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.
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)
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