Favourite foods from Mauritius:

Daily Maverick’s head of human resources married into a Mauritian family many moons ago. She shares her

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A rainy day at Trou aux Biches, one of Mauritius's most beautiful beaches, located on the northwestern coast.

(Leah Rolando)

When I fell in love and married into a Mauritian family almost 44 years ago, I didn't realise how much garlic, ginger and thyme would become a part of my life.

I had no idea that, more than a marriage, I had embarked on a culinary affair that would last a lifetime. In sickness and in health, till death do us part.

I have always been more of an eater than a cook. When I was a student at the University of Cape Town (UCT), sharing a flat in Tamboerskloof with my boyfriend — later to be husband — and his brother, I was not allowed in the kitchen except to feed the cats.

My relationship with food had been at fork’s length at best by the time I reached UCT. And never having boiled an egg, literally, I was happy to be relegated to chief cat feeder. Even making tea was not entrusted to me, and in my late teens and early twenties I found myself hopelessly, helplessly, gloriously useless and at the mercy and whim of two young men who could cook, make tea, clean and even iron when absolutely necessary. Bliss.

The first time I sat down at my future family’s table in Joburg for Sunday lunch, I gawped in wonder as they all heaped rice on their plates. Not a polite spoonful, but a towering mountain. To me, it looked less like a meal and more like a geological event.

Today, when my husband sits down to dinner, he still builds a perfect, towering replica of Mauritius’s dormant Trou aux Cerfs volcano, piling the rice high to form the crater rim, just waiting for the molten lava of his rougaille (a spicy Creole tomato-based sauce) or kari poulet (chicken curry) to fill the caldera.