Goa New: Local Food

The everyday meal in most Goan homes, eaten at lunch rather than dinner. Coconut, dried red chilli, tamarind or kokum and turmeric are ground into a base, then the day's catch is simmered in it. Kingfish, mackerel and pomfret are the usual fish. Rice, usually parboiled red rice, is served alongside.

Portuguese sailors carried carne de vinha d'alhos to Goa, and local cooks replaced wine with palm vinegar and added Kashmiri chilli. The result is sour before it is hot. Pork belly or shoulder is marinated overnight, then cooked down until the fat renders. It is a Catholic Goan dish and improves after a day.

Roasted coconut, poppy seeds and a long list of whole spices are ground into a dark, thick masala. The name comes from the Konkani chacuti. Despite the colour it reads aromatic rather than fiery. Mutton and crab versions exist, and the same gravy is what gets poured over a ros omelette at street stalls.

A Portuguese-Macanese preserve that settled in Goa as a pickle rather than a curry. Prawns are cooked in a paste of dried red chillies, palm vinegar, garlic and jaggery until almost dry. It keeps for weeks without refrigeration, which was the original point. A spoonful goes with rice or bread rather than a full plate.

Pork is cured with palm vinegar, chilli, garlic and spices, then dried in the sun and hung in strings. The Portuguese technique adapted to a climate with no cold storage. It is sharper and more sour than Spanish chorizo. Cooked with onions and potatoes, or stuffed into a pav as choris pav on the street.

Steamed rice cakes leavened traditionally with toddy from the coconut palm, which gives a faint sourness that baking soda cannot copy. They are spongier and sweeter than an idli. Catholic Goan kitchens serve them with pork sorpotel or vindaloo, and Saraswat kitchens with vegetable curries. They are made fresh and do not keep.