Mauritian Open Air Festival 2014

This weekend I visited the annual Mauritian Open Air Festival based in Tottenham on Down Park Lane. There was only a little wait for 40 minutes to get in.. but next time I’ve learnt to turn up later, we are running to Mauritian time after all

With the promise of sega music, stalls serving up dhall puri, briyani and was a must visit for lunch (even if it was just to pick up some food) I went to last years one review here, with similar vendors as before and families setting up stalls serving homemade Mauritian food.

We met some characters, including a man who lived at a naval base in Mauritius in the 70′s, but now attends the Mauritian Festival every year. It’s quite refreshing to see many Europeans and mixed crowds at the festival, not just Mauritians to see that the interest outside of the community is growing.

There were some charity stalls there including Second Sight and Save our Monkeys who are championing their causes to support their charities directly linked to Mauritius.

Street style gajacks (aubergine fritters, gateaux piment, du pain frier, bhajia)

There was one stall I passed by from a catering company that were serving freshly made dhall puris, you could see the process line of the woman rolling and filling the dough with split peas. And one was constantly cooking them on a large tawa (flat pan),she mentioned how you have to add a lot of oil to help it cook, to the hesitation of me going “that’s too much oil!” I still ate it anyway..

Dhall Puri in all its glory.. with butterbean curry, chilli sauce and achar.. this chilli nearly blew my head off!

The dhall puri was slightly too hot for me, I know so shameful, but sometimes in dhall puri you buy on the street they just have chutney and the curry sauce which is just as nice as with the hotter version with chilli sauce.

At £1 each for a pair that’s not too bad.

Fruit pickled in sugar, vinegar, chilli with extra salt chilli to sprinkle on top

Fresh sugar cane juice, these were brought over from Uganda

Alouda, vivid in pink colouring, a refreshing milky drink with basil seeds and agar jelly. This can be in various colours and is normally quite sweet, I make mine with ice cream for extra creaminess and texture.

Gateaux piment (split pea chilli cakes) and gateaux arioulle (yam fritters)

These fried morsels, are crisp, tasty and perfect scooped up with chilli chutney, proper Mauritian style. This rather stylish guy was frying gateaux piment in batch non stop, to keep up with the queues.

Tarte Banane, caramelised banana cooked in a pastry shell, a cake/pastry in Mauritius best with a cup of tea! This was recommended to me by the stall vendor as the best tarte banane! Of course I had to text her theory out and it only lasted seconds.. the banana was spiced , dark in colour and cooked all mashed up, the pastry was baked through and had a delicious buttery taste to it.

Pudine Mais, polenta cake with coconut, set in a jelly like texture, not too sweet

With the main attraction being the food available, you do get dhall puri stalls competing with each other and every is offering the same traditional dishes, kept piping hot in large pots, there were a few jerk chicken stalls there as well. We came across a few vindaye baguettes or chicken liver baguettes at £4 each filled to the brim with traditional fillings, a Mauritian sandwich if you like..