Goa New: Local Beverages

Dried kokum rind is steeped in water, then blended with coconut milk, garlic and green chilli into a pale pink drink. It is served at the end of a fish meal as a digestive rather than as a starter. The taste is sour and faintly savoury. Every Goan and Konkan household makes a slightly different version.

Green coconuts are cut open to order at stalls along every beach road and outside every market. The water inside is naturally high in potassium, which is why it works after a day in the sun. Ask the vendor to split the shell afterwards so you can eat the soft flesh with a piece of husk.

The purple rind of the kokum fruit is boiled with sugar into a concentrate, then diluted with chilled water or soda and salted. Kokum grows across the Western Ghats and is used in Goa as a souring agent in place of tamarind. The drink is tart and deep pink. Bottled syrup is sold in most Goan markets.

Pressed from cashew apples during the harvest between March and May, this is the unfermented juice that would otherwise become urrak. It is sweet, slightly astringent and must be drunk within hours of pressing. Distilleries and old Panaji bakeries sell it in season. Outside those three months it does not exist.

Black tea is boiled with milk, sugar, ginger and cardamom, and often clove or black pepper. It arrived in Goa with migration from the rest of India rather than from Portugal. Bakeries and roadside stalls serve it through the day in small glasses. It pairs with the mushroom and beef patties sold at the same counters.

Goti soda takes its name from the glass marble sealing the old Codd-neck bottle, which the vendor pushes in with a thumb. Lime juice, sugar, salt and a pinch of masala go in on top. The bottles are refilled and reused. Market stalls in Panaji and Margao still sell it through the summer.