Country 37: Comoros - M'tsolola

I didn’t know that Comoros was a country until I started working as a travel agent, and even then it wasn’t until I was doing Sporcle’s ‘Countries of Africa’ quiz. I still don’t know much about Comoros except it’s an island chain between Madagascar and Mozambique on the mainland. 

 

Here are some fun facts about Comoros.

1. The name ‘Comoros’ comes from the Arabic word for moon which sounds like qamar. The moon is depicted on Comoros’ flag.
2. The main agricultural products in Comoros include vanilla, coconuts, plantain, cassava, and various spices. Fish is also a big part of the Comorian diet.
3. Yang-ylang, or perfume tree, is endemic to Comoros and is used to produce essential oils and perfume.
4. The main industries are fishing, agriculture, tourism, and perfume distillation.

The national dish of Comoros is lobsters with a vanilla sauce. Nick can’t eat seafood so I wasn’t going to do that one, but I did find another dish that is pretty common in the island nation, called M’tsolola. This uses three of the main agricultural products that I mentioned earlier: coconut, plantain, and fish. 

 

It was an incredibly easy dish to make, and delicious to boot. It doesn’t look like the most appetising meal I’ve cooked as part of this project but hey, at least it wasn’t beige! I whipped the onions, garlic, chilli and spinach up in the food processor, fried the fish and plantain separately, then added everything together with coconut milk to simmer. 

 

I couldn’t find any regular red chillies so I used birds eye chilli, which I haven’t had before. I used three, and I think that was enough. At first it was way too spicy but I added two spoonfuls of sugar at the end to dissipate the chili a bit, and that worked fairly well. The plantain is also quite sweet so once the flavours infuse it wasn’t too spicy. I definitely think my spice tolerance has increased dramatically over the last few years, much to Nick’s relief, but I still can’t handle a lot of heat. Nick could have probably had it a bit hotter but I think I was at my upper limit and probably wouldn’t have been able to comfortably eat it if there were more chillies involved. 

 

To be honest, I thought this was pretty great. I had some leftover coconut rice from my Colombian meal which I used to serve it with, but plain rice would have done the job too. Yum yum. 

My recipe is adjusted from this one here.

 

M'tsolola

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 250 fish fillets (I used cod)
• 3 garlic cloves, sliced
  
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 400mL coconut milk
• 200g baby spinach
  
• 3 birds eye chillies, finely chopped
  
• 2 plantains, peeled and sliced into bite-sized pieces
• 50mL water
• Salt and pepper
  
• Oil, for frying 

Instructions

1. Put onion, garlic, chilli, salt and pepper into a food processor and pulse until you have a thick paste. Add spinach leaves and continue until all finely chopped.
2. In a saucepan, add spinach and onion paste with water, and half of your coconut milk. Simmer on a low heat for 20 minutes.
3. In a shallow frying pan, heat a centimetre of oil and fry fish and plantain. Once they are almost cooked, remove them from the oil and add to sauce. Bring mixture to boil and then reduce to a medium heat for 7 minutes.
4. Adjust seasonings, then add remaining coconut milk and stir gently. Simmer and cook for 5 minutes until you get a thick sauce.
5. Serve hot with coconut rice.