When Maputo Meets Mapusa!

 

(This article first appeared in the 14th July 2024 issue of Deccan Herald newspaper's Sunday Herald section on page 14 https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/lifestyle/food-and-drink/when-maputo-meets-mapusa-3103088)

Recipes by home chefs on restaurant menus

 

(This article first appeared online on 13th March 2024 on Live Mint, India and in print on page 14 on 14th March https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/discover/nostalgia-recipes-menus-home-chefs-mumbai-delhi-goa-111710318343110.html)

Goan Street Food and Drink

 

(This article first appeared online on 21st February 2024 on Live Mint, India https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/discover/goa-street-food-guide-111708479964448.html)

Want Lot, Waste Not: Zero-Waste and Sustainability in Indian Restaurants

 

(This article first appeared in the 5th November 2023 issue of The New Indian Express newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 and online here https://www.newindianexpress.com/lifestyle/food/2023/nov/05/waste-side-story-putting-waste-to-use-2629446.amp)

Goa's Monsoon Porridge Party

 

(This article first appeared in print on 15th July 2023 on page 6 of Mint Lounge, India and online here https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/cook/monsoon-foods-goa-millet-recipe-111689309091402.html)

Feijoada: The Stew For Family & Friends

 

(This article first appeared in print on 17th June 2023 on page 6 in Mint Lounge, India and online here https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/discover/feijoada-brazilian-pork-beans-stew-goan-cuisine-111686937941602.html)

Mangalorean Christian Cuisine

 

(This article first appeared online on 26th April 2023 in Mint Lounge, India https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/discover/the-edible-secrets-of-mangaluru-s-christian-community-111682477016549.html)

Goa's Vintage Cookbooks

 

(This article first appeared online and in print on 22nd April 2023 in Mint Lounge, India https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/discover/the-best-cookbooks-on-food-from-goa-111682206278295.html)

The Goa-Brazil Christmas Food Connection

 

(This article first appeared online on 12th November 2022 in Mint Lounge, India https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/discover/how-goa-and-brazil-are-united-by-christmas-recipes-111670815157415.html)

Belly, Belly Good: 9 Interesting Pork Belly Preparations Around India

 

(This article first appeared online on 10th November 2022 on ZeeZest https://zeezest.com/food/restaurants-serving-the-best-pork-belly-dishes-in-india-2678)

Spiced Alcohol from Goa

 

(This article first appeared online on 17th October 2022 in Mint Lounge, India https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/drink/toast-to-the-festive-season-with-spiced-spirits-111665989693602.html)

Kismur: Goa's delicious monsoon must have

 

 (This article first appeared online on 21st September 2022 in Mint Lounge, India https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/discover/kismur-is-a-flavour-bomb-from-the-goan-pantry-111663745637616.html)

Noshtalgia: Kalchi Kodi

 

(This column first appeared in the 31st July 2022 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8
https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/goan-monsoon-dish-of-kalchi-kodi-trumps-the-states-pork-fest-ofsorpotelassadoroast-andvindaloo/article65369633.ece)

Rise & Shine

 

(This article first appeared in the 15th May 2022 issue of Deccan Herald newspaper's Sunday Herald section on page 17 https://www.deccanherald.com/sunday-herald/sh-top-stories/rise-shine-1108632.html)

Five alcohol museums around the world

 

(This article first appeared online on 15th September 2021 on ZeeZest https://zeezest.com/food/all-about-alcohol-museum-in-goa-say-cheers-to-alcohol-museums-around-the-world-909)

The OG Goan Holy Trinity of Taste

 

(This article first appeared online on 5th August on ZeeZest

https://zeezest.com/food/importance-of-coconut-in-vinegar-toddy-and-feni-in-goa-806)

The Secret Art of Foraging for Food

 

 (This article first appeared in the 29th May 2021 issue of Business Line newspaper's BLink section online https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/takeaway/the-secret-art-of-foraging-for-food/article34674064.ece )

Today’s ‘Wrap’ Star

Every 15th of August, Goa celebrates both the nation’s Independence Day as well as the Catholic feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary by indulging in the patoleo—a medicinal, festive treat that is so much more than a mere sweet    

By Raul Dias

Like most Indian micro communities, we, the inhabitants of the tiny state of Goa have our very own set of peculiarities. Chief among these is our all-consuming fixation with hypochondria, where running to the doctor at the slightest hint of a malady is almost a state pastime. A close second is our unbridled love for feasts of all kind. This could take the form of village feasts, religious feasts or agriculture-based ones that pivot around sowing/harvesting seasons. 

Interestingly, this truism is augmented by the fact that in Goa, every feast day and almost every ailment has its own ‘patron’ sweet treat. One that helps celebrate, and the other that helps cure, or so is the belief. The humble patoleo has the distinction of holding sway over both ‘portfolios’…and then, some more!      

 

Leafing Through

Loathe as we are to call it a mere ‘steamed dumpling’—even though the patoleo is made with just three main ingredients viz. red, parboiled local Goan rice called ukda tandul, dark palm jaggery called madachem god in Konkani, and fresh coconut scrapings—it is anything but simple to us Goenkars. Even its full name is a tongue-twisting haldikolyanche patoleo, with the first part referring to the all-important haldi or turmeric leaf that the sweet is ensconced in before steaming. For it is this crucial catalyst that gives the patoleo its gingery, almost floral fragrance and taste when steamed in a traditional copper vessel with an airtight lid. Known either as a komfro or chondro, depending on which part of Goa—Bardez up north or Salcete in the south—one comes from.

But what brings the patoleo into focus is the fact that it is today, the 15th of August, that we Catholics observes the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A big feast day celebrated all over Goa, usually with street processions and dances, and always with plates overflowing with the hallowed patoleo. This is also the time of the year when churches across Goa celebrate the harvest festival—again with patoleo—that is multifariously known as the Festa de Novidades, Novem or the Konnsachem Fest, symbolising the holy day of thanksgiving and gratitude to God. 

Now, coming to the medicinal properties of patoleo, it is said to be a great antidote to whooping cough among children thanks to the antiseptic, Ayurvedic properties imbued in the turmeric leaves. With early August, in particular, seeing a profusion of turmeric plants shoot up all over Goa and India’s other western coastal regions, there truly is no better time of the year than now to celebrate the patoleo. 

Community Spread

But it would be very remiss of me to shamelessly co-opt the patoleo into being a Catholic Goan sweet only. For, in Goa, it is also prepared by the Hindu Goan community to celebrate the festivals of Naag Panchmi and Ganesh Chathurti. In fact, the Hindus celebrate the aforementioned harvest festival on the second day of the Ganesh Chathurti festival. In neighbouring Karnataka, a salt-bereft version of the patoleo that is called haldi panna pathali is even offered to Goddess Parvati, who, according to legend, used to crave the preparation during her pregnancy.

While researching her book—The Culinary Odyssey of Goa—that she’s currently working on, author and Goan food historian, Odette Mascarenhas dug up some interesting patoleo factoids. The most surprising of all being the possible origin of the sweet in far Bengal. “The patoleo is quite similar to the preparation called pitha in Bengal which is also a rice batter and coconut-jaggery stuffed steamed dumpling made in January for the seasonal harvest of rice there. I believe that migration—particularly after the 1009-1026 AD invasions of Bengal by Mahmud of Gazni, when families fled to the Konkan coast—brought it to Goa,” she opines.

This is probably true, for the patoleo can even be found among Mumbai’s East Indian Catholic community where it is called pan mori and patoley by the Mangalurean Catholics.   

Different Strokes

While the ground rice and salt paste smeared onto the turmeric leaf is the base for all patoleo, each family makes a few minor tweaks to their recipe, mainly in the coconut-jaggery filling called chun that sits in the center of the leaf. “The inherent diversity of each household in Goa brings uniqueness to the precision with which the dessert is prepared, as a curative snack or as a prized festive dessert. Every home has its own unique patoleo recipe,” says Jerson Fernandes, executive chef at the Novotel Goa Dona Sylvia Resort Hotel, who has researched the sweet and come up with versions that use everything from ghee-fried charoli or chironji seeds (buchanania lanzan) to cardamom flvaoured chun iterations. He claims to have even come across a highly non-traditional patoleo version that is steamed in a cup-like parcel fashioned out of jackfruit leaves.

And speaking of interpretations, the Mumbai-based modern Goan restaurant O Pedro recently took things more than a few step further when their pastry chef Heena Punwani sent out her jazzed up version of the warm patoleo. She teamed it with a light palm jaggery caramel, poha granola and a vanilla bean ice-cream on the side.       

Deliciously blasphemous enough to send any patoleo-loving, hypochondriac Goenkar scurrying to the nearest doctor, I would say!  

------

(recipe)

Patoleo

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup parboiled Goan red rice (ukda tandul) 

¼ tsp salt

1 cup fresh coconut (scraped) 

100 gm dark jaggery (madachem god)

10-12 turmeric leaves

METHOD:

1. Soak the rice in water overnight.

2. The next day, after draining the rice, grind it in a food processor along with the salt till the mixture resembles a smooth, but thick slurry. Use a little water, if needed. Let the mixture sit for 1-2 hours.

3. For the filling, melt the jaggery in a pan and add the fresh, scraped coconut, mixing well. Turn off heat and allow to cool down to room temperature.

4. Clean and wipe the turmeric leaves with a damp cloth.

5. With wet fingers, gently spread the rice paste along the surface of the leaf, making sure to not tear the leaf and to leave a little space along the edges of the leaf.

6. In the center of the leaf, place a tablespoon of the coconut filling, spreading it outwards (make sure to not overstuff the leaf as the filling will ooze out when steaming).

7. Fold each leaf in half lengthwise, pressing gently with the palm of your hand to seal the edges.

8. Without overcrowding (you can make them in batches), steam the patoleo for 15-20 in a covered, pre-heated, water-based steamer till the leaves turn a dark green.

9. Serve warm.   

(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 15th August 2020 issue of The Hindu Business Line newspaper's BLink section on page 22 https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/a-goan-sweet-for-august-15/article32350189.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)

Christmas around India!

(This article appeared in the 21st December 2019 issue of the Mint Lounge newspaper, India on page 14 https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/where-to-find-the-perfect-yuletide-spirit-11576857488372.html)