To Mauritius - for organic healthy biscuits

In this small country, there are neither antique ruins nor memorial places of glory associated with great battles, nor great names of history, nor casinos, nor even amusement and entertainment parks. Here, all the attractions are connected with the surrounding nature. That is why a small bakery surrounded by cassava fields is one of the most visited places on the Island of Mauritius.

Cassava ... The word sounds as if it comes back to you from some adventure novels read in childhood. Together with it, Creoles, pirates, palm trees return to your memory. All this you can also find in Mauritius. But do not look for this name in the books by great novelists, for one reason or another, they did not pay attention to a piece of land, lost in the middle of the Indian Ocean. 

Two hundred years ago, the island was called ‘France’ and, as you might guess, was among the France estate. Many went to the overseas property to look for a better life than at home. Once, Hilarion Rault arrived here from the province of Brittany. He brought some secret know-how that was supposed to enrich him: a family recipe for hard biscuits, which he believed would become a good seller among his French fellow colonists. Alas! Upon arrival, he discovered that they did not grow wheat on the island. The bread-stuff was irregularly supplied from Madagascar. His ambitious plans had to be postponed for some time. But he did not abandon his dream, and in the long run, he made the decision: if there is no wheat, let it be what there is - cassava.

This plant, as high as a man, is the real bread in the southern countries. But this bread ‘grows’ underneath the ground, where oblong thick tubers ripen for two years. Their leaves are also used - for a salad, but most important, nevertheless, are not the tops, but the tubers. In 1870, Hilarion Rault finally set up his own business: cassava biscuits. It is difficult to say how useful the French recipe was, but the fact that the bakery is now managed by Hilarion’s fifth-generation heirs tellingly indicates that the product was in demand.  

Here it it - the tropical potato

And now, the small bakery produces 5 thousand biscuits a day. Over these five generations, nothing has changed; everything is done in the same way as almost 150 years ago. Even water for the production does not come from the water supply, but from the well, and it lifts the mechanism invented in the 18th century by one of the Montgolfier brothers. “What is the 19th century production process? This means that it’s completely organic, because only natural materials are used,” says Lina, the Hilarion’s descendant. “Even the packaging is made of a rice paper, and the glue is based on starch.” 

First of all, the guests are shown the cassava tubers: what they are outside and what are inside, in what form they come from the field and how they look when they are washed. It turns out that the heiress of the business stretches the truth a little bit: the cassava tubers are peeled and crushed into flour with a rather up-to-date equipment. “We also add some milk powder and sugar,” Lina says, “because cassava is almost tasteless.” 

Flavour mixing is manual

Before our eyes, a cheerful Creole mixes light chunks with various flavouring agents with her skillful fingers - anise, coconut, vanilla, cinnamon - each mix separately. We roll back to the 19th century again: only an out of date oven, tins for biscuits and the hands of women. All operations: pouring the ready mix into a tin, making it even, turning it over and removing it from the oven - are carried out with the same spatula. The stove is heated ... not with gas or fuel oil - God forbid! - but with dry palm leaves only. Greta Thunberg would be happy.  

In fact, a long stove is not exactly a stove, but a kind of a conveyor, invented long before the Henry Ford’s conveyor. Women gradually move the tins with the mix along it and at the very end, they remove the baked biscuits. “In the initial part of the oven, where the mix is poured into the tins, a temperature of 200^oC is maintained to ensure baking, and then biscuits get baked thoroughly at a temperature of 150^oC,” says Lina. However, no temperature detectors are seen here. “The temperature is determined by experience, as it was in the past,” the explanation follows. Well, we must take it at that.   

At the end of the tour, you enjoy a tasting event of the health food, organic biscuits, baked at the 19th century bakery. As Lina told, the taste is mostly given by flavouring agents, and some biscuits, for example, with anise, taste good. 

Of course, among various biscuits you eat, you can find more delicious. But here, to produce these biscuits they use no palm oil, no emulsifiers, no baking powder, and etc. You can be sure of this, because the entire simple process of the biscuit production took place before your eyes.

Mauritius has its inexhaustible reserves of local “hydrocarbons”

And if you recall that the human body has about 20 reasons to eat cassava more often (from strengthening the hair to preventing cancer), then biscuits are very good. The only question is where can you find the flour of cassava in the grocery stores in Russia?