Cyclone dish, tilapia and lemon verbena!

It's been raining for 3 days and very windy. It's cyclone time! My lemon verbena tree couldn't stand the strong wind neither did the chillies. So I had to go into the garden this morning and made new cuttings, collected seeds and came up with what I call a cyclone dish. The wonderful thing about seasonal food is that I don't quite know what I'd eat from one day to the next which spare me from wasting time planning. Rivers are overflowing and tilapia fish are in abundance. Since I live not far from a lake, people come to my door to sell tilapia. So I decided to make a dish out of the broken plants and the fish. This is the result, a delicious, spicy tilapia in lemon verbena sauce!

You will need quite a lot of lemon verbena leaves. It is very easy to plant it in your garden but do not make the mistake like myself where I never prune it so it got to 3 meters high and cyclone brought it down. This plant has a very beautiful, strong fragrance and has a slight lemon taste to it. I use this plant a lot for tea.

You will also need a big tilapia fish, cleaned thoroughly. I must say that I am eating here a foreign introduced fish to Madagascar that has put our endemic fish species into disappearance. May be if we eat more of them, they will be eradicated. Here is an interesting video and article about the change in rivers and lakes in Madagascar.

• Put a bed of onions, lemon zest, lots of lemon verbena leaves in a non-stick frying pan.
• Stuff some more of that combination inside the fish itself.
• Put the two types of chillies (cayenne and habanero) washed and unopened next to it
• Add salt and pepper
• Cover and let it sizzle with its own juice
• Turn the whole fish to cook making sure you do not break it.
• Finally, drizzle a little bit of oil on top and cook 3 minutes more before serving!

KOBA, Malagasy pudding

Today I would like to introduce to you the first kind of koba. I had this one for breakfast earlier on in the morning today since I had to do some physical work and needed a bit more energy. It is made out of rice and banana. Normally, it is already sweet enough but I added a teaspoon of forest honey as well. It is so delicious and I have to admit that wherever I go these days, I always make a new version of koba because I have to eat it at least once a week. As I mentioned before, I was so inspired by this food that I wrote a song about it. You can listen and watch the Koba video clip here!

Sweet potato leaves, ravim-bomanga

Here is another type of sweet potato leaves. You can find out on the net everything about the plant and all its nutritional values if you wish but I would like to just give you few examples of how I would eat them.

• Eat them raw as if they were for salads.
• Quickly boil them in water to get a sort of clear soup (ro).
• Stir fry them with onions and garlic.
• My favourite one is cooked with patsa mena or dried dwarf red shrimp. This is a typical malagasy dish eaten with rice.

My main purpose here is not to give you recipes but to rather encourage you to incorporate them in your daily food. Plant some, eat them fresh from your garden as often as you can and let me know how you are doing! It is fully packed with good nutrition and you cannot go wrong.