Cooking with spice: Why Zanzibar should be on your travel menu

How spicy do you like it? Add more, always more. OK, enough!” said Bakari, our tour guide and cook, as I added a freshly ground mix of cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper and turmeric to the cooking pot sizzling on open coals. A wave of complex and taste bud-tingling fragrances and aromas washed over me. I knew I had arrived in Zanzibar, the island of spices.

I couldn’t wait to tuck into this fish curry dish, with fresh ingredients measured not by the cup but by intuition. “Careful of your eyes,” Bakari said as he expertly showed me how to make a paste from ginger, garlic and chilli in a wooden pestle and mortar. I closed my eyes and held the top of the pot shut while pounding the mixture, in order to avoid the hot sting of chilli.

This spice-filled cuisine spoke to me, as I love using these flavours cooking at home. Like Timbuktu or Casablanca, Zanzibar was a name I had heard in my childhood. It conjured up visions of mystery and adventure where spices were a currency worth more than gold.

Fast forward 30 years and there I was in the ruins of a sultan’s palace that looked like the set of an Indiana Jones movie, cooking up a Swahili storm on three coal burners on a sandy floor with a bucket of water for a tap, a couple of blunt knives and some metal cooking pots with handleless lids, meaning asbestos fingers were needed.

Apart from a large wooden cooking spoon and a knife for chopping vegetables and peeling potatoes, our hands did all the work without need for kitchen tools. I won over my hosts by getting stuck in. My training comes from my mother’s Filipino kitchen, where we never owned a sharp knife.

My teachers for the afternoon – all of whom were in fits of giggles as I straddled the traditional seated coconut grater instead of sitting more elegantly side-saddle – included two local Swahili women, Salha and Mwana, who were heading up the class. As is always the case with home cooking, my two Swahili male tour guides couldn’t help chipping in and giving me their twopence (or should I say Tanzanian shillings) on cooking techniques.

Even “Mr Ruins”, the guardian of the Mtoni Palace ruins (the name means “place by the river”), got involved. He explained that we were cooking in the burnt-out grounds of what was the oldest palace in Zanzibar, built as his private home by Sultan Said – an infamous historical figure who built his palace on the site of the former home of an Arab trader believed to have imported the first cloves to the country.

Sultan Said went on to build acres of clove plantations in Zanzibar and the neighbouring island of Pemba, turning the island into the biggest exporter of “the king of spices”. It remains near the top of the league today, although Madagascar and Sri Lanka have overtaken it.

After a fun-filled couple of hours including trying to dress my partner, Nick, and I in the local kanga, or sarong, to match the ladies’ outfits, the food was ready. We got down to the main event of eating our Swahili feast – and it was divine. As our group tucked in with their hands, they told us how much better the food tasted without cutlery.

The main dish – tuna curry – was served with delicately spiced pilau rice mixed with slices of slow-cooked potato. We had bought tuna, vegetables and spices from a bustling and somewhat overwhelming market in Stone Town, the ancient heart of Zanzibar City with its reminders of the island’s slave trade history. Unlike in Western cooking, which favours short cooking times, the tuna was boiled with the vegetables for almost an hour, doused with coconut milk and lightened by squeezes of juice from the sweetest limes I have ever tasted.

The rich curry was tempered by a refreshing kachumbari salad of salted sliced tomatoes, red onion and lime eaten like a relish. As side orders we had made deep-fried turmeric-battered chilli potato balls (urojo) as well as egg-wash fried potato and tuna “cutlets” (fried patties shaped like large croquettes, called katles or katlesi), all mopped up with fluffy pillows of pan-baked sesame bread.

Occupied in turn by Iranians, Portuguese and Arabs (before the British stepped in and overthrew Sultan Said’s successor, in the shortest war ever – 38 minutes), Zanzibar reflects all these cultures plus a clear Indian influence from the spice trade. The spices that were once imported are now grown here on the island, from the Persian favourite cumin to the Thai classic, lemon grass, not to mention the black pepper favoured by Italians.

The islands gained independence from Britain in December 1963 and today thrive culturally, politically and spiritually. There is a true sense of community in Zanzibar, where people greet each other on the street and life is slow-paced. There may be a beach club where you can create your own gin-and-spice cocktails, plus a couple of big hotel chains, but the towns and surrounding villages retain a feeling of old-world authenticity.

My trip was made up of beautiful faces and characters and genuine encounters – both at the Essque Zalu Hotel, where we were staying, and the places I visited. I remarked to our tour guide, Ramadan (born during Ramadan 30 years ago, and intent on telling us how hungry he was throughout the 90-minute cooking session) how safe and friendly the vibe was as we walked the streets of Stone Town or the volcanic, rock-lined beaches. “You know everyone here,” we joked, as he nodded, shook hands and shouted “Mambo” (slang for “What’s up?” or literally “issues” – as in, have you got any?) or answered “Poa” (cool) or “Freshi” (fresh, but with that Swahili-esque “i” on the end).

“Well, I’ve been doing this for years,” he smiled as we walked along, “and I also teach English to all the local kids on weeknights.” This explained why he had scribbled down with relish my “Yummy, in my tummy” show of appreciation during our earlier meal.

Yes, the trinket sellers and craftsmen in Stone Town bartered hard and were not afraid to approach us with a sing-song “Jambo! (“Hi” or again “issues/How are you?”), “Karibu” (“Welcome”) or “Looking is for free!” Equally popular is the catch-all phrase that everyone loves from The Lion King: “Hakuna matata” (“No worries”). The Maasai security guards we saw in traditional costume, with their long staffs, seemed intimidating – but people were friendly towards each other and to tourists.

This meant I ended up buying as souvenirs great swathes of kitenge (the African cotton fabric in show-stopping colours and patterns) and kanga, which means “guinea hen”, on whose plumage the pattern of the original kanga cloths were based. Nor could I resist the woven mats, bowls and baskets – and, of course, packets of spices.

Our home for the week, the Essque Zalu Hotel, boasts the highest and most impressive thatched makuti roof on the island. There I took another cooking lesson – this time with Rose Mosha, a tall, softly spoken Swahili lady who had applied to work in the kitchens when the hotel first opened eight years ago. She had become so popular with visitors that the hotel’s previous general manager created a cooking school on the property in her honour, calling it Mosha.

Head chef Anurag is her biggest fan – he is from Mauritius but was fascinated by Zanzibarian cooking. His father had worked on several ayurvedic documentaries and, inspired by those and the spices encountered in his own home and on his travels, he has expanded his spice cellar to 90 varieties and is aiming for the world record of 500, all housed in the Mosha cooking school hut on the hotel property.

Rose was dressed in typical “hospitality kitchen” costume of black trousers, black Crocs, a white chef’s jacket and a bib apron. Every recipe started with two tablespoons of sunflower oil, two of chopped red onions, one of chopped garlic, half a teaspoon of turmeric and five tablespoons of chopped tomatoes as standard. “Do the kids eat up all their vegetables?” I asked Rose. “Yes,” she said, “always – but not green peppers. Well, they are quite bitter…”

The vegetables used in Swahili cooking include lots of starchy tubers such as potatoes and yams, as well as pumpkin, different varieties of aubergine, carrots, tomatoes, green pepper, green banana and various leafy greens.

The greatest holidays on Earth for food and wine

“Do they like chilli?” I asked. “Oh no, but they do like raw red onion.”

Don’t be put off by the word curry in Africa – just specify that you don’t like too much chilli and you’re in for a complex, mouthwatering treat. This time we cooked up beef samosas, octopus boiled in fresh coconut milk, spinach in coconut milk, badeer, or “snack” – a kind of pakora or bhaji of deep-fried vegetables enfolded in a lentil batter. To freshen it all up, there was that kachumbari salad again, together with some fresh coconut chutney.

But the standout dish, for me, was green banana curry. Less of a curry than you’d imagine, and more like a stew, it was sublime in its simplicity: green bananas cooked in the “starter” sauté of garlic, onion and tomato, then augmented with coconut milk. Here, old-fashioned overcooking is de rigueur. Unripe banana is admittedly pretty tough, but just like the tuna from the first lesson, I watched in horror as the spinach was boiled for what seemed like an eternity. As I saw the bright emerald leaves turn to a deep, dark (dare I say greyish?) green, I mentioned to Rose that the fashion in Britain is to eat these leaves raw, blanched or barely braised. “Oh no,” she said, “we don’t eat anything raw here except the ingredients for the kachumbari salad – and maybe some cucumber. We cook everything, which is better.”

Once we had made the food, we enjoyed it on the hotel jetty, surrounded by the waves that moved in and out every day, sometimes covering the white coral sand of the island in 16ft of water, at other times sweeping far out and exposing the coral reef where the locals would go out armed with a pot and a stick to catch octopus.

“There are no allergies in Africa,” joked a couple of waiters in traditional, brightly patterned shirts as we talked about the dietary requirements of Western visitors. I couldn’t help envisioning their upbringing amid the scenes I had walked and driven past, with babies and small children playing together in the dusty road, tucking into fruits and hotpots of cooked food with the family, developing sturdy immune systems and good digestion.

After experiencing the colours and pungent smells of the old spice market in Stone Town – like walking through a window in history to the ancient spice route – I wanted to get to the source of the Spice Island, so I arranged a visit to a local government-run organic spice farm. We drove up a long and treacherous dirt track surrounded by acres of lush green vegetation and spice trees. There was coffee from trees (robusta), coffee from bushes (arabica), cinnamon, pepper, vanilla, nutmeg and of course the hero, cloves. In small amounts, the more pungent spices are highly medicinal, not to mention tasty and with preservative qualities, but go overboard and you may have a hallucinogenic experience.

There were fields of turmeric, ginger plants and fragrant lemon grass, with which I was more than familiar from my trips to south-east Asia. We saw jackfruit, which grows out of the trunk of its tree – like giant spiky earrings – rather than from the branches. Nick and I then tucked into our first durian fruit. As luck would have it, the one we selected was so overripe that my first taste screamed garlic – or make that roasted garlic, creamed with some sugar and salt. They quickly cut us another pod and still the same slight garlic flavour came through, but sweeter, fruitier and unlike any other fruit you might try in terms of its texture and taste. It’s hard to describe, but was well worth it.

I’m not so sure I’d rush back to eat durian for breakfast, but I’d certainly love to try it spread over a clay pot of freshly cooked pilau rice – a tip from one of the farm workers – and left for 10 minutes or so to infuse its strange, sweet and savoury goodness down into the depths before serving. Garlic rice and all things spice are, after all, delicious.

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Essentials

Turquoise Holidays (01494 678400; turquoiseholidays.co.uk) is offering seven-night stay at Essque Zalu from ￡1,995 per person, based on two people sharing. The price includes half-board accommodation in a Garden Suite, a cooking class at the Mosha Cookery Studio, a half-day Swahili food safari (comprising a morning visit to Stone Town’s market to buy ingredients, followed by a cookery session with two female Zanzibari cooks), return international flights and private transfers.