The Miracle of the Masala
Rosalyn D'Mello
www.rosalyndmello.com
'How do you transpose taste?' I wondered, especially in the
absence of the ingredients responsible for the aura of a
dish. For months, I had been experimenting with
approximations to achieve equivalence.
Could locally available sun-dried tomato stand in
for kokum (a sour berry that grows along the Konkan
coast and contributes tartness to our coconut-based
prawn curry, whose black flesh floats in the
kashmiri-chilli-turmeric-infused gravy, reminding
you of sharks in an open sea)? Among my earliest
triumphs was Galinha Cafreal, a Goan recipe of
African origin that depends entirely on a paste
(masala) made with fresh coriander and green
chilli, among other kadak (hard) spices.
Sensing we were on the verge of yet another stringent
lockdown, one that would forbid us once again from leaving
our Gemeinde for reasons other than work or health, in the
beginning of February I contrived with my partner to devise a
'last supper'.
We decided to visit the weekly pop-up seafood-selling van in
Neumarkt, on the other side of the Etsch valley from Tramin,
where we live. I had wholeheartedly embraced the uniqueness
of South Tyrolean cuisine and had been 'studying' its
specificities since 2019, when I decided to 'enter' the
German language through this local kitchen. But recently,
I'd begun to crave flavours more native to my creolised
ancestral kitchen. I wasn't homesick, rather, my tongue had
begun to feel 'displaced'.
Over the ten years I spent in Delhi, I ensured my kitchen was
always stocked with palm toddy vinegar that I'd bring back
with me upon returning from trips to Goa. Could I make do
with red wine vinegar abundantly available in the winery in
which we live?
My research revealed that my substitution would in
fact be suggestive of a form of etymological
return. The very existence of toddy vinaigre,
without which the Goan Catholic kitchen would be
incomplete, is allegedly premised on the longing of
Portuguese colonisers who, craving the fermented
acidity of red wine vinegar, supposedly strategised
by allowing sap (sur) collected from the bud of the
coconut flower to rest in a container for 21 days.
The still evolving discourse of Goan Catholic
cuisine remains punctuated by cravings felt over
land and sea.
My father, who perfected his approach to cooking when he
moved to Kuwait in the 80s to work as an engineer, bequeathed
me a simple culinary principle: the beginning of creativity
was in conspiring to make do with what was available rather
than go desperately in search of the elusively not-at-hand.
>From my mother I inherited the gestural methodologies that
constitute resourceful behaviour. Among her many great
skills is her ability to invest loving energy in generating
so much goodwill among the people around her that they
conceive of her well-being as an extension of their own.
My desire for saltwater fish hit its apotheosis during my
first winter in South Tyrol. It was more than just a seafood
craving.
I missed the messiness of my family's affections;
the awkwardness of our loud, noisy, opinionated interactions;
the comfort of being seated around a table; the prelude to
that moment, fussing around together in the kitchen and then
assembling our spread, finally waiting for everyone to
gather, followed by our recitation of the 'Grace'. Though
Catholic, my partner's parents are not religious like mine.
Once, after having cooked for my partner and his family, I
found myself on the verge of making the sign of the cross,
readying for prayer. I must have subconsciously felt 'at
home'. I stopped myself.
When my partner took a token from the fish truck and we took
our place in the queue, I began to survey from afar what
might be on offer.
As we waited our turn, I was drawn back to my childhood in
Mumbai, to weekly trips to the market in Kalina, where my
dad's office was headquartered, about 10 km away from where
we lived, in Kurla.
As a successful bureau-registered private nurse, my mother
worked daily 12-hour shifts, leaving home at 7am and
returning at 9pm. My brothers, who were much older than my
sister and I, had their own lives.
My father administered the kitchen. My sister and I were his
accomplices. We accompanied him to Kalina once a week. We
watched him playfully haggle with the Koli (indigenous
inhabitants of Mumbai) fisherwomen. We were besotted by
their gold jewellery and their bold demeanour, the polar
opposite of coy and feminine.
My father was a loyal customer to two sisters who
watched us grow into adolescence and adulthood and
still recognise us today. As children, my sister
and I often tried to imitate them in our
role-playing games. We learned to identify fresh
from days-old fish, to clean prawns, to bargain
respectfully, and to nurture relationships with the
people who sold us the ingredients we would bring
back home and then arrange in the refrigerator.
My father portioned out the fish in repurposed milk bags and
taught us to store pre-prepared vegetables, so as to
economize on time. His version of vacuum-pack involved him
sucking the air from the transparent storage bag.
He taught my sister and I the basics of cooking and
much more, how to hold a knife, how to poach
tomatoes, how to use flour to thicken a sauce, how
to use ketchup like a balancing ingredient, how to
emulsify oil, egg and vinegar, and most
importantly, the combinations (masalas) of the
various spices that were responsible for individual
dishes. When my mother retired, she, unaware of
the extent of our kitchen training, instituted her
own informal education, allowing me to perceive
their individual approaches to the same dish.
When I inhabit kitchens and/or marketplaces my body performs
inherited movements, speaks a language not wholly its own.
The gestures I make are part of a generational lineage. I am
inadvertently repeating actions I have internalised through
deeply attentive observation and conditioning. For instance,
I rarely ever go to the market with a preconfigured list of
ingredients. I seldom decide beforehand what I will make. I
follow my father's method. I go to see what there is. I
remain attentive to what speaks most to me and structure my
approach responsively.
My style is a synthesis of my parents', which is the
syncretic culmination of what they inherited from their
parents, relatives, and neighbours. In Kurla alone, you
didn't have just an East Indian, Goan, and Mangalorean
version of Sorpotel, a dish of complex origins, made with pig
offal. Each home had their own improvised or inherited
mysterious twist.
Kurla is a part of Mumbai that had a sizeable
community of East Indians (a Catholic community
indigenous to the Mumbai Metropolitan region),
Mangaloreans (Konkani-speaking Christians from
Portuguese Goa and Daman who migrated to South
Canara between 1500 and 1763), and Bombay Goans.
Authenticity was a construct to which we could
never relate. All our individual kitchens had been
symbiotically contaminated by our migrant
histories.
Why one East Indian housewife's fugias (ball-shaped fried,
fermented bread, often eaten with sorpotel) tasted better
than another's was anyone's guess. Each time we asked for
the recipe we'd find, to our dismay, that despite being
practised cooks, our version was never as good.
Till today the myth persists that an East Indian housewife
will never give you the full recipe, always leaving something
out. I'm convinced what we perceived as missing from either
the oral or written recipe was an intuitive wisdom unique to
the cook's body. The only way to truly learn how to make
something is to be present while it is being made, to bear
witness, to see it with your own eyes.
When our number was finally called at the fish stand, I
glanced at what was on offer. My partner translated into
Italian my desired quantities -- a kilo of finger-long,
pink-hued prawns; a quarter kilo of sardines (tarla) and a
mesh bag full of large-ish clams (tisrios). In the
three-to-five-minute span between placing our order and it
being supplied, I had already conjured our lunch menu.
Once home, I let the clams soak in water while I prepped the
prawns, using a toothpick to draw out the intestines, and pat
dried the gutted sardines. I could hear the clams react to
their new environment, the shells softly unclenching while I
waited for my mother to respond to my video-call. If she
were administering the meal, she would have sat upon a wooden
stool fitted with a serrated blade, rubbing the sardines
against its edge to descale them, splitting the shells of the
clams against it to open them out.
Had I access to freshly shaved coconut (scraped in Goa with
the same device), I would have stir-fried the tisrio in
lightly spiced onions fried with tempered cumin (jeera) and
infused with a splash of red wine (my mother uses port wine),
finished with a drizzle of coconut scrapings. Instead, I
steamed the clams in a broth seasoned with onion and white
wine. I extracted the flesh, discarding the shells and
preserving the stock.
I would make a tisrio pulao (clam pilaf) and flavour it with
the subtle richness of saffron. Meanwhile, once my mother
confirmed that she did indeed use ginger-garlic paste in her
tarla marinade, I forayed forward. I used turmeric, red
chilli powder, ginger-garlic paste, salt, and red wine
vinegar massaging this mix into and over the sardine flesh.
As it sat in this rub, I made my Cafreal-ish masala, grinding
coriander, chilli and other spices. I was suddenly unsure
whether I was meant to use tamarind or vinegar, and so
quickly video-called my sister, unintentionally interrupting
her siesta. Tamarind, she confirmed. I took a small ball
from the stash I'd managed to get at the Pakistani-run
'Oriental' shop in Bozen.
I soaked it in warm water and when it had surrendered enough
of its pulp, added it to my ground masala. I had finally got
the hang of the hand mixer. It was a decent substitute for
an actual mixer, which itself was a substitute for the
grinding stone my grandmother, Rosie, like many Goan
housewives, used to make masalas.
My mother once told me how reluctant she had been to switch
to the 'modern' mixie, complaining it compromised on texture.
Soon enough, when she was better introduced to its
convenience, she happily adapted. I marinated the prawns in
this fragrant green paste knowing its flavour would be
entirely transformed upon contact with heat. The tender
chlorophyll shade would turn into a caramelized green.
My partner summoned his parents to the kitchen as soon as the
sardines and the prawns were fried. I knew from the smells
alone they were both pitch perfect. Although I didn't
vocalise it because my German is still too basic to bear the
weight of emotion, I knew I had managed to metabolize my
dislocation.
This feast that had found its way to this table
through circumlocutory routes was a celebration of
my past and my future, where I came from and where
I am presently sprouting roots. Tongues were
loosened that afternoon. My culinary efforts were
rewarded in kind with candid stories my
parents-in-law took turns to narrate, about my
partner's paternal grandmother, who was widowed
early in life. I was being implicated in their
oral network of references, citations and familial
histories. I felt like South Tyrol belonged to me
a little bit more. When my parents called later
for a debriefing of how my feast was received, I
responded with feeling, in Konkani -- kabar zaale.
They were proud.
>From Arts of the Working Class, Spring 21.* Issue 16
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Rosalyn D'Mello (she/her) is a feminist writer, art critic,
columnist, essayist, editor and researcher. She is the
author of A Handbook for My Lover and is a TBA21 Ocean
Fellowship Mentor for 2021. She lives in Tramin in South
Tyrol, Italy.
