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Meal 104: Maldives

If you go to the Maldives, off the southwest coast of India, for a tropical beach vacation, you're more likely to find steaks and French cheese than any of the local cuisine. I'm not entirely surprised, because the intense flavor of sun-dried and smoked tuna runs that through nearly every meal is probably a bit too intense for the holiday-package crowd. This is only the second meal for which I've ordered an ingredient online, but there's simply no way to cook Maldivian food without that uniquely prepared fish. I was able to get it from a Sri Lankan market outside of LA, which wasn't a surprise, since they've imported so-called "Maldive Fish" for nearly a millennium.

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Our guests: Maxwell and his mother Leslie, Bitsy, Anne, Steve, Julie, Levi, Kal, Lauren, Karen, and Andrea.

Karaa fani | Watermelon juice | Recipe

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Simple as can be: watermelon pieces, water and sugar in a blender. Delicious and refreshing.

Lonumirus | Hot sauce | Recipe

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A fairly thick sauce, fairly musky from the curry leaves and cumin. A good complement to the rich umami flavors from all the dried fish.

Mas huni | Dried tuna with coconut | Recipe (scroll down)

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This is apparently an extremely common dish. Although the Maldives imports much of its food, this can be made with pretty much entirely local ingredients: dried fish, coconut, onion, chilies, and lime. It's also super simple to throw together. It's a unique textural mix of semi-jerky-like flaked fish, crunchy onions, and slightly chewy coconut. It was fun to eat, and pretty tasty.

Bashi hiki riha | Eggplant dry curry | Recipe

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This dish shows the dried tuna in another light, as a flavoring moreso than the main event. This was a mess of eggplant and various veggies and spices. The term "dry" in the translation doesn't mean it's not moist, but rather that it isn't a saucy curry. This was a pretty intense and aromatic dish that needed some rice to balance it out.

Kaliya birinji| Spiced rice | Recipe

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As there's barely space to grow things on these small islands, the traditional means of getting rice is to trade for it with that dried tuna. This dish is hardly a daily affair, with an indulgent assortment of spices as a hefty dose of coconut milk. But it's gentle and mild in the mouth, marrying well with the other dishes, especially the eggplant.

Pirini | Rice pudding | Recipe

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This rice pudding would seem familiar to Western tastes — sugar, milk, vanilla, mild spices — but for one flavor unique to the tropics, pandan leaf, which imparts a gentle yet haunting nutty flavor. Compared with the intense flavors of the rest of the meal, this made for a nice wind-down.