By Tara Narayan

WHILE my three sisters scattered across the world were in Goa, recently, and staying at the lovely complex of the Santana Beach Resort at Candolim (which has its own nicely done up beach shack Kalamari) I was charmed to discover that at breakfast buffet they had a choice of drinking these most delectable “infused water” — a huge jug of water with thinly sliced oranges, cucumbers, lemon and a bunch of fresh mint leaves swirling in it, pour and drink and it’s so refreshing chilled that I promptly fell for this so called infused or infusion water!
I mean if you can’t drink water from a spring in the mountains of the Himalaya or Switzerland or the mountains of the Himalaya or even an old Goan well lost in some deep dark forest home…you may as well drink infused water to revive your sense of feeling alive! Actually, it’s an old story, dropping fruit into water to alkalinize it and relishing it…life-giving water is one way to drop all your cares, by all means add some ice cubes in your infused water!
Now I’m dreaming up all kinds of infused water combos…in the old days whenever I found the fresh kokum fruit I’d quarter it and drop it in a jug of water and in half-an-hour lo and behold I would get this gorgeous fragrantly pink water, a faint hint of roses about it, just drink up. Truly fruit infused water is to live for, everyone should take to it to help their digestive system turn from more acidic to more alkaline!
Check it out. Make your own infused water to drink at home if you don’t like plain old tap or boiled or filtered water, I know some folk who don’t; funny or not funny, they prefer to drown themselves in bottles of cold drinks like Coca-Cola and Limca and all the other market place industrial sugar-doped bottled beverages; adults gulp down these sugary carcinogenic drinks and so do their children. It’s one way to set yourself up to pickled organs in body beautiful of course, and then don’t complain if you wake up one morning with pain oozing somewhere and the next thing you know you may be stricken with a sugar problem or cancer and other things in between for truly the body is a marvelous highly-evolved creation but we all know that and if we don’t…too bad, suffer!
I MEAN in Hinduism we’re supposed to respect the body as a temple and I always like to imagine that the heart is sort of kalyana mandapa and the soul the sanctum sanctorum …the mind? A garden of paradise with a zillion flowers blooming smiles of goodwill or…er….a desert of original serpants!
BUT to move on here I find that over my recent foodie adventures folk across all walks of life love our desi range of appetizers or should I say our north Indian chaat range, even the hubby is happy with a dahi papri chaat in the evening for quick fix early dinner, but he wants more of the fryum puri and they must be soft and crunchy, not hard and hurtful for his gums…the rest is easy to do, fix the chaat item number I mean. Be it the favorite pani puri or bhelpuri or be it sev puri or dahi papri chaat or samosa chaat or ragda patice chaat, etcetera, the combo are many nowadays but I stay with the half-a-dozen original recipes from maybe Uttar Pradesh maybe. Where was chaat savoury appetizers of desi origin born? In oldest city of India Benaras maybe, correct me if I’m wrong, after all Nita Ambani went all the way to Benaras to find her favorite chaatwallah and made him set up a Benaras chaat street at her son Anant’s shaadi some time ago!

But to stay with good chaat item numbers they’re very variable quality and sometimes I go to Chat Street down town Panaji where my friend Sonia supplies the basic chaat fryums of pani puri and and papri puri, plus the real gram flour or besan sev, etcetera, and I know her stuff is reasonably quality conscious. The other place I like down town is the chaat counter at Sweet Nation although they’re overpriced now after the marketing blitz they went on to promote themselves with their Rs1 snacks some time ago and which saw endless queuing up all day long outside the place.
All that’s over now at Sweet Nation and the prices are hiked beyond imagination now but the chaat numbers are decent and here I go some evening to pack up a dahi papri chaat…as usual begging for more of the crispy papri puri! But Samantha here always tells me everything is accounted for and they may not give me more papri puri separately for money or for love because I’m a regular for their chaat items!
Funny or not funny they have introduced a ridiculous scheme of giving you “boondis” (points) so that if you order beyond Rs350 you may get a chaat item free! At first it was Rs250 and now it is Rs350…it’s just a game to make you buy more than you need or want and damn stupid if you’re asking me. Last time around I appealed if against my 12,506 boondis I could get an extra helping of the papri puri? But it was nothing doing. Sell me an entire packet then! Nothing doing. The staffers at Sweet Nation are young and politeness itself and even if they agree with all my arguments, they tell me their hands are tied…Ma’am go talk to the management! I will.
ANYWAY, I’ve decided that buying such crunchy evening delights are so expensive now, I’m going to just do them at home: Buy both types of puri from Chat Street or from Sonia Jalan directly, and my friend Sonu Jaiswal says he will supply me with the genuinely besan or gram flour sev (crispy vermicelli) and also the pani puri of “aata” meaning real whole wheat flour…but for the “papri puri” I must look elsewhere. The market versions elsewhere are usually terribly adulterated, greasy and a half burnt lot.
Once with the basics it’s easy to fix a chaat item at home, quick and simple…keep the crunchies in air tight containers, boil and cube potatoes or do vatana mash, chopped green coriander, a tamarind chutney and a green chili chutney, chaat masala of course. You make it, you make it as you like it and homemade curd need not be sweetened as the chaat shop version is, some sweeter than another. Okay, no more buying of chaat item numbers from outside in 2025, one more new year resolution! Make even the green pani puri flavorful water at home, minty and tangy…it’s a great tummy cleanser if you drink a bit more of it and some friends of mine do when they think their stomach needs a boost to evacuate!
Okay, no more.
WHAT did my sisters from “Amrika” and New Zealand bring me? This time the Amrika sister got me a huge pack of these delectable Donsuemor Traditional Madeleines soft and moist…” When I saw them I realized these are the basic “madeleines” which some of the high end cake shops in Panjim get from abroad and then they dress them up very artistically with fondant and marzipan and so on…and retail for an order at a fancy price!
In fact, the foreign connected Goan patisseries do get quite a few primary things from the Middle Eastern market or well, there are agents in Panaji who get and deliver certain popular demands from abroad like say some chocolates or wines or other liquor and liqueur…and the longer shelf life goodies like say these Donsuemor “madeleines” my sister got me. They’re almost over, my dears. My New Zealand always gets me dark Whitttaker’s chocolates and Manuka honey. I’m reminded of what my youngest sister Kalpana in New Zealand now once said, “We grumble the most at home but home is where we get treated the best!” Unforgettable, smoke on that, my dears.
What did I do while my trio of sisters were in Goa to say hello to me and also holiday? Lived a little bit of the good life for a few days, that’s all! Wining and dining a few upmarket places here and there by the Aguada-Sinquerim-Candolim-Calangute-Bage beach side, Goa’s famous and infamous Konkan riviera, perhaps superior or not superior to the Mediterranean riviera! I won’t say Konkan cuisine is a healthier cuisine than the Mediterranean riviera cuisine!
At the beach resort where my sisters stayed, a most beautiful resort, I discovered the executive chef was a Bengali chef all the way from west Bengal and the caldin fish curry I ordered was so terribly spicy, when I asked, he came to say hello and confessed that he’d used a packet of so called “caldin” masala and the Indians like it hot anyway. I felt like just washing out the excellent kingfish cubes in the curry and eating those alone! That’s what I did more or less in the end, my tongue burned. Most tourists don’t know that a caldin-style fish curry is the Portuguese fish curry and the mildest, but exquisitely flavorful of fish curries in Goan cuisine repertoire of fish curries…there’s more of fresh coconut milk in it than dry chili red. A real good caldin curry is to live for and not die for! Only Portuguese-influenced Goan housewives like my Amanda Aguiar does a mean caldin fish curry. Goa has an amazing wide repertoire of masala formulae from the traditional simple jirem mirem to rechiedo, then cafreal, ambotik, caldin is hard to find…the stores offer many brands of wet or dry powder masala mixes for doing quick fish or chicken or lamb or pork or beef curries. Rechiedo and caldin are not meant to be spiced by the hottest of red or green chilies…and if any Goan fish curry is not accompanied by a side helping of “chepnim” mango, that is water pickled sliced green mango, don’t order it whatever the fancy price!
The sisters have departed after some happy times and it’s back to humdrum life for me. Wishing all my readers here a more fruitful 2025!
NOTE: My Mumbai sister brought me the winter-time water pickle of amba haldi, an old favorite of mine. It’s a combo of slivers of fresh golden turmeric and the ivory “ambo haldi” or mango ginger which one may look for high and low but can’t find in Panaji market. If you see any, buy some for me and I will collect and also compensate. Mango ginger has a most tantalizing sour flavor and it marries well with the golden turmeric.