East Africa and the Islands · Volume 18, The Indian Ocean Islands
Romazava
Madagascar, the highlands
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 2 hours
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Zebu beef and mixed greens including brèdes mafana, with tomato, onion and ginger, served with rice. Structurally it is the Mascarene brède bouillon with beef in it, which is the argument this volume opens with. But the mafana is not a garnish. Its spilanthol produces a tingling, mouth-numbing effect and heavy salivation, in the class of Sichuan pepper, and it is the reason romazava is not merely beef and greens. Brèdes mafana are effectively unobtainable fresh in Britain, and no UK retailer of Malagasy pantry goods could be verified. So, stated once and not softened: you cannot make a real romazava here. You can make a very good beef and greens dish, and you should say which one you have made.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 2 hours.
Ingredients
- 1 kg zebu or stewing beef, in cubes
- 500 g brèdes mafana, or 200 g if you are not used to the numbing
- 1 fresh tomato, crushed
- 3 to 4 fine slices of fresh ginger
- 1 clove garlic, chopped
- 1 small onion, sliced
- 15 ml vegetable oil
- to taste salt and pepper
Method
- Brown the beef in the oil in a heavy pot, then add the onion, garlic and ginger.
- Add the crushed tomato and enough hot water to cover. Season with salt and pepper.
- Simmer until the beef is genuinely tender, topping up as needed. A second Malagasy formula for 6 to 8 scales this to 1 kg beef with two bunches of mafana and three tomatoes.
- Add the brèdes mafana late. The buds are the strong part and the leaves are milder, and prolonged boiling flattens the effect.
- Serve with rice, and sakay on the side. Not in the pot.
Notes
After two Malagasy formulas, which agree on structure and differ on quantity.
What a modern chef changes
A two-stage green, the numbing dosed as a variable, and the broth clarified
Rungs 3, 1 and 6
Method
- Split the greens into two additions and treat them as different ingredients. The tough, alkaloid-carrying leaves go in early and get the full boil Rung 3 exists to explain; tender tips and buds go in during the last 4 minutes. You are detoxifying the morelle and protecting the spilanthol in one pot, and those jobs want opposite timings.
- Dose the numbing deliberately. Start at the lower figure the source gives, 200 g to a kilo of beef, and build. Spilanthol is fat soluble and cumulative across the bowl. Treat it as you would Sichuan pepper: a measured variable, not a leaf.
- Brown the beef properly and once. Rung 1 applied outside its usual home: romazava is not traditionally a browned dish, but the Maillard chemistry that makes a cari long and savoury is what separates a pale, watery bowl from one with a base.
- Clarify a third of the broth and return it. Chill it, lift the fat, pass it through a chinois, reduce by half and pour it back at the pass. The depth of a long cook, and a broth that reads clean rather than muddy.