My World of Food and Travel

I was hit by an intense aroma as I entered Raquel’s kitchen. It was an October evening last year. We were in Goa, at Roberto and Raquel’s quaint homestay, a house with a history of over 500 years. The aroma seemed faintly familiar. I looked at Raquel with wonder. She had an impish smile on her face. “I prepared Goan Choriz for you tonight, with noodles,” she said. “I know you will love it.” I did. And that beautiful meal, partaken sitting at their wooden dining table in the bright, airy kitchen, with Raquel’s three children running around, has remained as one of my cherished memories. It was Raquel’s dish that I remembered when I opened the packet of Del Monte pasta. After all, it is only food that can connect you to two different places with cuisines as different as chalk and cheese.  On an impulse, I decided to cook pasta, an Italian staple, with Goan Choriz or Goan pork sausages – a potent delicacy that only the feisty Goans can conjure up. Italy. The name ev...

Woohoo!! I am just back from a fabulous trip to Goa – the bestest trip ever to Goa. I am bursting at the seams with so many stories and so much to share with you guys. I hope I will be able to keep the excitement intact for the next few weeks, because, oh woe is me – I have a tremendous work schedule before me at office and I have to travel from tomorrow. Nooooo! *shudders in horror* Okay, let’s just stick to our happy ‘woohoo’ for the moment and not think about work.  Now, I am not much of a shopper, more so at touristy places, but I make it a point to buy at least one local-made thing from the places that I visit. This time in Goa, I bought the famed Goa sausages (they are not called Goan sausages, apparently). We get them in the cold storage shops in Bangalore (Lusitania Foods, Frazer Town), too, but it is more fun to buy the same thing from the place it actually belongs to, no?  Luckily for us, we were there on a Friday which turned out to be Market Day in Mapusa. A...

  We were in Coorg (Kodava district) last week and the region’s beauty just blew our minds away. As did its amazing cuisine – especially, the spicy Pandi Curry. It was a pork curry like no other I had tasted.  I should mention that my initiation to pork took place only after my marriage some 3 years back. In my life prior to marriage, I was brought up to believe that the pig was not a nice animal to have as food. All thanks to my dad whose favourite expletive was ‘ Suwar ka bachha’ (Son of a Pig).   The word pig, thus, would evoke in my mind visions of fat, grunting pigs wallowing in filthy water.   No, not a nice animal to eat, for sure. I had built up such a mental block against it that even when my friends and cousins spoke of pork with drooling mouths, I was not a bit tempted. People who knew I was from North East India would be surprised at my aversion to pork. “What? You don’t eat pork?” was the common refrain. All that changed after I got mar...