Mofo gasy

EVENT:FOODIEMONDAY/BLOGHOP
THEME:#172 INTERNATIONAL FEAST

When it comes to choosing themes for FoodieMonday/Bloghop, the task can be a little difficult as we try to make it a bit challenging and yet feasible for all, with members living in different parts of the world and availability of ingredients. For quite sometime our themes were more or less based on Indian cooking. So to give that a rest and to make something different this week, I challenged the members to identify a country beginning with the first letter of their name and then cook a dish from that country. By this theme hoping that we’ll get a variety of different dishes from different parts of the world and hence the theme name #InternationalFeast.

For me the choices were from Myanmar, Mauritius, Morocco, Malta to name a few. I chose to prepare something from Madagascar the island that is famous for lemur, baobab trees, vanilla, cocoa, rainforests, beautiful flora and fauna. Situated to the south east of Africa, its believed that it broke off from India 80 millions ago. It is believed that the first settlers were from Borneo and after that Africans from the main continent found their way there. Later on came the Europeans and Asians. From the Europeans, the biggest influence was from the French. People from Madagascar are called Malagasy and the language too is Malagasy. The other popular language spoken there is French. The biggest island in Africa and the 4th largest in the world, the cuisine has largely been influenced by French, English, Indian, African, Chinese, South East Asian migrants. The staple food is rice called vary in Malagasy and is served with a side dish ranging from meat, fish to vegetables.

I decided to make the famous street food called Mofo gasy (pronounced as muf gas). Mofo gasy translated from Malagasy means Malagasy bread. Its more of a pancake than a bread. There are different varieties of this bread, most of them are made in a special mold that is similar to the aebleskiver. Some add coconut and coconut milk, some add spices and some are fried in hot oil like round balls of doughnuts. Usually served with sweetened coffee and fresh fruit.

I made the Mofo gasy using coconut milk and fresh grated coconut. As Madagascar is famous for rice, the bread or pancake has to have rice as one of the ingredients. Usually rice semolina or cream of rice is used which is readily available there. However, I had to make the rice semolina at home. Its quite easy to make it at home. Soak the rice, dry it and then grind it to a coarse texture that resembles fine semolina.

When my daughter who helped with the photo shoot, gets all creative.

MOFO GASY

Makes about 20-25 depending on the size of the aebleskiver

½ cup plain flour (all purpose flour)

¼ cup rice semolina (cream of rice)

3-4 tbsp sugar

¾ tsp dry active yeast

½ cup warm water

½ cup coconut milk

a pinch of salt

⅓ cup fresh grated coconut

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp melted butter/coconut oil

1. Add 1 tsp sugar from the measured sugar to the warm water. Add yeast and mix.
2. Cover the rest mixture and let it rest for 10 minutes or till the mixture becomes frothy.
3. Mix plain flour, rice semolina, salt and sugar in a bowl.
4. Add the vanilla extract, the yeast mixture, coconut milk and mix well.
5. Cover the mixture and let it rest in a warm place for 1-1½ hours till it becomes nearly double the size and has fermented.
6. Add coconut and mix well. Let the mixture rest for 30-45 minutes till it rises again.
7. Heat an aebleskiver pan or an appe pan over low heat.
8. Brush the cavities with the melted butter or coconut oil.
9. Add some batter in each cavity till its full.
10. Cover the pan and let the bread or pancake cook for 2-3 minutes.
11. Take the lid off and turn each bread over and let it cook till done.
12. Remove from the cavity and place the mofo gasy in a plate.
13. Repeat steps 8-12 using the remaining batter.
14. Serve the mofo gasy with maple syrup, honey or icing sugar drizzled over it, some sweet coffee and fresh fruit.

Tips:

• Use condensed milk instead of coconut milk. If using sweetened condensed milk, reduce the sugar.
• Can replace the plain flour with wheat flour.
• Add spices like cinnamon to the batter.

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A little request:

If you do try this recipe then please either

• add a comment below,
• send a picture to my email mayuri.ajay.patel62@gmail.com
•  tag me as #mayuri_jikoni on Instagram
• or tag me on Twitter as #Mayuri1962

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