At the Serendipity Art Festival’s Food Lab
SOME folk think the tubers of the earth are ugly and do not even look at them…and some think they’re just so earthily mysterious for they grow underground in the moist darkness of mother earth! How romantic! How about taking a second look at such tubers as potatoes, sweet potatoes (in Goa nowadays we see more ivory white sweet potatoes than the old magenta red twisty and knuckled ones), colacasia or “maddi,” the giant yellow or fascinatingly pinkish called “suran” (in Gujarati) and the purple yams called “ratalu”…think of the little rounded burnished coffee dark “air potatoes” or “kaate kangna” (in Konkani) and the little Chinese potatoes, and the “arbi” which I love so much cooked, peeled squashed salted and black or red peppered and deep fried to emerge in a crispy avatar utterly delicious to savoury! They were romancing tubers at one of the Serendipity’s culinary sessions and I had already made up my mind to go listen tuber talk…
(Sigh, a big sigh). This year both IFFI and Serendipity were a wash out for me for I could barely concentrate on all the art shows and music concerts and exhibitions, events, story-telling sessions and even missed out on the what I usually find the most exciting – the Serendipity Food Lab series which present food with so much drama and sometimes much ado about nothing!
Anyways I did make it for the one on romancing tubers and so there were all these tubers of various shapes and dark colors laid out on a table and they looked back at us daring us to pick them up and close and … fall in love naturally. Depending on what your perception of beauty is, mine is very definitely …er…tubers. Mash them, turn them into cutlets or crisps or deep fry them before tossing them in a divine chaat masala and chopped greens and serve on a cold listless evening!
TUBERS are interesting and maybe not so much the plain ones like potatoes which are an international craze, but the yams amongst tubers, these intrigue more. You know wintertime’s speciality “oondhiyu” out in Gujarat cannot be “oondhiyu” if three ingredients are missing – yellow/purple yam, sweet potato, field beans and green spring garlic…
But to stay with this Serendipity tubers session romancing tubers, I must say the hostess Afshan Mariam did a superlative job of getting participants to take a fresh look at the legacy of the earthy tubers family of root, root stemmed vegetables – a storehouse of carbohydrate nutrition which fuels our day-to-day energy. Tubers are the storehouses of plants and high in mineral values of potassium, magnesium, etc, “they have the whole earth in them…also sun, wind…very primodial veggies!” The forest people still live off them and revere and celebrate them, go visit in Uttar Kannada tribal villages and see how they conjure up timeless recipes of good food to live for, to nourish the mind and body, heart and soul.
Well, Afshan here got us all meditating on the different tubers and after she was done with us I felt like I was re-born again and ready to relish slices of sweet potato for breakfast every morning instead of toast, butter, jam, cheese and my favorite poached eggs. Hey, slices of steamed or pressure cooked sweet potato may double as slices of “bread” any day (and that’s what I’m aiming to do come the new year, if only the partner will agree!). For some reason along with the bowls of cooked sweet potato the session offered to all participants there also came along so needlessly melted butter…like you may dip your slices of sweet potatoes and enjoy. No, thank-you, I said, how gross, I’ll eat my share of the sweet potato slices as they are…so pure and perfect!
Truly, all the insight which came up at this session on taking a fresh look at a selection of tubers of the earth was an experience in travelling with them below the earth and coming up having experienced birth, growth and death of course if I may say so. Don’t laugh. This is to say, honey, tubers are our friends as the seasons come and go, make friends with them. I haven’t done too much homework yet but I’d say it’s worth looking at life close up through the “eyes” of the tubers of the world. Who was it who said our only goal in life is to astonish and be astonished?
Be astonished constantly, my dears. Go discover the tubers of the world if you can, at least the ones which still exist in the marketplace of Panaji and Goa! I am sorry I couldn’t make it for the Serendipity Food Lab sessions on wild local weeds presented by my friend Dr Maryanne Lobo, or the one on “Gobi Manchurian & the City”…the ones on eating rice, seaweeds, Bengali sweetmeats, the fascinating world of fungi, there was a session on honey too titled “Nectar: Embodying the Critical role of bees in Food Systems” by Jashan Sippy, who says “Nectar highlights the urgency of our climate crisis through the importance of bees in pollination.” Couldn’t agree more, save the bees. Create more gardens of paradise filled with food for life and wild forests…instead of waging war against one another in the realm of human civilization. Human beings wake up before you all go under water anew!
On that note, thank-you, Serendipity, for all these sensitizing sessions and workshops on appreciating the wonders of the good earth which makes all life on earth possible, makes the impossible possible…but only as long as we respect and cherish Her! Mother Earth is the real goddess to worship if you’re asking me in a myriad forms, no?
Okay, no more.
CHRISTMAS LUNCH AT GOA MARRIOTT
2024 is coming to an end and I thought I would catch up with Christmas lunch at an old favorite 5-star, the Marriott at Miramar beach so close to where I live in Panjim. It used to be an old favorite haunt of mine but I lost touch a couple of years ago…anyways, there I was anew sick of myself for looking at the spread of food without an iota of interest in making a pig of myself. This is just nonsense of course!
The Christmas spread was a bonanza spread of East, West and Oriental and Indian and more and I enjoyed the Lebanese salad appetizers of pretty little oval pita bread dipped in hummus in various avatar, the cheese on cream crackers and other tangy and creamy bites with arugula lettuce…and some chaat numbers like pani puri and finished off the hubby’s ragda chaat since he was not eating it! Funny or not funny, if I make curd-rice at home he won’t eat it, but here at the fantabulous Marriott spread there was a creamy curd-rice in the Indian delights section and he was eating it along with palak sabzi and various papad and mainly a plateful of desserts – which were so good that I skipped them and just watched them eating…two dear friends who were along with us.
This is to say it was rewarding to say hello to the Marriott’s Executive Chef Balvinder Pal Singh Lubana, to whom I complained that it was so hard to find the perfect north Indian puri in my usual Goan eateries down town Panaji…most of them are burnt or overcooked affairs of maida and absolutely hatefully dripping with oil. Goan chefs don’t know how to make the quintessential wholesome puri even if it is deep-fried in oil or ghee of course and one should of course avoid them nine out of ten times.
I shared with Chef Balvinder that half the time I’m looking for decent puri in Panaji eateries to buy home for someone who loves deep-fried puri and invariably complains that they are cold, leathery, sticky, chewy, etcetera. An utter sweetheart, Chef Balvinder said puri dough should be of whole wheat atta and bound soft…and he went into the Marriott kitchens and sent me a plateful of these most perfect puri flecked with ajwain seeds. Of course I was charmed and even took the one lonely puri left to take home and relish for breakfast the next morning! Chef said, you know where to come when you want to eat puri now, right here at the Waterfront Terrace & Bar restaurant at the Marriott restaurant and I said, I will. Imagine going to the Marriott just to buy home some wonderful puri and perhaps one of the green leafy sabzi…the winter months up north and in Delhi homes is for homemakers to turn out makki di roti and sarson da saag (combo with bathua greens, what we also know as ambadi bhaji and these days available in the Panjim pavement market and another place where I see it some mornings (Barracuda down Caranzalen street).
Well, I think I will go back and say hello to Chef Balvinder Singh to find out more about such things as Punjab’s, Delhi’s, Chandigarh’s “gobi-gazar-mooli-shalgam” (cauliflower-carrot-radish-turnip) water pickle with exquisite sour notes…and of course, the blackish carrots from up north which go into making the most desirable carrot and beetroot “kanji” beverage to stop the cold seeping into body beautiful. Hey, a toast to winter delights of north India!
The year is coming to an end and soon it will be 2025 and the one thing I must learn now is to eat less and less and more of what is worth eating – no sugar, less salt and only Goa sea salt which comes closest to celtic salt, no refined carbs, that is if I want to survive the last quarter of my wintry life. No fryums, no oils, no oils, no oils. Go ask India’s famous heart doctor Dr Bimal Chajjar and he will tell you how to cook without oil at all, substitute oil with water. It’s that simple! Boycott all processed foods rich in hydrogenated oils and fats…etcetera. Seek out what makes for good hormones swirling in your blood streams!
WHICH reminds me over the Christmas season I got a veggie Shepherd’s Pie courtesy my friend Nigel Costa Faria – this is vegetarian, he said, for Rajan! It was from a place called Tapas Isabella’s near where his office is downtown Panjim, let him know if I liked the vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie, “I usually eat the non-vegetarian version!”
They also do other Spanish/Italian stuff, like …large plates of say Verdure Rellenas (a lasagna with zucchini and aubergine), Frango Piri Piri (Portuguese styled grilled chicken with smashed potato and cumin peppers). Then the Tapas are small plates of say Patatas Bravas, Champinones al Ajillo…oh some more things to discover, how about Moorish Grilled Pumpkin Salad (crisp chickpeas, goat’s cheese and an orange-mustard vinaigrette).
No more, if I read any more from their menu I will sink into hell, or may be heaven. Hell, heaven, it’s all here down on earth, my friends. Have a fruitful New Year while ushering in 2025 and a happier world all around from north to south, west to east!
Note: By the way I curiously wanted to find out more about Shepherd’s Pie origins. It’s reportedly a Scottish dish using lamb or mutton rather than beef, shepherds who herded sheep at the end of the day came home to shepherd’s pie, the minced meat usually topped by textured mashed potato to look like…er…cloudy sheep woolly fleece. It’s popular fare to celebrate St Patrick’s Day too for some reason…a hearty meaty dish for working folk to refuel after a long day’s hard work. In Britain they make shepherd’s pie of lamb mince and also called cottage pie. My vegetarian shepherd’s pie from Tapas Isabella’s was packed with minced veggies topped with mashed potato…nice! A little bit of Tabasco sauce or Worcestershire sauce would liven it up more I imagine, next time.