Creole cooking in six dishes — a family kitchen in Anse Royale

My grandmother cooked on a wood fire. I cook on gas, which she would have considered a compromise. In everything else, I try to do what she did.

Seychellois Creole cooking is the result of four centuries of collision — French technique, African ingredient, Indian spice, and Chinese economy — all mediated by an island ecology that gives you fish you cannot find anywhere else and a banana variety that exists nowhere outside the archipelago. The result is a cuisine that is, on the surface, familiar, and, underneath, entirely specific to this place.

Six dishes. These are the ones I would cook for you if you came to my kitchen.

Bouyon blan The fish broth that is the base of everything. Grouper or red snapper, onion, garlic, thyme from the garden, a lime leaf, and water. You cook it until the broth is white and the fish is falling apart. You eat the broth first, then the fish. You do not need anything else.

Octopus curry The octopus is always fresh — in Seychelles, there is no other way — and it is tenderised by the simple method of beating it on a rock at the water's edge for twenty minutes before it comes to the kitchen. Coconut milk, turmeric, ginger, chilli. Served with rice cooked with the broth from the pot.

Shark chutney This is the dish that surprises people. Smoked shark — the meat is white and mild — shredded and mixed with bilimbi (a small sour fruit), turmeric, and green onion. Served cold. It is eaten at breakfast, which is the detail that always astonishes visitors.

Ladob The Creole dessert that no one can place on first tasting. Ripe banana and breadfruit cooked in coconut milk with vanilla and nutmeg. It is sweet but not cloying, and the vanilla — grown here in Mahé, not imported — changes the dish in a way that is hard to describe except to say that it smells like the island itself.

Grilled red snapper with mango chutney The simplest dish. The best fish. The mango comes from the tree in my garden. In December and January, I have more than I can use and I give it to the neighbours. The chutney is four mangoes, one lime, one chilli, and an hour. Nothing else.

Cari zourit A second octopus dish, because one is not enough. This version uses tomato, which the first does not. It is darker, deeper, and slightly sweet. My grandmother made it on special occasions. I make it whenever I have the right octopus.

*Manze bien* — eat well. In my grandmother's kitchen, it was the beginning and the end of every conversation.