or: What Happens When Chilli Loving People Try Wasabi

One of the 974 things I like about travel is trying new food and another is sharing new food with others.

In leaving Cyprus, I picked up a few things to share with some friends in Mauritius.

They have shared various foods with me over the times I’ve been here and seem to enjoy testing me with the chiili. They are a culture that enjoys spicy food.

Over the past 48 hours, some have tried various olive tepanades (the spicy one was the favourite though it tasted like chili mixed with toothpaste to me) and another has been one of the sweets which is quite similar in flavour and the abundance of loose icing sugar to traditional, Turkish Delight (not the chocolate covered jelly sort, the traditional kind).

The same as everyone else, they realised quickly that it is important not to breathe in and eat it at the same time.

Last night I went to a barbecue where I knew we were going to be eating tuna which one of them had caught earlier in the day. I had been told that we would have both tuna steaks and tuna carpaccio.

I looked to see what I had brought with me that could go with either of these. Nothing.

I looked in the fridge to see if there was something I could take from there that I may have left on earlier visits.

Wasabi.

I took this with soy sauce and made tuna sashimi.

This is one of my favourite Japanese foods and watching me eat this, a few were willing to try it too.

Maybe I should have warned them about having their nasal passages cleared…

* Thanks to Jack Johnson for the title to this post.