A FOOD TRADITION

Merina Cuisine

Merina cuisine is the rice-centered cooking tradition of Madagascar’s central highlands, associated especially with the Merina people and long-established irrigated rice cultivation. Rice is accompanied by beef, pork, poultry, leafy greens, cassava leaves, and root vegetables, with relatively substantial use of simmered meat dishes. Common techniques include prolonged boiling, pounding greens or cassava leaves into a relish, steaming rice, and preserving ingredients for the cool highland climate. Representative examples include romazava, ravitoto sy henan-kisoa, and vary amin’anana, rice cooked with greens. These dishes overlap with wider Malagasy cooking but are particularly characteristic of highland household foodways.

Catalogue preview Cuisine connections may be unreviewed. Regional comparisons include their food references and do not establish the ingredients of a particular meal.