broth is savoury and fragrant. Some versions carry a peppery kick from the anamalao leaves, which have a mild numbing warmth, giving the stew a gentle heat that sets it apart.

Romazava is comforting, brothy and deeply flavoured, and, like almost everything in Malagasy cooking, it is served with a mound of rice to soak up the liquid. The greens are as important as the meat, and a good romazava depends on the mix of leaves that go into it, which is part of why it tastes so distinctly of the island. It is the dish most associated with Madagascar, made in homes of every kind and served at gatherings and celebrations, and it captures the Malagasy way of building a meal around good greens, tender meat and plenty of rice.

Ravitoto Coconut Dishes and Everyday Favourites

Another beloved Malagasy dish is ravitoto, made from cassava leaves that are pounded to a coarse, deep green paste and then cooked slowly, most often with pork, until rich and savoury. The pounding is part of the character of the dish, breaking the leaves down so they turn thick and almost creamy as they cook. It is frequently finished with coconut, a version known as ravitoto sy voanio, which softens the earthy greens with a mellow sweetness and is many people's favourite way to eat it. Because it is traditionally made with pork, ravitoto is not suitable for everyone, which is worth noting.

Coconut runs through much of the island's cooking, a legacy of those Southeast Asian roots. Akoho sy voanio, chicken cooked with coconut, is a well loved dish, gentle and comforting, while henakisoa sy amalona pairs pork with eel in a hearty stew that shows how freely Malagasy cooks combine meat and fish. At the table you will often find lasary, a relish of pickled vegetables or green mango, sakay, a fierce red chilli paste added to taste, and achard, a spiced pickle that shows the island's Indian influence. For snacks and sweets there is mofo gasy, little rice-flour cakes cooked in the morning and eaten for breakfast, ramanonaka, a savoury fried version, and koba, a cake of rice, banana and ground peanuts wrapped and steamed until dense and sweet. Because koba is made with peanuts, it is not suitable for those with a peanut allergy. To drink, families enjoy ranovola, also called ranon'ampango, a homely burnt-rice water made by boiling water in the pot after the rice, as well as excellent local coffee, and Madagascar is one of the world's leading producers of vanilla, which perfumes many of its sweets.

Where to Find Madagascan Food in the UK

Madagascan food is one of the lesser known African cuisines in Britain, so dedicated Malagasy restaurants are uncommon, but the ingredients to cook it at home are within reach. African food shops across the UK stock the building blocks of a Malagasy meal, from good rice and cassava leaves to coconut, dried beans, spices and, of course, Madagascar's famous vanilla. Larger cities with African communities are the easiest places to find the more specific items, though a well stocked African food shop anywhere will carry most of what you need to make a simple meal of rice and laoka. If you cannot find pounded cassava leaves fresh, they are often sold frozen, which makes ravitoto much easier to prepare at home.

To cook Madagascan food at home, start with rice and a laoka and build from there, browsing African food stores near you for the ingredients. If you would rather someone else did the cooking, you can also look for African restaurants near you and African caterers near you, and ask whether they cook Malagasy dishes or something close to them. However you come to it, the heart of Madagascan food is simple to recreate: a mound of rice, a good laoka beside it, and a table to share it around.