The Secret to Making Perfect Kori da Gassi
Aranya learns that kori da gassi hides many secrets, both within the family, and the community at large.
A woman sits on a low wooden stool in a kitchen whose window opens into a thaarai’da thota, (tulu for coconut plantation) behind the courtyard wall. Her sari, whose pallu she uses to pat her forehead, is drenched in sweat. She sits beside a monumental semi-electric stone grinder, a whirring blade embedded in the vessel on top, for grating out coconut — a smooth alternative to the peredane, the traditional coconut grater used in households in coastal Karnataka, and other places in the south. The grinder heaves and sighs like the Matsyagandha Express that makes its way through the western ghats and the Konkan coast before reaching Mangalore, grinding a thick paste for kori da gassi. Kori da gassi is a local chilli-coconut based chicken curry made in ‘tuluva’ households.
Outside the men are drinking, comparing the sizes of bangude and surmai that they’ve discovered in various unchartered markets.
The image of ammamma sitting in the kitchen cooking for droves of guests, her glass of neat foreign whisky kept out of harm’s way (and my vision), as she went about preparing her signature chicken gravy, is embedded in my mind’s eye.
My maternal grandfather loved boasting about his wife’s curry. One of his favourite stories about the time soon after they migrated to Bombay, as they settled into the small suburb of Chembur, always featured a guest he’d bring home for dinner, promising them Mangalore’s pride, and the jewel on Ammamma’s crest — the kori gassi. This was usually accompanied by rottti, thin rice-paper wafers, or neer dose, soft dosas made from a batter composed only of rice and water, and folded into neat quadrants. The person and intent of the tryst changed with every telling. Sometimes, it was a boss or a colleague at Chicago Radio, the telecommunications company that he worked for in Bombay, who was proving inflexible in some official context. At other times it would be some business magnate with whom he had to crack a deal. And other times, it would be extended family, who knew the flavours, and missed it — for them it was a way to relive the homes that they had left behind, to come to Bombay.
My grandfather prided himself on being the orchestrator of the miracle of gassi. Ammamma was merely an accessory to that end. The one thing that never changed in his story was the reaction the gassi evoked in its patrons: “Mad! They’d go mad eating your ammamma’s gassi”.
It is quite astonishing how easily the men in Shetty households subsumed the work and identity of the women around them. A vocal, independent, creative woman was the greatest bane in the imaginations of insecure husbands, fathers and brothers.
The Shettys famously took to the catering, eatery and drink-ery business in Bombay. Shetty Lunch homes and Udupi joints were a great low cost option for office goers who found them in some basement or tucked away in an alley near their workplaces. My father would frequent a small lunch home in the Fort area, that served fish curry and rice, and sometimes, he would take us along on special outings on the weekends.
I would go to my grandparents’ home in Mangalore for two months of summer holidays. I have many memories with ammamma, but the event that was kori gassi and its preparation is the sharpest.
She was a formidable woman, soft as the manjal da ire tha addye, flattened coconut-jaggery-and-rice dumplings steamed in manjal (turmeric) leaves that she knew were my favourite. After retirement, and before returning to their native place, my grandfather stayed back in Bombay, while ammamma went back to set up home and property. She spent months alone in that big house, flanked by a courtyard and thotas on both sides, tending to a vegetable garden that grew lady’s finger, brinjal, thimare (brahmi), and a leafy creeper that was cooked in another delicious coconut gravy like the gassi, called basale or Malabar spinach. There was also a flower garden, areca nut thotas and coconut thotas, with banana trees and pineapple that had to be managed. There were chickens that made a racket all day, and shat all over the courtyard. But her real affection and care was reserved for the cows. At any time there was a Laxmi grazing in our thota. Most likely, she would have calved recently. In the evenings ammamma would head to the shed with a steel tumbler to milk the cow. The money that she made by selling that milk to families in the local community was probably the only thing that was truly her own. She ferreted it away carefully, saving up every paisa. Years later, just before she died, she whispered the secret hiding place to her treasure to my father — he found the Rs.15,000 locked away, folded between the pages of a Bhagwad Gita in a chest hidden behind her saris. A life’s savings.
My grandmother cheated at carrom. But out of respect, let us simply say that she had a lenient disposition towards lines placed arbitrarily on the carrom board. She loved gadbad, golibaje, masala dose and eating whole mangoes from our tree. She’d let these desires out to play when the grandchildren were over — taking us to the beach, or an Udupi restaurant or to IDEAL, the world’s best fusion ice cream parlour. Ammamma rarely got to venture out; my grandfather’s favourite reprimand to any mildly adventurous suggestion was “Daayg?” Whyyyyy? When we were around, the curfew was relaxed.
While I look at this less than favourably, my grandfather’s overbearing gassi story is an extreme manifestation of the phenomenon of food being tied to home, kinship ties, culture and caste. Food as social glue and spark of nostalgia is hardly a new idea, after all. It is laced with the inherent patriarchy, entitlement and regional patriotism that is compounded by the associated insecurities of leaving home, the perceived ‘pollution of purity’ that comes from caste, and the need to establish identity in an urban social context with rules different from the small town or the village. I stopped eating chicken around the time my mother was reading Maneka Gandhi, and I finally made the connection between diminishing chicken in the pen, and tasty kori gassi on weekends. But my grandfather would never miss an opportunity to remind me of the etymology of our caste: Bunt. “Bunta means warrior. How will you become a warrior if you don’t eat chicken? Where will you get the strength.” Ammamma did not approve of the decision at all. She never stopped trying to re-convert me every chance she got. “One piece that’s all, one piece.”
After she died, I took to eating kori gassi once a year during the ritual of ‘serving’ (her favourite food and drink items, prepared and laid out in a banana leaf, along with a lamp) on the anniversary of her death. When it was cooked at home on weekends, we replaced chicken with mushroom, but it wasn’t the same. After I left home, and while cooking for friends, I’d never compromise with mushroom or any other replacement. Gassi evenings became more frequent. The gassi goes well with rotti, neer dose, semay da addye (rice noodles), parboiled brown rice and my personal favourite, chakkuli (also known as murruku, rice/urad dal based snack made across south indian and marathi households, especially during festivals). Soaked in gravy, chakkuli is the perfect ‘touchings’ for drinks.
Ammamma never really sat me down and explained the recipe in a formal way for me to write in a notebook. She didn’t think men should cook.When I’d ask she’d tell me, “What is there? Put this, that, grind, cook.” Many times I’d sit with her at the grinder, in the kitchen, watch her, and slowly, I’d learn. She’d tell little details, in between, and tricks she used, and I noted them down, slowly perfecting the formula. But one time, I caught an expression of satisfaction at the perfect orange of the arepu (curry/masala). It was intuitive, spontaneous. When we looked at each other, and smiled, I understood the secret.
Cooking the dish in a hot kitchen, as I set all the ingredients out, and grind the bedagi munchi (a red chilli found in the Konkan coast and used in many traditional Mangalorean recipes) with the coconut, I would invariably feel her quiet smile prickling at my shoulder. I’d catch a whiff of Pond’s talcum powder, kumkuma, and sweat, and a silent nod of approval as the gassi began finding its colour. That signaure orange.
For so many years I’ve looked for that colour in kurta fabric, or to paint a freak extra wall in a house. There is something about that colour that I can’t fully pinpoint. While cooking, it is a marker of the dish reaching its destination, the same way you know a poem has found its end, with a word or phrase that is the exact space of the gap in its last line.
Orange
Cooking kori da gassi
reminds me of my grandmother
grinding love into curry
But mostly
I like to see the white of coconut
meet the red of bedagi munchi
and flush orange
that is why
if you ask me about my favourite colour
I will have to invite you home to dinner.
When I remember my ammamma, I see the slowly bubbling orange of that kori da gassi.
A Recipe for Mangalorean Kori Gassi
Ingredients
Arepu (masala)
8-12 byadgi munchi (quantity can vary based on spice and flavour preference)
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp of cumin seeds
3-4 fenugreek seeds
12-15 peppercorns
½ a spoon of mustard seeds
8-10 pods of garlic
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 cup freshly grated coconut
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 lemon-sized tamarind (to be soaked in ½ to one cup of hot water)
Curry
½ kg chicken, curry cut, marinate with salt, and haldi for half an hour
1 small onion finely sliced
1 sprig of curry leaves
1 cup coconut milk
1 tbsp ghee
Method
In a banale (a heavy-bottomed pan or kadhai), put in the ghee, and roast/fry all the dry ingredients for the masala – cumin seeds, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, fenugreek seeds, byadagi chillies, and then garlic, sliced onion. Then add the grated coconut. Wait for the rich aroma. Watch that the chilli and dhaniya do not burn. Then add ½ a spoon of turmeric. Make sure the coconut doesn’t burn. Remove from the heat.
Put the roasted/sauted spices and coconut in a mixer and grind it. While grinding, add the strained juice of one lemon sized imli that has been soaking in hot water. Add salt and let the arepu (masala) become a thick orange paste. All the ingredients should be fully ground into a smooth paste.
In a clay chatti, heat some ghee, and add curry leaves. Then add one finely chopped onion.
Next, add marinated chicken. Don't add water; the chicken will release moisture while cooking. Add the arepu into the vessel. Allow it to cook for a few minutes.
Now, add some coconut milk. Do this carefully, use your intuition, and watch the colour. You can regulate the spiciness, and coconut-iness, as well as the thickness/texture of the gravy based on personal taste – I prefer a thick spicy gravy, so I add only half a bowl of coconut milk. Bring to a boil. Check for salt.
I sometimes add a little bit of jaggery to balance the flavours, but this is optional.
Cook the gravy till a thin, slightly darker layer forms on top. When the chicken is cooked through, remove from the heat.
Your Kori da gassi is ready! Serve hot with neer dose, rotti, rice or any rice based steamed item known as addye (similar to idli, puttu).
Aranya is a poet, based currently in Delhi. His heart lies in Bombay, though, and makes a detour via the Konkan & Karnataka coastline.
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