thecookscottage

Pomfret curry at Morjim

Morjim is one of the quieter beaches in North Goa and well worth a visit. We stayed at one of the few 'resorts ' there which consisted of some wooden shacks with attached baths open to the sky. Very nice. But the food was awful. This might have ruined the few days we had there but we were lucky to find the "Seahorse Restaurant" on the corner of the Morjim Mandrem crossroads.
Mandrem is known for the Olive Ridley turtles which nest and lay their eggs there. Hopefully this wonderful spot will not be ruined by shacks which have sprung up a little too close for comfort on the beach, several of them licenced out to a few Europeans( exceptions obviously) trying to make a quick buck by encroaching on the habitat of the very same attraction which has enabled them to earn a living in this beautiful place.

Anyhow about the "Seahorse". It is owned by the Shetgaunkars, a husband and wife team. Sujata does the cooking and Uday runs the bar, the little tandoori area and does the waiting on tables. The restaurant seats 20 people and is very popular amongst the locals which gives you an idea of the quality of the food.
The Shetgaunkars have been in the restaurant business for 15 years, having run the Residency restaurant in Margao. They then tried to start an eating place on Bogmalo beach, next to Joets, but the investment was too high, barely clearing a profit after the season's license and electricity bills were paid off. So they decided to come home and start anew in their own village. They have built a basic little place decorated with yellow mirror work lanterns and red check tablecloths complete with a TV showing Hindi soap operas, popular with the villagers who actually come for the welcome change of tandoori and chinese food which are on the menu, but don't want to miss out on their favourite programmes.

We had malai kebabs from the tandoor which were smooth as cream, and then opted for the Konkani cuisine. A pomfret curry cooked in a different way from the usual Goan style and a very nice dal fry which was out of this world with hot buttered naan.

Sujata will especially cook vegetables and fish or prawns in the Konkani style if ordered in advance. She shared the fish curry recipe with me.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium sized pomfret about 750 gms
• 1/2 coconut
• 5 flakes of garlic
• 1" fresh ginger
• 4 green chillies
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 4 large tomatoes.
• 1/2 tsp haldi /turmeric powder
• 1 tbsp jeera / cumin powder
• 4 red chillies
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp chopped green coriander

Chop the coconut roughly, peel garlic chop ginger and chillies. Combine all and grind into a paste in a blender. Cover the paste with 3 cups of hot water and set aside.

Slice the pomfret into thick slices. Chop the onion into fine slices. Break the red chillies into pieces and shake out the seeds. Blanch the tomatoes in hot water. Dunk in cold water and peel. Then chop into peices.

Heat the oil and fry the onions till golden brown. Add the fish slices and fry lightly for a few mintes till brown . Remove.To the same oil add the chopped , peeled tomatoes, the cumin, haldi, red chilli bits and salt. When the tomatoes have dissolved add the coconut paste and water. Cook the paste for ten minutes. Add the fish slices and cook for another 5 minutes. Add a coriander , give the curry a good stir and serve with rice.

It is a bit of a walk from the beach to the Sea Horse but well worth it.The Shevgaunkars make you feel right at home.

Lila Cafe in Baga,Goa

When in Goa do as the Goans do. Eat prawn curry and rice or fish curry and rice or crab curry and rice or chicken curry and rice or pork vindaloo and rice or...anyhow you get the gist if it. I cannot get tired of Goan food as long as I make a huuuge salad from time to time. The cafes are getting a bit better in that they offer vegetables too, at least a few of them do. The management/ owners at most seaside shacks are quite happy to make up an order not on the menu. I tell them to lightly boil a mixed lot of seasonal vegetables and pour a teaspoon of chopped garlic sauteed in oil over them. Then sprinkle with a generous pinch of black pepper and bit of salt. It goes perfectly with the hot curry and you get your daily veggie intake.

There are those who tire easily of the hot stuff and want a serious change. You have little Italian pizza joints and so on but for something completely different head to Lila Cafe on the banks of the Baga river, going inland from the sea at Baga along the Arpora stretch via the tunnel bridge and past Micheala's banner. She used to be a midwife and now does piercings.

Lila Cafe is owned and run by Elisabeth Saal , who has lived in Goa for over 20 years and began the Coconut Inn at Candolim many years ago before it was sold. She is constantly around the cafe keeping an eye on everything . She does breakfasts, brunches, lunches and teas and makes delicious pumpernickel, whole wheat, and other German breads. Though the place sometimes seems to be a Lonely German Osho'ites Club, the friendly waiters serve other customers quite happily.

On the menu is simple, familiar Sour Cabbage and Mash potatoes, Roesti, Hungarian Goulash, Spaetzle, Sour Beef dumplings, Ratatouille with Rice, Brown Bean Salad, Smoked King Fish with salad, Avocado with Prawns, Aubergine Pate and other such fairly European dishes. The best was the Mango Cheesecake which I had to wait three days to taste as it was always sold out. They also have a Chocolate Mousse which is nice and several other sweet dishes.
The kitchen is spanking clean, the breads are worth buying to take home and there is a jewellery shop at the back for those who are fed up of food.

A nice place to spend an hour or two looking at the lazy river and the mad motorcyclists who cut like a knife through the perfect landscape on the road that, unfortunately, passes between the cafe and the creek.

Lila Cafe
Pumpernickel Health Food Pvt Ltd
House no 566, Baga
Calangute 403 528
Bardez, GOA
Tel: 0832 2279843
Open 9 a.m.- 6 p.m.

Khau Swe and the Duchess

Delhi was relatively cool. The rains had stopped and it was wonderful meeting old friends in new surroundings. Many have moved to kinder places, with roads not potholes, and quiet streets, patrolled by friendly dogs that are fed daily by several animal lovers. People come in cars or on scooters or walking with milk, biscuits, rice and other fresh goodies for them. It showed that Delhiites have a soft corner for animals and a level of prosperity not common to other citizens of India. Though the frontier mentality remains, with aggressive men and buses that careen around with intent to kill, it is always refreshing to see the gardens of Lutyens' Delhi and the tall trees bordering the elegant wide roads.
Many new restaurants have opened since I went there last, some of them very good, serving authentic Italian, Thai or Mediterranean food.
The best food we had was home cooked, naturally. It was the vegetarian fare we ate at the place of a friend, a writer of books on Indian religion, history and spirituality, who teaches yoga in a beautiful space built for the purpose. The room is cool and generates calm.The air reverberates gently with the sound of our mantras.
She has taught her cook some wonderful dishes over the years and we stuffed ourselves quite shamelessly at lunch and dinner. Duchess, the cook, is so named because she has such aristocratic features and a very dignified bearing. I am just so grateful to be served tea by her, which is always perfect, with a pod of elaichi / cardamom, a teaspoon of sugar, topped up with half a cup of milk and half a cup of water, zapped in the microwave for 90 seconds and served in an impeccable porcelain cup.
While being a Malayalee, there is something a bit oriental about the Duchess. Her high cheekbones add to her sophisticated looks. And then at lunch I understood. She made us Khau Swe, or Kauk Soi as it is sometimes spelled. A recipe from Burma ( now Myanmar) where she was born. She made it vegetarian with carrots and potatoes and capsicum, but told me that chicken is the main ingredient and most Burmese eat it that way.
We all liked it so much that I took down the recipe to share ...it has something so Indian yet South Asian about it. Like the Duchess herself.

Ingredients:

1 200 gm packet of noodles, either rice or egg noodles.

1 kg chicken, skinned and cut into 6 pieces.
2 1/2 cups of milk made from 1 coconut.
2 onions
6 cloves of garlic
1 inch of fresh ginger
2 green chillies
1 tbsp of vegetable oil
1/2 tsp of haldi/ turmeric
2 tablespoons of besan/ chickpea flour
Lime Juice
Salt

4 tbsp of green coriander chopped.
4 spring onions chopped
4 eggs boiled and cut into 8 pieces each
1 lemon cut into 8 pieces

Boil the noodles, drain and set aside.

Pressure cook the chicken for 5 minutes at high heat ( about 2 whisltes). Let it cool and remove all the bones. Cut into cubes and reserve the stock. In a blender grind the coconut till it makes a paste, add a cup of hot water to the paste and blend it again. Strain the milk from the coconut and return the paste to the blender. Add another cup and a half of hot water and repeat the process. Strain through a fine wire strainer or through muslin.
Grind the onions, garlic, ginger,and chillies into a paste in a blender. Heat oil and fry the paste till the oil seperates from the mixture. Add the turmeric and the chicken. Fry for a few minutes then add the stock and the coconut milk. Make a paste of the chickpea flour and add slowly to the curry, stirring continuously so it does not become lumpy. Cook for ten minutes .When the mixture thickens add a tablepoon of lime juice and salt to taste.

Chop the corainder, spring onions and eggs and serve in seperate bowls along with the noodles and the curry. Each takes as much noodles , fresh herbs and eggs as they like and pours the chicken curry on top. Squeeze a bit of the lemon on top. Delicious!

France-On Holiday

Last week I had wanted to tell all friends and readers we were going  off on vacation for a month. Well , we are here already , in Pas De Calais , France , eating a mind boggling variety of cheeses, never tasted before, drinking superb wine and  hearing all about our friends Judy and Nick's wonderful artisanal jams being made out of a picturesque farm house in the countryside. Much more about all this later.

Sweets for my sweet, Sugar for my Honey- All about Gur things

Sugarcane fields

Travelling in the Kolhapur district it is a pleasure to see such rich land all around . This is sugarcane area and every other field is tall with sugarcane ripening in the warm sun.The plateau is covered in a sort of mist which I soon discover is the smoke from bagasse fires, as sugar cane juice is being churned in huge iron vats to make rab a thickened syrup.

Bagasse

The bagasse is what is left after the cane has been mangled in a rotary press to remove all the juice. This is carried and spread out around the small rural processing plants, to dry in the sun . When it is dry it is fed into the boiler which is constructed under the vat .

Sayaji

Sayaji Pawar owns a couple of acres of land in Vahagaon which is in Karad Taluka. Vahagaon is also famous for its Bhairavnath Temple. Being near the Krishna River, Sayaji's lands get plenty of water and the cane fields look healthy. He also owns a jaggery processing plant. Making jaggery is as simple a process now, as it was hundreds of years ago.Sugarcane has grown In India since the time of the Indus Valley Civilization, four thousand years ago. The extracted juice was strained, boiled and treated with Hibiscus plant stems , or the bark of semul , Salamalia malabarica and phalsa, Grewia Arabica trees as well as treated with sodium bicarbonate, alum and limed water.With a few changes in the additives, the same thing is done today. The whole process from start to finish takes about 4 hours.

Chimney and boiler of gur plant

I ask Sayaji why he doesn't supply the cane from his lands to the sugar factory close by.

He says "They do not pay everything up front. First they give two thirds of the money, then make us wait for 3 months more and pay the rest.Why should I wait ? Making gur is much better. I get my money as soon as I take it to market in Karad, 7 kms away."

He is happy with his independence from the factories as are several other farmers who process their own cane into gur for which there is still a huge market. Most food in India calls for a bit of gur in dal / lentils or sabzi/vegetable dish.Gujarati, Maharashtrian,Rajasthani and several other regional cuisines cannot do without it. And many sweet snacks like chikki / a brittle made of puffed rice, sesame seeds, nuts etc mainly use gur.

Filling boiler with bagasse

Khand or khandsari , a type of raw light brown to white sugar can also be made from the rab. Now this is done through a centrifugal system . Formerly the boiling molasses was strained with water poured through seaweed. This served to wash the molasses off and the material immediately below the weeds was removed and formed "khand" or "khandsari". India had always exported khand.

Boiling and Churning Rab

There are records of khand being sent to America in 1750 and to Britain in 1789. The latter then figured out, khand could be used to make sugar crystals which would work out a lot cheaper than importing sugar from the West Indies. Initially raw sugar was sent to Britain as ballast in ships!

For years raw sugar was known by different names and came in different forms. Shakkar, also known as bura are gur crystals, that is, unrefined but well drained of molasses.It is used a lot in the North for tea and coffee.Shakkhar is also the word for sugar in Marathi and this led to some confusion.I was under the mistaken impression that I could get that same brown sugar which I used in Punjab, in Pune as well. No such luck. Shakkar is unknown in Maharashtra except as refined crystallized white sugar. Misri and chini, are almost white sugar crystals made from further refining khand by the weed and water process.And kuza khand are the large white crystals, also made by the same process sometimes offered with saunf fennel seeds, as a mouth freshener after a meal.

Pit for cooling Rab

Rab , or sieved, cleaned, boiled and thickened juice, is poured into a shallow pit lined with thick plates . It is shoveled about with spades till it cools and forms a kind of thick paste.

Buckets of setting Gur

This is then poured into muslin lined buckets or vats and within 2 hours these have cooled and formed neat and large, hardened, mounds of gur, about 30 kg in weight, which can easily be removed from the vat.

Gur ready for Market

Then its off to market where people buy it in amounts of up to a kilo or less.

Gur is graded according to sucrose content, shape (Bheli, Chakki or Laddoo) texture ( grainy which is known as Rawedar or Danedar or smooth which is known as Chikna.)

Unrefined sugars like gur contain essential minerals such as magnesium, potassium, iron, copper, calcium as well as tiny amounts of fluorine and selenium. Altogether much healthier than refined sugar. Besides that , is also has a taste of its own , not just sweetness.

Makar Sankranti  occured during our trip, a day when til (sesame) and gur laddoos /jaggery balls, are exchanged in Maharashtra . The saying, when feeding each other sweets like this, is- " Til Gur ghya, god bola" a literal translation of which would be "take this sweet and speak sweetly". Actually it signifies forgiveness , when bad words and ill will towards anyone is  forgotten. Since gur and til "stick together"  it is offered during the festival...to remind people and communities to stick together, and remain undivided in their goodwill to all.

Makar Sankranti is also a harvest festival to give thanks to the forces of nature for providing so much.

Instead of making laddoos I make a chikki at home with gur. Instead of sesame seeds you could try other dried fruit, nuts, peanuts, pumpkin or sunflower seeds or even puffed grains like wheat or rice. Any cereal or muesli mix tastes good with gur too.

Chikki/ Sesame seed Brittle

Ingredients:

250 gms sesame seeds
200 gms gur/ jaggery
1/2 cup water

Grease a 8" X 5" baking tray and keep aside.

Roast sesame seeds very lightly. Grate the gur/ jaggery. Add the water to the gur and heat the mixture on a low flame. When the mixture starts thickening check it frequently by dropping a bit on a plate.When it congeals almost immediately, the jaggery is ready. Add the sesame seeds and mix quickly. Pour immediately onto the prepared tray. Make indentations of about 1" square across the brittle while it is still warm. When cold, break into pieces and store in an airtight container.

For more sweets with gur click here.

Goan Gobbro Curry- Rock Fish Curry

The fisherwomen were out this morning sitting in the shed constructed by the Chicolna panchayat.The catch seems very small but the best has already gone, taken by the bigger buyers as soon as the boats come in, in an on-the-spot auction on the beach.What little left is sold by the women to the local people in a couple of hours.

Tiny Pomfret, a handful of miniscule Mackerel,and Gobbro a type of Rockfish. Gobbro is a larger fish and very popular on this side of Goa.Claudi makes a great fish curry from Rock fish at his laid back restaurant, a hundred yards from where we stay.It is an open air, circular, structure made of the red laterite stone so typical of all Goan houses.Even at the height of summer it stays cool at Claudi's.

He is well known among Vasco residents and Goans come from the local area to eat here. Lunch is a laid back affair with the waiters and owner watching cricket and football matches avidly on the T.V, their attention diverted to the customer for just as long as it takes to serve them.If no matches are going on, it is seriously quiet at Claudi's.

Give the Chinese and Tandoori fare, which are also on the menu, a miss, and stick to fish or prawn curry.

Here is a nice recipe for Gobbro Curry

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Kg Rock fish cut into slices
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2-3 green chillies,slit and deseeded (optional)
• Tamarind Pulp. Made from tamarind the size of a walnut soaked in 1/2 cup of water, or a few kokum .
• Salt to taste

Grind the following ingredients in a blender with a little water till very smooth:

• 12 cloves lasun/ garlic
• 2 tsp dhania /coriander seeds
• 6 dried red Kashmiri chillies
• 10 peppercorns
• 1/4 -1/2 fresh coconut,grated
• 1 tsp haldi /turmeric powder

This curry can be a thin or thick one depending on the amount of coconut used. Put the chopped onion,green chillies and ground masala puree in a pan with 2 cups water. Bring the mixture to a boil. Turn heat to medium low and cook for about 30 minutes,Sieve the tamarind soaked in water through a strainer . Add the pulp to the mixture 15 minutes into cooking. Add the sliced fish,and bring to the boil again,reduce heat and simmer.Cook for 5 minutes.Add salt to taste. Serve with parboiled or brown rice.

Meal for 2 at Claudi 's with a bottle of Kingfisher Beer each- Rs 200

Claudi
Palimand
Bogmalo
Goa

Back to Bogmalo

Even as we drove the short distance from the airport to Bogmalo I could feel myself relaxing. Memories of the last visit here were enough to do that. Within ten minutes, unpacked and sipping a cup of nice hot tea made by Mrs Rodrigues, the landlady and I am now already to forget the world beyond the village.

The pigs wandered in the scrubby back yard, and the chickens were running around.A pleasant smell of dry burning coconut shells scented the air and wisps of smoke crept over the red tiled huts.As dusk gathered, I could see the toddy tappers perched high in the surrounding coconut trees gathering the day's yield in their black pots.Some were already nimbly climbing down and wending their way along the darkening village road to fill the large vat at the local toddy maker.

Everything was winding down from slow to slower and I was already looking forward to dinner at John's, a shack on the beach where the owner, John, of course, has become famous for his food among the locals on this side of Goa.

People come all the way from Vasco for both lunch and dinner and he remains a firm favourite with many regulars.Sitting out at small tables placed on the sand many of the clients are Goan families, or groups of people from local offices out for the evening.

It is not too hot right now and a cool breeze came in from the sea. Groups of people were still wandering on the beach in the dark and kids were playing .You know you are in Goa when you see kids are playing , not cricket but football. That seems to come with their Portuguese history and young people follow Real Madrid with a passion usually reserved, in the rest of India, for Tendulkar and Co.
It was Karaoke night at Johns and strains of the Eagles, Abba and many '70's tunes filled the air.We sat down and ordered the usual....ice cold Kingfisher beer and Chilli Calamari . The service is leisurely and we had a slow and super dinner.

Here is a recipe for Chilli Calamari.

Ingredients:
2 small squid about 8" long, cleaned and washed.
5 dried red chillies
12 cloves of garlic finely chopped.
3 teaspoons olive or vegetable oil.
Salt
Pepper

Slice the squid into circles of about 1/2 thick. Heat the oil and fry the red chillies and garlic till light brown. Add squid and saute for about 7 minutes till opaque. Add salt and pepper to taste. This tastes wonderful with cold beer on a hot day.