Green, yellow, red, orange and even pink… In Marie Josée Grimaud’s kitchen, fruits are everywhere and hang heavy in the air. Marie Josée Grimaud’s fruits are not ordinary ones. They are crystallized. This technique consists of simmering fruits with sugar for a very long time so that they become glossy and moist.

On the occasion of the “Festival de cannes à sucre 2006”, held from the 3rd to the 6th of August at “L’aventure du sucre”, a former sugar estate turned into a museum, Marie Josée Grimaud came to disclose her sweet treasures to the public. And the word “treasures” is not too strong for few people still possess the skill and dexterity to create these delicacies nowadays. A skill and dexterity that Marie Josée Grimaud inherited from her mother and friends: “as a child, I remember my mum preparing different types of fruit dishes like jams, marmalades and crystallized fruits. Because we weren’t well-off people, we used the food we had on hand. Then, later I learnt how to make crystallized fruits”.

Over the last twenty years, she has refined her technique so that she is now able to crystallize more than twenty different kinds of fruits… and vegetables including star fruit, grapefruit, banana, passion fruit but also tomato, carrot and custard marrow. Once crystallized, they can be eaten whole with their skins. They are also “very good in rums, cakes, sorbets…”. And Marie Josée Grimaud does not limit herself to crystallisation. She is also a past master in the art of making improved rum, liquors, jams and fruit jellies: “I love fruits and with these recipes, I’m trying to bring back into favour some very rare species that still exist in Mauritius”. Among these species, she is particularly seeking to bring back to light a type of cherry called “coeur demoiselle” as well as a fruit known as “sour yellow mangosteen”. Round-shaped and white on the inside, it grows wild in Mauritius.

Her passion for little-known fruits and her stubborn determination to make them popular again has brought Marie Josée Grimaud praise and awards. For three years running, she has won the “Crystallized fruits prize” during the “Fête des fruits”, which takes place every year in Beau-Bassin/Rose-Hill. She also received the “Star prize” and the “Rare fruits prize”.

<B>Promote forgotten fruits</B>

But more than winning rewards, Marie Josée wants to arouse the interest of professionals and officials in order to promote these forgotten fruits. She has even lodged a request with the authorities to create an eco-museum with the help of the Agricultural Research and Extension Unit (AREU). “Having an eco-museum would allow me to grow dozens of rare fruit trees, which already exist in Mauritius but are often neglected. It would be such a pity to let them disappear forever. But thanks to the ‘Festival de cannes à sucre’, I can heighten public awareness of this question. It also made me want to discover and cook other less well-known fruits as well as trying new recipes like fruit jellies thanks to the AREU.” While waiting for her eco-museum to be set up, Marie Josée keeps on cherishing her fruits and spending hours and hours, after work and during the week-end, looking for new ways of enhancing them. But as it requires so much time and work to cook them, she prefers, for the moment, to give her produce to friends instead of starting to sell it to the public.

According to her sister Nicole Tranquille, who sometimes helps her in the preparation of crystallized fruits: “When Marie Josée’s not working, she’s cooking. Sometimes, she can even stay up until 2 o’clock in the morning to watch the fruits cooking. It’s more than a hobby, it’s a passion!”