Sesel Sa! January - March 2015 Jan - March 2015 | Page 34

Fruits From Paradise
A tropical island is synonymous with abundance, it
brings to mind visions of fertile, green forests filled
with trees full of fruit, surrounded by pristine white
sandy beaches and an azure blue sea. In the Seychelles
this is not a dream and the fruits from the trees are
unlike those from any other place. Take a bite and one
will wish to stay forever…and if one cannot do that,
one can always take recipes home.

Raw or cooked, endless options!

Most visitors to the Seychelles islands tend to focus on
the cooked food, they come to sample an array of the
local cuisine and these do not disappoint. Recipes that
have been handed down across generations produce
some of the best dishes in the culinary world. Some
recipes never make it to a cookbook but rather, are
carefully guarded family secrets, so a home cooked
meal is a jackpot for the taste buds. The fruits are
used in several dishes but rarely will there be only one
recipe for the dish. No one fruit is used for a specific
dish but rather for a variety of dishes. A good example
is the banana, which is used in cake, fried, fried in
batter, baked, stewed, and cooked in various other
styles.
On a tropical island where one can walk around safely
while experiencing the island life, a free fruit wouldn’t
be amiss and in Seychelles, one can actually pick fruits
hanging from roadside trees or ask the friendly locals
for fruits from their trees. The choice is yours; have it
raw or wait to sample it in a truly delicious Creole dish.

What’s your favourite?

There are a variety of fruits that one can choose from
according to when it’s in season. Those that are readily
available are different types of mangoes, breadfruit,

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SESEL SA! | JAN - MAR 2015 ISSUE NO. 6

coconut, melon, a variety of bananas, pawpaw,
pineapple, different citrus fruits, avocado, passion
fruit, golden apple, star fruit, jamalac, local apples,
rambutan, jackfruit, and grapefruit. If your favourite
is on the list and you are in Seychelles, when can you
get it? They are found everywhere on the island, from
those sold in the supermarkets to those sold at the
small local fruit stalls that are scattered along the
coastal roads. The prices range from reasonable to
free, reasonable when bought and free when you pick
the fruits off a tree yourself.

Fruits galore

The islands have many trees growing in the wild but
there are also a few places where the fruit trees are the
the Pride of the Place. On the island of Mahe, places to
visit have to be the Botanical Gardens at Mont Fleuri,
the Jardin du Roi at Anse Royale and the Biodiversity
Centre of Barbarons. On Praslin the place to visit
would be the Valle de Mai and on La Digue, the Veuve
Nature Reserve. A visit to these exotic places would
immerse one in a world that leaves an imprint of what
it means to live the island life and would convince any
person that they had truly wandered into the Garden
of Eden. Take a bite out of that local apple and you will
want to stay, much like Adam and Eve wanted to stay.

Ready and waiting

The good thing about the Seychelles is that certain
fruits are in season all year around so there is NEVER
a scarcity of coconut, all varieties of bananas,