Sun, sand, and sorpotel: Why I keep going back to Goa for the food

When the Portuguese, led by Afonso de Albuquerque, seized Goa from the Sultan of Bijapur in 1510, it marked the beginning of the Estado da Índia. Over the next 150 years of Portuguese rule, several ingredients and culinary techniques travelled from South and Central America to Indian shores. Fruits we now consider commonplace — sapota (chikoo), cashew, and the famed Alphonso mango—arrived during this time.

The cuisine of Goa, which I love with its spicy, smooth gravies and use of pork and fish and seafood, is thanks to the Catholic monks of Goa who developed this cuisine –– a mix of Iberian with Saraswath Hindu sensibilities and flavours. Goa’s Hindu Saraswat cuisine and Saraswat Brahmin cuisine are worth trying, and many home chefs now open up their houses to guests for meals in Goa.

That Goan Hindu food is vegetarian is a big misconception. But even the Brahmins, much like in Bengal, eat chicken, mutton and fish. Given that there’s almost 100 miles of coastline and innumerable ponds and rivers, and rivulets, the love for fish is understandable.

One of the most defining Portuguese influences is the introduction of vinegar to Goan cooking—particularly coconut vinegar. Without it, you can’t achieve the trademark tang of pork vindaloo or sorpotel. These iconic dishes, which I often crave from my Delhi kitchen, rely heavily on vinegar, chillies, and slow cooking to bring out their full flavour. While I can manage a decent vindaloo, I’ve yet to master sorpotel—an intensely flavourful curry made with pork, liver, and pork fat, slow-cooked with tamarind, vinegar, and chillies.

Goan cuisine also has a kick to it, from the chillies used, which is often tamed down by the use of coconut milk. Chillies, in fact, feature generously across Goan recipes. The red ones go into the fiery peri peri and recheado masalas. Chicken cafreal, on the other hand, is green and herby, spiced with green chillies and coriander. Recheado, slathered over fresh fish and grilled or fried, is particularly addictive, best enjoyed on its own or with fluffy rice.

Bread in Goa is made from rice flour, sometimes molasses is added, it is leavened with palm toddy and you get round buns called Bole. Sannas are a round steamed bread made from rice flour fermented overnight with toddy. In Goan villages, it’s commonplace to see poders (bakers) with baskets of fresh bread selling their wares to homes or headed to local bakeries to stock them up with poee (a wholewheat flatbread) and pao (a square-shaped fluffy bread with a hard crust), or the bangle-shaped crusty bread called kakon, which is often dipped into tea in the evenings.

Of all Goan dishes, my favourite remains sorpotel, especially when made by a friend’s mother in Goa. I used to religiously stop at a small Goan takeaway in Khar, Mumbai, on my way back to Delhi, to pick up freshly made pork sorpotel and vindaloo. Nothing comforts quite like them.

One of the most defining Portuguese influences is the introduction of vinegar to Goan cooking—particularly coconut vinegar. (Photo: Freepik)

Pork is a very key ingredient in Goan food. Vindaloo – nothing like the vindaloo you get in England – is flavoured with the dried rind of the kokum fruit. Pork assado is marinated in feni. Another favourite delicacy of mine and one which people who can’t handle the heat of chillies should try is the caldine, which is a yellow curry which uses turmeric and is primarily a fish or prawn preparation. Much of the food in Goa uses vinegar to almost pickle the food to survive the heat and humidity of the state. Prawn balchao, again not for the faint-hearted, is prepared by cooking prawns with a lot of onions, vinegar and chilis to make a sweet and sour prawn pickle.

No Goan meal, in my view, is complete without dessert. While bebinca, dodol, and dos de grao hold their place, the under-rated serradura—or “sawdust pudding”—is my personal favourite. A humble Portuguese dessert made by layering whipped cream and finely crushed Marie biscuits, it’s cool, creamy, and perfect for Goa’s heat.

Sadly, many restaurants in Goa today are moving away from their roots, serving everything from German and Greek to Thai and even Bengali fare. But for a real taste of Goa, seek out the old favourites—tucked-away homes and family-run establishments that still cook with tradition and heart.

Next week, I’ll be writing on kathi rolls and the rolls I have encountered across the country.