A Culinary Homecoming
Ruth Sequiera writes about a decades-old family tradition of packing boxes of the best local foods to carry back home to her family.
Every summer, while the world descended on Goa, my mother packed our bags and took my brothers and me, to her family in Bombay. Growing up as little barbarians in Goa, almost all our holidays were spent doing slick city stuff — visiting movie theatres, playing video games, counting the number of BMWs that passed and learning city slang that we could later use to impress our friends back home.
Last November, after almost a year of not visiting my family due to the coronavirus pandemic, I decided to surprise my mum for her birthday. Given the mad tourist rush Goa has experienced post the nation-wide lockdown last year, I decided to drive to Goa. Sounds pretty straightforward, except, I live in Auroville, almost a thousand kilometres away from Goa, on the opposite coast. While I have been on a few road trips recently (Colaba to Borivali and Whitefield to Koramangala), the last real drives I took were as a young girl on our family holidays, driving north, through the Konkan coast.
My grandmother Ida, was a tough woman who lost her mother young and brought up her siblings from the age of 13. Growing up in Daman, she spoke Portuguese and Gujarati, learning English only once she moved to Bandra after her marriage in the ‘40s. On our holidays, she and her daughters would congregate in the kitchen to gossip, laugh and heal. A feast would be cooked at every meal — Gujarati snacks, Daman-style kebabs, East Indian fish curries and Goan meat roasts. Family members from all over Bombay found every excuse they could to show up uninvited at lunch or dinner.
While my grandmother and all three of her daughters have been excellent cooks, those genes did not trickle down to me. I have a vivid memory of being 9, just out of a shower after a long day of playing Chor Police with the boys of the building; my grandmother locking me between her knees, combing my unruly curls. With each stroke of her sharp comb, she dictated to me a list of all the things she could cook at my age and the extravagant food all my girl cousins could currently make; all of which I failed at miserably. Years later, just before grandma Ida passed away, she once again tried to teach me to cook, but I burnt the dal and splattered beef mince all over the kitchen as I dealt with a pressure cooker for the first time.
My mum, a pragmatist, treated all three of her kids equally, this way she had 3 sets of hands helping her in the kitchen instead of that of her only daughter. Once I moved out of home, I learnt to cook — just not the kind of food she expected. On our phone calls, when she asks me what I’ve had for dinner, she sighs every time I mention a salad or sandwich. She hoped to pass on her Gujju-Bandra-Goan heritage of delicate masalas, marinades and cooking techniques, instead she has had to deal with a daughter who cooks ‘bland’ European, vegetarian cuisine.
As I prepared to travel, I was reminded of all the local produce my mum parcelled on our trips to visit my grandmother — dozens of mankurad mangoes rolled in hay, balls of deseeded tamarind, sun dried kokum, white cashew nuts, red rice and chikoos from our tree. Besides this, she scouted Mapusa market or called up friends of friends to get the best homemade vinegar and sun dried pork sausages. All of this was cleverly packed to avoid spillage and provide cover for the lower tax alcohol bottles we smuggled into Maharashtra.
I was excited to return home, this time with the freedom to carry as much luggage as my SUV could take. Living in Auroville, a small town with a cosmopolitan mix of experimental people, there is plenty of creativity in architecture, design, fashion, landscaping and food. Just as my mother had done a few decades ago, I went about collecting the local, artisanal produce of Auroville to take back home. From Le Ferme, I took parmesan, feta, gruyere; from Antonello’s Gastronomica, I picked up fresh, whole wheat tagliatelle, granola and gouda; from Naturellement, I picked up my favourite mustard and pesto, from Mason & Co, I got a variety of vegan chocolate bars and finally, from a friend’s farm, I carried a few kilograms of organic cashew nuts.
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After a day and a half of driving, I arrived exhausted and excited to meet my mum just in time for lunch. She was taken by surprise, but just like her mother before her, she dealt with unexpected guests with complete ease. In 45 minutes, she served an extravagant Goan meal. After a quick afternoon siesta, (some traditions are sacred), we began unpacking my basket of Auroville produce. It felt like Christmas morning, unboxing and explaining to her how she could use each of the ingredients I’d bought.
The week I spent with her, we got into the rhythm of teaching each other different dishes — she taught me how to make recheado masala, while I showed her how to make low-cal cauliflower couscous. On her birthday, we managed to merge both our styles by cooking tagliatelle with Goan chorizo and fresh, goat cheese. While I may never ace traditional Goan or East Indian food, my grandma would have been proud of the (gluten-free) ragi chocolate cake I made for my mum. It was to quote her advice, “soft but firm, like a woman’s arm.”
As it began nearing the time for me to head back, the meals got more extravagant as did the recipes I was asked to note down. The planning for what my mum would cook for me to eat on my way back began in earnest and friends and trusted shopkeepers were telephoned to arrange for their best goods. Usually, my 15kg airport luggage limits what my mum can send back, this time, however, she was thrilled that she could load the entire car. As she had once packed for her mother, she now packed for me. She sent me off with sun-dried kokum, deseeded tamarind, Goan red rice, passionfruit from our garden, pork sausages from the neighbour and homemade bebinca from her friend. As a desperate attempt to entice me to reform my ways, a whole bunch of masalas were bottled to spice up my otherwise “bland” food.
A few weeks after I returned back to Auroville, I called my mum to check if I could use her East Indian Bottle Masala to make a mushroom xacuti, she was thrilled that I was going to do some ‘real cooking’. At the end of the same call, she sheepishly asked me to send her some more gouda and parmesan. Ever since, we’ve been bartering food packages by air courier — Christmas sweets and prawn balchao in exchange for a bottle of capers and handmade pasta. We’ve decided not to wait for another lockdown or road trip to encourage us to learn and appreciate each other’s taste in food.
IDA’S RECIPE FOR RECHEADO MASALA
Ingredients
20 red Kashmiri dried chillies
2 garlic pods peeled
2 inch piece ginger chopped roughly
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon pepper
I teaspoon sugar
1 inch stick of cinnamon
4 cloves
Tamarind - a small ball the size of a lemon
1/2 cup vinegar
Salt to taste
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
Method
Soak tamarind in 1/2 cup water and extract pulp
Grind chillies, ginger, garlic, cumin seeds, pepper, cinnamon cloves and turmeric powder. Add tamarind extract and grind until the paste is fine. Add vinegar, salt and sugar and grind once more. If the paste is too thick add a little more vinegar.
Remove from the grinder and store in a dry glass jar. It could stay for months in the fridge if stored well. (Avoid using wet spoons or leaving the jar half open)
Use recheado masala to stuff fish (mackerels, pomfret, kingfish, etc) and then pan fry. Alternatively you could make a prawn or fish curry or it can also be used with pork or beef.
Ruth Sequeira heads Human Resources for Hidesign, lives in Auroville, reads widely and loves to cook for friends.
Banner illustration by Amrita Nambiar
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