Sweet Sensations: 6 Of India’s Most Spectacular Desserts

This article was first published online on 25th July 2020 in Luxury Lifestyle Magazine, UK https://www.luxurylifestylemag.co.uk/food-and-drink/sweet-sensations-6-of-indias-most-spectacular-desserts/

Bali-hoo!

The idyllic island of Bali seems poised to become the post-pandemic world’s epicenter for the hipster drifter with ‘digital nomadism’ finding a strong footing in the millennial lexicon.

By Raul Dias 

“Trust me, it’s paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven’t tried before…”, says Leonardo Di Caprio’s mononymous character ‘Richard’ in the 2000 film The Beach. A backpacker cult classic, so ahead of its time that it effortlessly segues into the current milieu, exactly two decades later. A time when digital nomadism seems to be the way forward for millennials-on-the-go, as they chart their course in the (hopefully!) post-pandemic world. One that is ruled by the unholy trinity of anxiety, apprehension and uncertainty.
All this, while attempting to precariously juggle travel, work and a little adventure on the side. Constantly searching for their version of a modern-day Valhalla if you may. Nesting in places as far flung as Cancun in Mexico to Bali in Indonesia where tribes of wannabe digital nomad warriors like themselves—be they app developers, social media marketers or the ubiquitous travel vlogger–hunker down for extended periods of stay. Armed with their hi-tech weaponry and millennial coolth, ready to conquer the digital world and beyond, one oat milk latte at a time!

Digi go-go
Loath as I may be to admit, I am one of these people now. Even though I have been on the fringes of the digital nomadic lifestyle for nearly a decade as a freelance travel and food writer, setting up temporary ‘shop’ wherever I travel, I have somehow always found succor and comfort in being tethered to the familiarity of my writing desk, here in my home base of Mumbai. The fulltime, peripatetic lifestyle scene was not something I could wrap my head around for an assortment of reasons that seem trivial to me today.
Like a lot of things in our lives that have changed over the course of the tumultuous first half of this pandemic-ridden year, I have done a rethink. I guess it was the ennui resulting from five months (and counting) of suspended animation that has sealed the deal for me. I want…nay, need a change. “If I can work from home, I can work from anywhere”, is a mantra I now chant on a loop.
As we do a rethink—both about how we work and how we travel—an important realisation comes to the fore. The tradeoff by combining work with leisure over an extended period, while remaining socially distant is far greater than the ephemeral lure of a short trip. The latter no longer as attractive and realistic as before, what with mandatory Covid-19 testing and fortnight quarantines putting a kibosh on everything.
I am not alone in recognising this need of being untethered. Quick on the uptake and saddling up to this cultural sea change are countries like Estonia which recently announced a special long-term digital nomad visa. The eastern Caribbean island of Barbados too has unveiled a similar 12-month digital nomad work visa to allow visitors from all countries to live and work there, tax free.       

Seas the day
But we need not look that far. As a frontrunner on the honeymoon-meets-family vacation scene for decades, the sea-n-surf paradise of Bali has had a facelift of sorts. Transforming itself into a hip digital nomad haven for the last couple of years, the Indonesian island is undoubtedly poised to become the post-pandemic world’s epicenter for the hipster drifter for a host of reasons that I will unspool shortly.
Exactly a year ago, back in the day when ‘Corona’ to me was just a brand of bottled beer, served with a wedge of lime bunged down its neck, I took a wee detour to Bali in the middle of a two-week-long work trip to Thailand. The purpose of my two-day trip to the island was to scope out an abridged version the digital nomadic lifestyle there as part of a writing project I was in consideration for. While said project did not work out, what I gleaned from that trip was a destination ripe for the picking.
Like almost every prospective digital nomad, I found myself in Canggu, Bali’s de facto digital nomad capital along the south coast of the island. A place that is relatively inexpensive to live and work in and easy to navigate around. I was there checking out the three main things a digital nomad in Bali seeks: accommodation, a place to work and something extra when R&R beckons. 

Ticking all boxes
While other areas in Bali like Ubud—the rice terrace-surrounded bucolic heart of the island—and the more upmarket Seminyak are no less attractive, there is something to be said about the beachy vibe of Canggu. Here, surfing lessons on lunchbreaks are the norm, as are al fresco sunset yoga sessions that replace post-work drinks.
With its explosion of avocado-toast serving cafés, cheap dive bars, art galleries and Insta-friendly vistas, Canggu garners some serious cred on hipster street. But is the wide variety of both coworking spaces (with lightning fast internet speeds) and a plethora of accommodation options available here that make it the very epicenter of Bali’s digital nomadic scene. From inexpensive guesthouses and plush Airbnb rentals to communal ‘coliving spaces’—the latest buzzword in digital nomad circles—the search in Bali ends here.
I was barely an hour into my dalliance with ‘digital nomading’ working at the open 24 hours a day Tropical Nomad Coworking space near Canggu’s Echo Beach trying hard to swallow the luridly purple contents of my acai fruit bowl, when I got chatting with Sarah. A digital content curator originally from Texas, she had been based in Bali for the last six months and by the look of it was still in the honeymoon phase with her digital nomad life. “It really does not matter if you are an aspiring digital nomad or an experienced one,” Sarah says rather encouragingly. “Bali is the kind of place where you are almost guaranteed to find some truly unique and inspiring places and people who help you get to your productive best, while living life to the fullest.”
Quite the prophetic solution for these bleak times, no?         


Travel log
Getting There
As there are no direct flights from India to Bali, one can take connecting flights via Bangkok, Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. Travel within the island of Bali is extremely easy with cheap and plentiful transport options available, including private taxis and bikes on hire. Citizens of 169 countries (including India) get a free 30-day on arrival which allows one to work as a digital nomad and which can be renewed by taking a short ‘visa run’ to places like Malaysia, Singapore or Thailand and coming back to Bali.

Stay and Work
* Dojo Bali (dojobali.org) along Canggu’s famuous surf break of Echo Beach ticks all three boxes offering a trendy coworking and coliving space along with recreational facilities like surf lessons and Balinese cooking lessons, all at very reasonable prices.
* Outpost (destinationoutpost.co) with its flagship sister property in Ubud is another great coworking and coliving space with an apt slogan of “design your best life.”

Tip
While the whole of Bali is very safe for women, there are places like Goddess Retreats (goddessretreats.com) which is a women-only retreat offering everything from accommodation and outdoor activities to transformative yoga sessions and spa treatments that are perfect for solo women digital nomads.
(Note: While it is not advisable to travel at the moment, the above information is intended to provide a general idea for future travel—whenever it is safe to do so again.)


(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 25th July 2020 issue of The Hindu Business Line newspaper's BLink section on page 20 https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/takeaway/bali-is-the-capital-of-digital-nomadism/article32177278.ece)

All Tangled Up

Cutting a wide swathe across several regional Indian cuisines, with many finding a permanent position in the country’s mainstream culinary landscape, are a mind-boggling variety of ‘inspired’ noodle and dumpling preparations. 

By Raul Dias

Isn’t it fascinating, how food somehow manages to find a catalytic role to play in almost every socio-political discourse drama here in India? From the kind of meat one is ‘allowed’ to eat or not, to the rather banal debate often centred around the North’s roti reverence v/s the South’s obsession with rice, we’ve been spectators to it all.
But none, perhaps, pertaining more to what we know, love and… yes, paradoxically hate as ‘Chinese food’. A cuisine that we’ve ingeniously co-opted to form a hybrid in the guise of the coriander leaf and garam masala redolent Chindian food.
In 2012, we had a khap panchayat in Haryana’s Jind district blaming the consumption of “hormonal imbalance evoking” chowmein behind the growing incidents of rape in India. Yes, try chewing on that indigestible titbit.
The most recent salvo fired against the cuisine being union minister Ramdas Athawale’s call to boycott, what he terms ‘Chinese food’, demanding that restaurants serving it should be banned. All this vilification, never minding the fact that said chowmein is as Chinese as chaat probably is. Or that another Chindian staple, chicken Manchurian was invented in Mumbai in the late 1970s by Nelson Wang, a third-generation Chinese chef born in Kolkata!

Strands of History
What is really interesting to note here is that we in India have had a tryst with Chinese cuisine way before dishes like chowmein and chicken Manchurian entered our local culinary lexicon. Unbeknownst to us and thanks to ancient international trade routes like the Silk Road and to the Chinese Buddhist scholar Xuanzang, who travelled extensively around India in the 7th century, Chinese cuisine has lent to us several regional noodle and dumpling iterations. Much like it has to Italy’s celebrated pasta repertoire. Something many believe to be a direct result of the 13th century cultural appropriations by the famous Italian explorer Marco Polo.
Speaking of Italy, we may as well set the record straight about the whole which-came-first-the-pasta-or-the-noodle conundrum. Irrefutable evidence in the form of a 4,000 year old bowl of millet noodles unearthed in an archaeological settlement in the Laija region of Northwest China has proven that most forms of noodles and dumplings—be they rolled, cut or extruded—have indeed come to the world from China.
This is exactly how one of India’s most beloved and popular vermicelli-like dried noodles that we know multifariously as seviyan in Hindi, sevai in Tamil and semya in Telugu came into being. Adapted from Italian vermicelli, also called angel hair pasta or minutelli (that was itself adapted in the 14th century from an ancient Chinese super fine rice noodle called mai fun) the rice noodle is used in both sweet preparations like kheer and payasam and in savoury ones like upma, here in India. The slightly fatter and freshly extruded idiyappam or noolputtu as it is known as in Kerala and Tamil Nadu respectively is another hybrid rice noodle that is steamed in coils and eaten with both sweet and savoury accompanying dishes like egg curry.
Similarly, the translucent, corn or arrowroot-starch noodles found at the bottom of a glass of falooda came to India from Iran, another pivotal country on the Silk Road, where they are called faloodeh. The north Indian sweet called sutarpheni is another rice-based noodle of Chinese origin that was introduced to Indian cuisine by way of the Turkish who call it pismaniye.

Adapt and Thrive
It is by turning our attention to the lesser known, more regional varieties of Indian noodles and dumplings—particularly in the high North and Northeast of the country—do we see how well the original Chinese ones have been adapted and assimilated into the culinary milieu. Take for instance the steamed Shanghainese nian gao rice dumplings made from dense rolls of pounded glutinous rice. Cooked in a warming stew along with yak meat, the kyu which is made from wheat dough is a popular dumpling in both Ladakh and Spiti and a dead ringer for the nian gao.
Chutagi another Ladakhi dumpling that came to the region via the Silk Road from Central Asia is a bow-tie shaped dumpling used in a soup that is made from meat and vegetables and similar to a thukpa. Ladakhi cuisine is also known for its sweet dumpling called pakchel mirku that is cooked into a warming dessert along with ghee and dried yak cheese called churrpi. 
Assam too has its own version of the Chinese bee tai bak (rat tail) rice noodle that takes the form of anguli pitha. Named after the pinky finger (anguli) that they resemble, these extruded rice dumplings are eaten as a teatime snack when cooked with onions, green chillies and tomatoes. The chushi and jhinuk pitha originally from east Bengal are more examples of dried rice flour-based dumplings that can be reconstituted by adding them either to a savoury curry or a creamy, milk-based payesh.
This sweet-savoury adaptability is also one of the chief characteristics of the tiny ring-like dried dumplings called sarvale. Found in the cooking of Goan Muslims, sarvale are either boiled and served with a topping of scrambled eggs for breakfast or as yet another kheer-like thickened milk dessert. Substituting dairy for the thick, first extract of coconut milk is the delicious coastal Maharashtrian noodle dessert called naralyachya dudhache shiravlya where rice noodles are cooked with the coconut milk along with sugar and cardamom and served during festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi.           

The Desi Twist
While most of China’s noodle and dumpling varieties are made from either rice, corn or wheat, there are a few made from legumes like the mung bean cellophane noodle called fen si. Interestingly, Indian dumpling adaptations—particularly in regions like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh—seem to focus on these. 
With its glossy surface speckled with tempered black mustard seeds and a scattering of freshly grated coconut flesh and coriander leaves, the Gujarati khandvi made from a mixture of gram flour and buttermilk is also spread on a flat surface to set before being rolled up into bite sized morsels, much like the Cantonese dim sum dumpling called cheung fun.
Still in Gujarat, the wheat-based dumplings of dal dhokli that are submerged in a spiced lentil stew are another example of adaptation. As are other regional Rajasthani dishes like the chickpea flour dumpling strip-based besan chilla ki subzi and Varanasi’s sui mai-meets-ravioli like wheat pockets called dal ka dulha.
Wonder what Marco Polo and Xuanzang would have made (pun intended!) of these?

(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 19th July 2020 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 (https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/all-tangled-up-the-straight-and-narrow-of-chindian-food/article32113300.ece)

Goa’s Monsoon Feast!

Catholic Goan cuisine has an entire scrumptious arsenal of fermented, vinegar-preserved dishes and accompaniments that come to the fore during the long, four-month monsoon season.

By Raul Dias

To say that the average goenkar is obsessed with food would be putting it way too mildly. Coming from a large, multi-generational Catholic Goan family where food has always been that all-important axis around which most of our quotidian life pivots, I have seen it all. From intensely heated debates around the dinner table as to the ‘correct’ recipe for the beloved pork sorpotel (blood in or blood out!?) to a family wedding being famously postponed—all because the top caterer in Margao was not free to display her legendary culinary prowess on the previously finalised date—celebrating food trumps all. Go to any village in Goa and to this day you will be greeted not with a “hello” but with the often-rhetorical question of “have you eaten?” Never mind the time of the day…or night!

Mango Mania
However, there are a few weeks of the year—if one were to discount lead-ups to major festivals like Christmas, Easter and the hallowed village feast day—when the food mania gets ready to hit the proverbial roof. Just before the southwest monsoon makes its boisterous presence felt in Goa, at the end of the torrid summer from mid-May to the first week of June, homes across the state witness a frenzy like no other. Pantry inventories are taken at a militant level to ensure the steady supply of grain, spices, cold-pressed coconut oil and of course, that chief preservative agent aka. coconut palm vinegar called sur, to the kitchen. For the next four months or so, the ‘liquid gold’ will find itself in an astounding number of preserved dishes and accompaniments.
Mango trees of indigenous Goan varietals like musrad and mankurad would have been divested of their prized fruit. The juicy, ripe ones either eaten straight off the tree or pulped and preserved in the form the sugary mangaad—a jam-meets-thick paste-like preparation that can be eaten on its own, blended with milk for a shake or slathered atop freshly baked poi bread made from wheat flour and bran that the poder (baker) just dropped off. 
The tinier, unripe specimens on the other hand would be washed, cleaned, quartered and salted before being submerged in a vat full of vinegar and sugar to be preserved as the famous Goan water pickle called tora shiro. This will most likely be eaten with a bowl of tepid rice water gruel called pez on a rainy afternoon.

In a pickle
Speaking of pickles, Catholic Goan cuisine has a wide repertoire of spicy pickles—mainly of the dried seafood kind—that show up during the rains. This is because we Goans have a rather strange habit of not consuming fresh seafood in months that do not have the letter ‘R’ in them, which incidentally are most of the monsoon months, June to August!
And so, well-planned shopping excursions will be organised to the large wholesale produce market in Mapusa to procure a mammoth number of food goods. Dried, salted mackerels called sukke bangde festooned upon choir ropes will be purchased in dozens, to be made into the spicy-n-sour Portuguese-influenced parra pickle that will jazz up the orange-hued, seafood-bereft sorak curry eaten with a mountain of fat, red ukde rice.
Prawn balchão, another equally famous seafood pickle will first see tiny, dehydrated prawns with translucent bodies called javla bought along with tonnes of angry red Kashmiri chillies for the year’s supply of the yet again Portuguese-influenced preparation. Both these main ingredients soon to be laid out on straw mats strewn about the home’s garden, under the desiccating heat of the blazing summer sun.
Interestingly, and rather confusingly, there is another version of prawn balchão that is eaten by us Goans during the rest of the year. Using fresh, saltwater prawns in its preparation, this iteration of balchão is enjoyed more as a thick gravy dish than as a pickle as it is less intense and vinegary than its monsoon counterpart.

Porcine Paradise
Just like balchão and parra were introduced and fit well into the monsoon staples of the indigenous Goan Catholic cuisine by the Portuguese during colonisation, a whole host of preserved pork-based dishes too were the result of the westernmost European country’s seafaring culture. One of the most famous pork dishes that has now breached its Goan shores to take long strides the world over—and particularly in Britain—is vindaloo.
It actually originated from a preserved Portuguese dish called carne de vinha d’alhos which simply meant meat marinated with garlic and wine. This was a dish that sailors took with them on long voyages thanks to its long shelf life, aided by the garlic and wine. However, the Goan vindaloo as we know and love today came about when said sailors, once ashore, localised the dish by adding spices and chillies and substituting the hard to procure red wine with coconut vinegar.
Called chauricão and available at most markets in Goa, the tiny beads of fat saturated Goan pork sausages have their origins in the traditional Portuguese smoked sausages called choriso. Another monsoon staple, chauricão are preserved by smoking strings of them over coconut husks causing them to dry up a bit. Only to be reconstituted when made into a spicy stew with water, sliced onions and cubed potatoes. Best had with slab of hot pão bread.

Colonial Cousins
What colonisation also did for the monsoon cuisine repertoire of Goa is introduce it to a few preserved dishes from other Portuguese colonies. Chief among these is the dark, rich pork stew called sorpotel. Known as sarpotel in north-eastern Brazil, the dish is a mishmash of offal like liver, lungs and heart that is mixed with meat and fat. Though contentious, many families in Goa are known to add a bit of pig’s blood to give the dish that special edge.
On the other hand, chicken cafreal which is a dark green, vinegar-heavy roast chicken dish is known to have been brought by the Portuguese from their east African colony of Mozambique where it is known as piri-piri chicken.
Portuguese, Brazilian, Mozambican, but now wholly Indian, Catholic Goan cuisine has evolved into a delicious genre unto itself. And one that shines in its spicy brilliance even on the rainiest of days! 

                   
RECIPE
Chicken Cafreal
(recipe courtesy Ann Dias) 

INGREDIENTS:
1kg skinless chicken pieces (legs and thighs)
2” piece ginger
8 cloves garlic
5 green chillies
½ tsp pepper corns
5 cloves
½ tbsp cumin seeds
½ tbsp poppy seeds (khus khus) soaked with a little water
1 cup fresh coriander leaves
1 tsp turmeric powder
30 ml coconut vinegar
½ tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
Juice of two limes
50 ml vegetable oil
2 medium potatoes cut in rounds and deep fried.

METHOD:
1. In a food processor, grind the ginger, garlic, green chillies, pepper corns, cloves, cumin seeds, poppy seeds and coriander leaves with a few drops of water to a fine paste.
2. Make slits on chicken pieces and marinate with turmeric, salt, lime juice and the spice paste for two hours.
3. In a large frying pan heat oil on medium flame and lightly fry the chicken pieces for 1-2 minutes on each side. Take the chicken pieces out of the pan and keep aside.
4. Pour any residual marinade into the pan along with a little water, vinegar and sugar. Bring to a boil.
5. Add the semi-cooked chicken pieces back to the pan, mix well and cook for another 8-10 minutes with the lid on till all the liquid has almost dried up. Check that the chicken is fully cooked.
6. Serve the chicken pieces hot, surrounded by deep fried potato rounds.

(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 4th July 2020 issue of The Hindu Business Line newspaper's BLink section on page 18 https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/monsoon-food-in-goa/article31979340.ece)