The recipe is straightforward. Slices of ripe banana go into a pan with sweet potato, coconut milk, sugar, a vanilla pod, and a pinch of nutmeg. The mixture cooks gently until the fruit is soft and the coconut milk has turned thick and silky. Some cooks add a strip of cinnamon bark too.
There is also a savoury version. For that one, the cook uses breadfruit, cassava, plantain or salted fish, all simmered in coconut milk with onion and a little ginger. The savoury ladob is often eaten as a side dish with rice and curry.
Coconut milk comes up a lot in Seychelles cooking, and many families grate their own from fresh coconuts. The grated coconut is mixed with warm water and squeezed in a cloth - the milky liquid that runs out is coconut milk. It tastes far creamier than the kind that comes in a tin.
Ladob is the kind of comfort food children grow up asking for. Grandmothers each have their own version - more or less sweet, more or less spiced - and arguments about whose is best can run in families for years. The right answer is usually 'all of them'.