Goa pics thread 1: noms (pic and food porn warning) [View all]
So my wife and I went to Goa this weekend. I get now why the Portuguese wanted to keep it (India had to invade it in 1961 to annex it, though everyone who lived there then could stay as residents and keep their Portuguese citizenship). I'm still processing the beach and cathedral pictures, but I thought I would share some food porn I took at the restaurants we ate at.
The first night we ate at the hotel. The main restaurant was an open-flame grill on the beach with tables on the deck by the pool. The view of the Indian Ocean was great but the lighting didn't work with my phone camera, so I got a picture of the pool bar on the other side of us instead:
The drink of the day was the Cuba Libre. They make it strong.
Outdoors, at dusk, in India is asking for mosquitoes to eat you, so they had these smokepots by the table. Worked great.
For starters, I had beer battered squid:
And my wife had tandoori crab claws (they have a fry station and a tandoor somewhere, apparently; we could just see the flame grill):
For mains, I had the seared red snapper with buttered carrots ("carroted butter" would be more accurate):
And my wife had the baked stuffed crab:
That's heavy cream, crab meat, and a little bit of gram flour. Oy.
For dessert, my wife got a crème brûlée with biscotti:
And I had a tiramisu served the coolest way I've ever seen:
The next night we went to a place called "The Quarterdeck", which is basically a similar theory: lots of grilled seafood, outdoor seating:
(That's a casino boat in the background; the bay is full of them and raucous booze cruises full of drunk Russian backpackers)
We got a prawn tikka malai:
Baked stuffed crabs again (much less rich than at the hotel):
A prawn biryani:
And a squid curry:
That bread next to the curry is called "pao", it's a Portuguese bread that's a local specialty. Interesting side note: Portuguese "pao" came into both Goan and Chinese ("bao", as in "long bao"
, while the cognate in French, "pain", came into Vietnamese as "banh" (as in "banh mi" . The English "bun" may be a cognate or a borrowing, but its history is obscure, etymology.com tells me.
No trip to Goa would be complete without eating at Mum's Kitchen. We had lunch there twice. It was amazing. The place is on the main beach drag in Panjim (the capital) with a nice privacy screen and cool garden with a koi pond in the front:
The first day, we started with chicken sekhna and fried sardines (they were amazing):
that's garlic mayonnaise for dipping the fried sardines in...
Then we got lamb xacutti:
and chorizo curry:
Holy crap that curry was good.
The second visit, we got prawn peri peri:
Rawa fried mussels (rawa = dredged in gram flower and a certain spice mix):
A chorizo pallau (absolutely incredible -- so smoky):
And... drum roll please... the queen of Goan cuisine; the inimitable; the one and only
vindaloo:
Vesuvian. Hadean. Infernal. Lip-numbing but not taste-deadening. The pork was tender, the flavor of the chilies came through the heat, and the sauce was rich without being glutinous; the fat did not separate from the tomato puree.
(Incidentally, although "aloo" is Hindi for "potato", "vindaloo" is etymologically unrelated, and contains no potatoes -- though many Indian restaurants in the US put potatoes in because people get confused otherwise. The word comes from the Portuguese "vin d'alho", "vinegar and olive oil", which is the base of the sauce. A true vindalho/vindaloo is pork, vinegar, tomato puree, olive oil, and lots and lots of chilies -- a Portuguese sailor's hash that became popular with the locals. Interestingly, potatoes, tomatoes, and chilies are all new world food, so any Indian dish containing them -- and that's quite a few -- is a result of European contact)
To sop it up we used fresh pao:
and we finished with two typical Goan desserts (yes, at lunch -- sue me), flan and bebinca:
Damn, that was good food...
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