I found no aloo in my vindaloo

The delicacies of Goa:
For me vacation means not having a todo list to look into every 30 minutes. But the next thing about a vacation is the food. I love food and I love eating. But I am not as lucky as I was 10 years back with eating, as I tend to put on weight now a days. Some actress or model has famously said that "no food tastes as good as being thin". That is not true for me. For me a lot of food taste better than being thin. But I don't want to be fat either. So I go in for the balancing act between eating and still not eating too much. The only time when this balance tilts a little to the eating too much side is when I am on vacation. This was true while in Goa on my last vacation too. We ate at restaurants with waiters in crisp uniforms, with waiters who bring water with one finger in it and all the variants in between. We ate at a bar in which the owner barked "upstairs" even before I entered. Once my eyes got used to the dim light inside I saw a bar full of men at various stages of drunkenness staring at us and realised why he shouted. But that bar was where I had my best meal from this travel. So food was one major (if not "the" major) part of my vacation in Goa.

When we were on our way back to the airport, we were comparing notes on which meal was our best meal and I realised disappointingly that I should have kept notes on each meal and the restaurant and it would have been fodder for a good blog. Then I thought at least I can write on the dishes I have had. So here goes a small list of dishes I tried in Goa and my take on them.

Serradura - I already wrote about this earlier. So this looks like the winner, nah, it was just that it was the easiest for me to even think about trying. But still, this is a yummy dessert.

Dodol - Dodol tasted somewhat like Kerala halva. It was not as firm as halva, so it almost felt like someone set out to make halva and got tired towards the end and said this is enough and left it a little loose. May be I tasted this at the wrong place, so I didn't take to it that much. But still worth trying out. Here is a recipe and pictures for the same from Flavours of Mumbai.

Costaz Bebinca

Bebinca - I started eating bebinca on the same day I landed in Goa and kept eating almost everyday till I found Serradura. I also picked up 2 packets of bebinca to share with friends and family back home. It is like a layered Kerala halva and very delicious, especially when eaten with ice-cream. I thought I will make it, but when I saw the 9 egg yolks in the recipe, I have postponed it. I hate recipes which ask either for egg yolk or egg white alone. I don't know what to do with the other part. I have to plan to make 2 recipes together sometime. Here is the recipe for bebinca.

Balchao - Balchao is a spicy, vinegary gravy and I ate the pork version of it in Goa. It is terribly spicy and almost made me faint. I couldn't find a pork balchao recipe, but here is one for a prawn one. It looks like prawn balchao is more popular than pork balchao.
 
Xacuti - Xacuti is also a spicy dish, again with the vinegary flavour, its special ingredient being poppy seeds. Here is a recipe for a fish xacuti. This one made me cry but I didn't faint.

Vindaloo - I have been looking forward to eating vindaloo as much as I was looking forward to jumping into the sea. But every time I ended up eating vindaloo I searched for the aloo (potato) in the vindaloo, sometimes even rolling my eyes at the unsuspecting waiter, when I found no aloo. Vindaloo is also another spicy gravy together with, hold your breath, vinegar. The colour of this gravy being darkish brown from the almost burnt onion made into paste with vinegar. I figured after a few disappointments that traditionally, vindaloo doesn't contain any aloo. But even now I feel it would taste good with potato in the gravy and if ever I plan to make vindaloo, I will make with aloo. Here is a recipe for the traditional chicken vindaloo without the aloo.

Sorpotel - Sorportel is almost liked pickled meet, small pieces of parboiled meat cooked in a vinegar based gravy. I ate this on the first day I landed in Goa and never managed to find it again. I am not much of a meat cook, so I wonder whether I will ever make it also.

Ambot tik - Finally one dish which is not flavoured sour by adding vinegar, but this is still sour but with tamarind.  This dish is mostly made with fish and that too shark. In all the savoury dishes I have here, this might be the only one I will cook. Here is the recipe. For all the other dishes I will wait till I go to Goa again. Or in case you decide to make any of these, please let me know. I can become the helper and taster, rolled in one.

Serradura

I am really scared when it comes to cooking. Once I have decided to cook/bake something, I will keep reading, re-reading the recipe. Find alternate recipes, check them also and do a lot of stalling before I actually set out to do it. This prepping-me-up time could be any where from 1 month up. I have a list of things which I want to cook stuck up on my fridge. This includes marshmallows, pav bhaji, cupcakes, .... I made this list 2 months back and the only thing I have tried in this list is cupcakes. I baked my first batch of cupcakes a month back and took them to office to my colleagues. After that day, I have colleagues who tell me they won't come to my meetings if I don't bring something baked and others who just give me ultimatums and specify what they want baked and brought. But I just keep waiting, may be because the doubt on the outcome is what is so scary for me.

I liked Serradura, which the very friendly waiter made me taste in Goa. I liked it so much that I came back the next day for lunch again and sprinted through the main course so I could reach Serradura. So when I was back in Bangalore I searched for the recipe and kept reading and re-reading. But it was surprising that I did it within one week of getting back. 

Serradura or Macau sawdust pudding is a no cook dessert, very rich, with just cream, condensed milk and crushed biscuits in it. Very simple. The recipe is available here.   

But the consistency of the cream is important (now I know :) ). This was the first time I was beating cream to get it into soft peaks and then hard peaks. I kept beating and checking for the peaks, they just never came. Then when I realised that the cream is turning to butter I stopped, added the condensed milk and set them into cappuccino cups layered with the crushed biscuits. In the Serradura which I ate in Goa there was just a small layer, rather a sprinkling of biscuit on top alone. But the recipes I read call for a more generous layering. So I layered rather generous amounts.
Here comes the reason of my being scared, fear of failure. The dessert turned out nothing like I had eaten in Goa. But on its own, it was still ok, if I scoop out the creamy concoction without too much of the saw dust. The friends on whom I have experimented had not eaten it earlier, so they couldn't complain. But I have learned from the experience is that, if you are scared of something, just go ahead and do it. I follow this when I need to do something in front of an audience, just go do it and sit back and watch the fun, especially when there are others to follow. But this holds good when it comes to cooking also. So what was I scared about; some wasted ingredients and some bad comments. Nah, strike off the first one, it is just the second. So from now on, it is "Just do it".

Oh, all these connections!

I finished my 11-day trip to Goa yesterday and together with that finished reading "A short history of nearly everything" by Bill Bryson. There is nothing much to do in Goa, no, not much for 11 days, other than to go jump in the sea and romp around (I still have sea water in my ears )and eat. Eat, we did, fish and then fish and then more fish and some bebinca and then some serradura (more on these later). In between the romping and the eating, managed to visit a bird sanctuary, an archaeological museum, a cathedral and a church. But still 11 days is too much and though I have started reading the said book a few days before we started our journey, I just didn't reach beyond the first few pages. So it was "the" book for the trip.

The book is an awesome book and I really loved the author's style of writing. but the para that touched me the most is the following. I read and re-read the para as I was stunned by the multi layered reasons for various things which I have never connected up earlier. So here goes:

"Bipedalism is a demanding and risky strategy. It means refashioning the pelvis into a full load-bearing instrument. To preserve the required strength, the birth canal in the female must be comparatively narrow. This has two very significant immediate consequences and one longer-term one. First, it means a lot of pain for any birthing mother and a greatly increased danger of fatality to mother and baby both. Moreover, to get the baby's head through such a tight space it must be born while its brain is still small - and while the baby, therefore, is still helpless. This means long-term infant care, which in turn implies solid male-female bonding."

Now, reflect on this.

p.s: Bipedalism means moving around on 2 legs like human beings than on four like most other animals.