Flavours of Goa... a chapter from Nandita Haksar's new book on food
Nandita Haksar <nhaksar@gmail.com> has
just got published her new food memoirs
called 'Flavours of Nationalism: Recipes
for love, hate and friendship'. The last
chapter of the book is about Goa. Goanet
reproduces an excerpt with permission of
the publishers Speaking Tiger Books. See
http://bit.ly/NanditaFood
Excerpt from Page 203-211.
------------------------------
Goa's cuisine does not consist only of fish curry and rice.
While Goan Catholics love their fish curry and rice, they
also have their chorizo or sausages, and bread. The Goan
sausage is small and when dried looks like red beads strung
in rows. It is mixed with spices and bursting with flavour. I
read a story in the local newspaper about Antonia Da Silva, a
sausage maker who has been selling sausages all his life,
like his father and grandfather. Every day he chops 90 kilos
of meat, seasons it with salt and garlic, marinates it with
10 litres of his own homemade palm vinegar and adds the other
spices to make five thousand sausages a day. In addition, he
sends four thousand sausages three times a month to Mumbai
and fifteen hundred to Swindon in the UK, where there are a
substantial number of Goans. And this is the story of just
one sausage maker! I wonder how many sausages are made every
day in Goa?
There are many things you can do with the sausage.
The most common is sausage in pao or pav, the local
bread. The Goans also make scrambled eggs mixed
with sausage, and a sausage pulao which is
absolutely delicious. Sebastian and I have found
that adding even one or two beads to vegetables
such as brinjals, ladies' fingers or just the good
old potato can give the dish a delicious flavour.
Sebastian even makes sausage-stuffed paratha. It is
such a wonderful example of fusion food.
In a sense, Goan cuisine, like so many others, is a testimony
to the wonders of fusion cuisine. Perhaps the best example is
the feijoada, a stew made by cooking rajma beans with pork
and beef along with spices. I was surprised when I saw it in
Brazil, where it is considered the national dish. Some people
say that the dish was invented by slaves from Angola who
worked in the plantations in Brazil. They made the dish from
the leftovers that they got from the dining tables of their
masters. Feijoada is also commonly prepared in Portugal,
Macau, Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique.
*****
The first time I became aware of Goa's strong connection to
Africa was when we used to buy our sausages from Aggassim,
the village famous for making them. A man who looked African
could be seen stuffing the red mixture of sausage meat,
spices and vinegar into the intestines. We learnt that he was
from the Siddi community: people who had been brought to Goa
as slaves by the Portuguese.
We would be reminded of Goa's connection with Africa from
time to time. For instance, when we first tasted chicken
cafreal, we were told that it was a spicier version of the
dish from Mozambique. It was introduced into Goan cuisine by
the Portuguese and the African soldiers serving under them.
The preparation involves green chillies, fresh coriander
leaves, onion, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, chilli,
mace, clove powder and lime juice or vinegar.
There was a flourishing market for African slaves
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Goa
was one of the most important ports connecting
Mozambique, Mauritius, Macau and Ceylon, as it was
then. The human cargo was handled by Goan traders
such as the Mhamai Kamat brothers.
The 350-year-old Mhamai Kamat house near the old
Secretariat is a major landmark in Panaji. The
Mhamai Kamats consist of ten families, which are
dispersed but congregate here for the Ganesh
Chaturthi festival. The house is thrown open every
year around the time of this festival and more than
a thousand guests are given a traditional feast,
containing sixteen vegetables.
*****
Sebastian and I had settled down to our life in Chorao. I was
always surprised at how we had been welcomed and made to feel
at home, even though he was from Manipur and me from Delhi.
On one occasion, when Sebastian and I were flying from Mumbai
to Bangkok by Air India, one of the flight attendants turned
out to be from Goa. When he learnt we were living in Chorao
he had a special request: he was retiring and could I
persuade his wife to live in Chorao? He said his wife was
also on the aircraft; they were going on a holiday. Of late
, they had been having differences of opinion on where they
should settle after his retirement. He wanted to settle in
his ancestral home in Chorao, but his wife was not convinced.
He brought his wife and seated her next to me.
The wife grumbled and said her husband did not
realize how difficult it was to maintain old
houses; she complained that he did not understand
the practical aspects of living in an ancestral
home. I had to agree with her because we ourselves
had decided not to buy an old home--they were damp
and could attract termites which would be dangerous
for my books. While we were conversing, the flight
attendant told us that there were two other flight
attendants on the plane who were also from Goa; and
unbelievably all were from Chorao! So there were
six of us from Chorao meeting at 36,000 feet in the
air.
When we landed, the flight attendant presented us with an
expensive bottle of champagne to celebrate. We decided it
would be appropriate to share the bottle with our friends
back in Goa. So we called them and Sebastian popped open the
cork and poured the sparkling wine into glasses that we
clinked together, as we had seen people do in movies. But all
of us were so very disappointed by the slightly sour taste
and could not finish our drinks!
We were surprised that none of our friends had liked the
champagne, but then we had also fallen victim to believing in
the stereotypical image of Goans. Except for the elite, the
normal Goan may like his or her glass of wine but the
wine-drinking custom is not integral to Goan culture. What
the average Goan loves his feni, not foreign wines.
However, the wine industry is trying to thrust an alien
culture upon the Goans in order to promote their products. It
is not just wine that is being thrust upon Goans but an
entire culture which is unfamiliar to them. According to
Arthemio D'Silva, who oversees sales of wines in Goa from the
stable of the United Breweries, Goans still have a long way
to go before they truly appreciate wine. In an interview to
Goa Streets in January 2013, he said: "It's my personal
opinion from the many wine events, parties and celebrations
I've been to all these years that many people drink wine as
some sort of status symbol without really appreciating its
taste."
*****
We have been witness to the way transnational corporations
have been working to reach deep into every home in every
village in Goa. Coca Cola and Pepsi have been busy too. On
the ferry going back to Chorao, we would often encounter a
young man. We used to give him a lift and he told us that he
was excited because he had got a contract to sell Coca-Cola.
The company would provide him with the machine to store the cold
drinks.
I am sure the man had no idea that a regular 355 ml
can of Coke or Pepsi contains about ten teaspoons
of sugar, which is like drinking a glass of the
syrup of gulab jamuns. The man just wanted a job;
he was not concerned with the struggles all over
the world to limit the power of the soda giants.
These struggles have been documented by Marion
Nestle in her book Soda Politics: Taking on Big
Soda (and Winning). The struggles in other parts of
India against these soda giants for consuming vast
quantities of water had not made much way.
*****
In 1977, the government had banned Coca-Cola. Many of us were
happy because we hoped our local drinks, such as coconut
water, sherbets and juices, would be saved. But seventeen
years later, Coca-Cola was back--and with a bang. On 24
October 1993, it was reported that Coca-Cola made its
official return to India in the shadow of the Taj Mahal. A
colourful cavalcade of Coca-Cola trucks, vans and uniformed
deliverymen paraded through the streets of Agra to great
fanfare, signalling to the world's second-most populated
country that Coke was back in a big way.
While our friend was excited about getting the Coca-Cola
machine, 175 local bottlers in Goa had united under the
banner of Goa Small-Scale Bottlers Association and were
demanding that the government scrap the mega Coca-Cola
project coming up at the Verna Industrial Estate, with all
the privileges including a twelve-year sales-tax exemption.
Goa's unorganized soft drink industry still holds over 65
per cent market share by selling around six million crates
annually, but the local bottlers feared that their market
would be wiped away.
*****
While the products of these transnational corporations were
successfully making their way into the daily lives of
unsuspecting Goans, their traditional sources of food were
under attack. One such traditional source of protein is the
frog.
During the monsoons in Goa the village boys look forward to
catching frogs for dinner. Frogs' legs have been eaten for
decades in Goa and even today you can get a plate of frogs'
legs along with feni if the barman trusts you not to report
him to the police. In Goa, frog legs are called 'Jumping
Chicken'. Sebastian and I were reminded of the nights back in
Imphal when the boys would go with their flashlights and
buckets to catch the big fat frogs.
Goa has banned the catching of frogs, and every
year before the monsoons there are warnings from
the Forest Department that anyone caught in the act
would be arrested. There is a big difference
between local people eating frogs and big
corporations involved in the import and export of
frogs' legs. Just as there is a difference between
commercialized whale hunting by whaling companies
and indigenous people hunting whales for their own
consumption. The scale is totally different. But
the stories that appear in the newspapers blame the
Goans for the depletion of this amphibian in the state.
I interviewed a farmer in Chorao, Jagan Nath Pai, and asked
him what he thought was the cause of the disappearance of
frogs. Pai was sixty-five years old and he had worked on his
land ever since he was a young man. He had converted his
paddy field into a mango orchard and we stood under the shade
of a mango tree and discussed the problem.
The farmer said in addition to his land he had five buffaloes
and so he was totally self-sufficient for his food needs
except for buying tea and sugar. Jagan Nath is different from
other farmers because he is a committed natural farmer. He
was converted to the idea after reading One Straw Revolution
by Japanese author Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008). He has not
used chemical pesticides since 1993.
Pai says the frogs have disappeared because of the
pesticides being used by farmers. The insecticides
and pesticides have killed all the insects and so
the frogs have no food to eat. Also, many frogs are
killed by vehicular traffic because when people
come rushing home they don't bother to notice a
frog on the road.
I ask whether his children were also interested in carrying
on organic farming. He said his son was a lawyer and, like
today's youth, cared nothing for traditions. He would not
stand for a pregnant woman in a bus and would tell her to go
by taxi.
I felt embarrassed because I had touched a raw nerve. I could
see that the sustainable lifestyle of Jagan Nath Pai would
have little appeal to people living in a consumer society.
*****
More details of the book at: http://bit.ly/NanditaFood
just got published her new food memoirs
called 'Flavours of Nationalism: Recipes
for love, hate and friendship'. The last
chapter of the book is about Goa. Goanet
reproduces an excerpt with permission of
the publishers Speaking Tiger Books. See
http://bit.ly/NanditaFood
Excerpt from Page 203-211.
------------------------------
Goa's cuisine does not consist only of fish curry and rice.
While Goan Catholics love their fish curry and rice, they
also have their chorizo or sausages, and bread. The Goan
sausage is small and when dried looks like red beads strung
in rows. It is mixed with spices and bursting with flavour. I
read a story in the local newspaper about Antonia Da Silva, a
sausage maker who has been selling sausages all his life,
like his father and grandfather. Every day he chops 90 kilos
of meat, seasons it with salt and garlic, marinates it with
10 litres of his own homemade palm vinegar and adds the other
spices to make five thousand sausages a day. In addition, he
sends four thousand sausages three times a month to Mumbai
and fifteen hundred to Swindon in the UK, where there are a
substantial number of Goans. And this is the story of just
one sausage maker! I wonder how many sausages are made every
day in Goa?
There are many things you can do with the sausage.
The most common is sausage in pao or pav, the local
bread. The Goans also make scrambled eggs mixed
with sausage, and a sausage pulao which is
absolutely delicious. Sebastian and I have found
that adding even one or two beads to vegetables
such as brinjals, ladies' fingers or just the good
old potato can give the dish a delicious flavour.
Sebastian even makes sausage-stuffed paratha. It is
such a wonderful example of fusion food.
In a sense, Goan cuisine, like so many others, is a testimony
to the wonders of fusion cuisine. Perhaps the best example is
the feijoada, a stew made by cooking rajma beans with pork
and beef along with spices. I was surprised when I saw it in
Brazil, where it is considered the national dish. Some people
say that the dish was invented by slaves from Angola who
worked in the plantations in Brazil. They made the dish from
the leftovers that they got from the dining tables of their
masters. Feijoada is also commonly prepared in Portugal,
Macau, Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique.
*****
The first time I became aware of Goa's strong connection to
Africa was when we used to buy our sausages from Aggassim,
the village famous for making them. A man who looked African
could be seen stuffing the red mixture of sausage meat,
spices and vinegar into the intestines. We learnt that he was
from the Siddi community: people who had been brought to Goa
as slaves by the Portuguese.
We would be reminded of Goa's connection with Africa from
time to time. For instance, when we first tasted chicken
cafreal, we were told that it was a spicier version of the
dish from Mozambique. It was introduced into Goan cuisine by
the Portuguese and the African soldiers serving under them.
The preparation involves green chillies, fresh coriander
leaves, onion, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, chilli,
mace, clove powder and lime juice or vinegar.
There was a flourishing market for African slaves
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Goa
was one of the most important ports connecting
Mozambique, Mauritius, Macau and Ceylon, as it was
then. The human cargo was handled by Goan traders
such as the Mhamai Kamat brothers.
The 350-year-old Mhamai Kamat house near the old
Secretariat is a major landmark in Panaji. The
Mhamai Kamats consist of ten families, which are
dispersed but congregate here for the Ganesh
Chaturthi festival. The house is thrown open every
year around the time of this festival and more than
a thousand guests are given a traditional feast,
containing sixteen vegetables.
*****
Sebastian and I had settled down to our life in Chorao. I was
always surprised at how we had been welcomed and made to feel
at home, even though he was from Manipur and me from Delhi.
On one occasion, when Sebastian and I were flying from Mumbai
to Bangkok by Air India, one of the flight attendants turned
out to be from Goa. When he learnt we were living in Chorao
he had a special request: he was retiring and could I
persuade his wife to live in Chorao? He said his wife was
also on the aircraft; they were going on a holiday. Of late
, they had been having differences of opinion on where they
should settle after his retirement. He wanted to settle in
his ancestral home in Chorao, but his wife was not convinced.
He brought his wife and seated her next to me.
The wife grumbled and said her husband did not
realize how difficult it was to maintain old
houses; she complained that he did not understand
the practical aspects of living in an ancestral
home. I had to agree with her because we ourselves
had decided not to buy an old home--they were damp
and could attract termites which would be dangerous
for my books. While we were conversing, the flight
attendant told us that there were two other flight
attendants on the plane who were also from Goa; and
unbelievably all were from Chorao! So there were
six of us from Chorao meeting at 36,000 feet in the
air.
When we landed, the flight attendant presented us with an
expensive bottle of champagne to celebrate. We decided it
would be appropriate to share the bottle with our friends
back in Goa. So we called them and Sebastian popped open the
cork and poured the sparkling wine into glasses that we
clinked together, as we had seen people do in movies. But all
of us were so very disappointed by the slightly sour taste
and could not finish our drinks!
We were surprised that none of our friends had liked the
champagne, but then we had also fallen victim to believing in
the stereotypical image of Goans. Except for the elite, the
normal Goan may like his or her glass of wine but the
wine-drinking custom is not integral to Goan culture. What
the average Goan loves his feni, not foreign wines.
However, the wine industry is trying to thrust an alien
culture upon the Goans in order to promote their products. It
is not just wine that is being thrust upon Goans but an
entire culture which is unfamiliar to them. According to
Arthemio D'Silva, who oversees sales of wines in Goa from the
stable of the United Breweries, Goans still have a long way
to go before they truly appreciate wine. In an interview to
Goa Streets in January 2013, he said: "It's my personal
opinion from the many wine events, parties and celebrations
I've been to all these years that many people drink wine as
some sort of status symbol without really appreciating its
taste."
*****
We have been witness to the way transnational corporations
have been working to reach deep into every home in every
village in Goa. Coca Cola and Pepsi have been busy too. On
the ferry going back to Chorao, we would often encounter a
young man. We used to give him a lift and he told us that he
was excited because he had got a contract to sell Coca-Cola.
The company would provide him with the machine to store the cold
drinks.
I am sure the man had no idea that a regular 355 ml
can of Coke or Pepsi contains about ten teaspoons
of sugar, which is like drinking a glass of the
syrup of gulab jamuns. The man just wanted a job;
he was not concerned with the struggles all over
the world to limit the power of the soda giants.
These struggles have been documented by Marion
Nestle in her book Soda Politics: Taking on Big
Soda (and Winning). The struggles in other parts of
India against these soda giants for consuming vast
quantities of water had not made much way.
*****
In 1977, the government had banned Coca-Cola. Many of us were
happy because we hoped our local drinks, such as coconut
water, sherbets and juices, would be saved. But seventeen
years later, Coca-Cola was back--and with a bang. On 24
October 1993, it was reported that Coca-Cola made its
official return to India in the shadow of the Taj Mahal. A
colourful cavalcade of Coca-Cola trucks, vans and uniformed
deliverymen paraded through the streets of Agra to great
fanfare, signalling to the world's second-most populated
country that Coke was back in a big way.
While our friend was excited about getting the Coca-Cola
machine, 175 local bottlers in Goa had united under the
banner of Goa Small-Scale Bottlers Association and were
demanding that the government scrap the mega Coca-Cola
project coming up at the Verna Industrial Estate, with all
the privileges including a twelve-year sales-tax exemption.
Goa's unorganized soft drink industry still holds over 65
per cent market share by selling around six million crates
annually, but the local bottlers feared that their market
would be wiped away.
*****
While the products of these transnational corporations were
successfully making their way into the daily lives of
unsuspecting Goans, their traditional sources of food were
under attack. One such traditional source of protein is the
frog.
During the monsoons in Goa the village boys look forward to
catching frogs for dinner. Frogs' legs have been eaten for
decades in Goa and even today you can get a plate of frogs'
legs along with feni if the barman trusts you not to report
him to the police. In Goa, frog legs are called 'Jumping
Chicken'. Sebastian and I were reminded of the nights back in
Imphal when the boys would go with their flashlights and
buckets to catch the big fat frogs.
Goa has banned the catching of frogs, and every
year before the monsoons there are warnings from
the Forest Department that anyone caught in the act
would be arrested. There is a big difference
between local people eating frogs and big
corporations involved in the import and export of
frogs' legs. Just as there is a difference between
commercialized whale hunting by whaling companies
and indigenous people hunting whales for their own
consumption. The scale is totally different. But
the stories that appear in the newspapers blame the
Goans for the depletion of this amphibian in the state.
I interviewed a farmer in Chorao, Jagan Nath Pai, and asked
him what he thought was the cause of the disappearance of
frogs. Pai was sixty-five years old and he had worked on his
land ever since he was a young man. He had converted his
paddy field into a mango orchard and we stood under the shade
of a mango tree and discussed the problem.
The farmer said in addition to his land he had five buffaloes
and so he was totally self-sufficient for his food needs
except for buying tea and sugar. Jagan Nath is different from
other farmers because he is a committed natural farmer. He
was converted to the idea after reading One Straw Revolution
by Japanese author Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008). He has not
used chemical pesticides since 1993.
Pai says the frogs have disappeared because of the
pesticides being used by farmers. The insecticides
and pesticides have killed all the insects and so
the frogs have no food to eat. Also, many frogs are
killed by vehicular traffic because when people
come rushing home they don't bother to notice a
frog on the road.
I ask whether his children were also interested in carrying
on organic farming. He said his son was a lawyer and, like
today's youth, cared nothing for traditions. He would not
stand for a pregnant woman in a bus and would tell her to go
by taxi.
I felt embarrassed because I had touched a raw nerve. I could
see that the sustainable lifestyle of Jagan Nath Pai would
have little appeal to people living in a consumer society.
*****
More details of the book at: http://bit.ly/NanditaFood
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