The Conkan Culinary Kaleidoscope-Book Reviews

Ethnographic singularities abound throughout the Konkan. Famously open to the world all by historic previous, this slender (not at all larger than 50 kilometers giant) shoreline on the Arabian Sea has peacefully absorbed waves of settlers over millennia.

That’s the place Zoroastrian refugees from Iran - who turned the Parsis - initially established themselves, in Sanjan (now Gujarat) throughout the seventh century. Earlier, in all probability means again to the Seleucid enlargement into Palestine 2200 years prior to now, obtained right here the Bene Israelis, the oldest Jewish diaspora of India. There are Africa-derived Siddhi clusters, and the wildly dispersed ‘Kokani’ Muslims part-descended from Arab migrants (over 40,000 now keep in Cape Metropolis alone). One different present incursion seems to have created the Chitpavan brahmins whose presence was first recorded on the cusp of the 18th century.

As traditionally understood, the Konkan spills up from the shoreline into the Western Ghats, and via the luxurious hills previous until they yield to the Deccan plains. Nonetheless political vicissitudes and the exigencies of colonialism imposed partitions, and it is revealing Konkani is the one language on the planet in daily use in 5 scripts: Latin, Perso-Arabic, Devanagiri, Malayalam and Kannada.

Nonetheless even when bewildering heterogeneity characterizes Konkani communal and ethnic sub-divisions, extremely efficient culinary undercurrents be a part of all through all caste, class and sectarian divides. Everyone relishes seafood, accompanied by regionally grown rice and coconuts. Their collective palate moreover reveals the widespread want for tangy sourness, attained variously from kokum (garcinia indica is indigenous), inexperienced mangoes, tamarind, tirphal (the native cousin of Sichuan peppercorn), hog plums, bilimbi or vinegar.

Possibly understandably, given the sheer enormity of this cultural panorama, no important compendious attempt has documented its confluential cuisines. Instead, there are piecemeal cookbooks rooted specifically particular person group views, normally that features equal elements reassembled kaleidoscopically to copy pressing specificities and proclivities. Each provides solely a tantalizing keyhole glimpse of the complete.

Jyotsna Shahane’s The Primary Konkan Cookbook - is an exceptionally well-conceived addition to this bookshelf, with its conceptual spine provided by Narayani Nayak’s 1952 conventional Cookery Craft (beforehand augmented and republished as 500 Simple Recipes in 1962). Nonetheless, it moreover illustrates the drawback of writing and rewriting meals books from what ethnologists identify circumscribed “custom provinces.” Blind spots grow to be institutionalized.

Thus, Shahane tells us Nayak’s e-book, extraordinarily creditably, “is notable because of the recipes won’t be particular to any caste or space; they span the delicacies of all of the Konkani-speaking group” even whereas making the obtrusive error that it predates “all completely different Konkani cookbooks by an excellent 15 years.” In precise truth, for just one occasion, various volumes of the bilingual English/Konkani The Goan Put together dinner’s Data Vo Goan Cuzneracho Sangat had been revealed by Pedro Damiao Dias in Bombay from 1894 onwards.

Leaving aside that quibble, The Primary Konkan Cookbook does differ delightfully by regional specialities, from the intensely flavourful Mangalorean kori gassi hen curry to six types of dosas (Jackfruit seed! Cucumber! Banana!), and choices a beautiful compilation of cooking phrases (eg: “Kootu is a thick curry with dal and greens as the first elements and with a little bit bit coconut masala added”). I notably favored the 5 language glossary: Prawns/jhinga are sigadi in Kannada, sungat in Konkani, and kolambi in Marathi.

Shahane’s roots won’t be throughout the Konkan (Nayak’s had been, from Udupi in Karnataka) nevertheless her meticulous technique is among the many hallmarks of the realm. The late celebrity chef Floyd Cardoz - who died in March from Covid-19 - as quickly as instructed me with good satisfaction, “the West now talks about sustainability, nevertheless we on a regular basis practised it.” As Shahane writes, “nothing was wasted. Every part of vegetable or fruit was used. Stalks, leaves and peels had been used to good affect in curries, chutneys and pickles. In a country the place many would not have adequate to eat, this resonated with me.”

One different praiseworthy dimension to The Primary Konkan Cookbook is its inclusion of suitably guide non-vegetarian recipes, along with three for beef, although Nayak deployed the euphemism “meat”, and Shahane has retained it. In precise truth, Konkanis relish the whole thing from wild boar to fruit bat (certain, it’s not merely Wuhan) alongside every attainable fish, crustacean and bivalve. Subsequent to in all probability solely Nagaland, there’s no space in India a lot much less vegetarian.

Sadly, whereas all that fantastic omnivorousness persists unabated, modern-day brahminical revivalism forces its acknowledgement into the shadows. That’s an India-wide disadvantage, nevertheless notably stark throughout the Konkan coast’s prolonged stretches in Maharashtra, the place in all probability essentially the most major meals habits are being efficiently effaced.

Thus, the one drawback to Saee Koranne-Khandekar’s impressively encyclopedic, and in every other case fully good Pangat, A Feast: Meals and Lore from Marathi Kitchens is its conspicuously perfunctory inclusion of meat and fish. There are solely a unadorned handful of mutton and hen recipes, and the seafood half consists of precisely eleven (towards this, my battered, beloved 20-year-old Standard Type of Goa by Kumudini Usgaokar and Shama Sardesai incorporates successfully over 100, with one different dozen for varied kinds of greens with prawns added to them).

Koranne-Khandekar’s e-book was launched on the 2019 Goa Arts + Literature Pageant, the place I am the co-curator along with the eminent Konkani creator Damodar Mauzo. She was a powerful delegate, with an exhaustive mastery of the meals of Maharashtra along with their cultural, social and political context. That distinctive wealth of expertise is showcased marvellously in her e-book, with meticulously researched sections on areas, communities, gear, methods, staples, and diverting essays on “recipes and rhymes” and “fashion crafts.”

In reality, its Konkan districts are solely part of India’s third largest state. Maharashtra is equivalent measurement as Italy, with twice the inhabitants, and far bigger culinary complexity. Koranne-Khandekar writes, “In an effort to level out myself and, in the end, anyone eager to concentrate, that there are unplumbed depths to Marathi meals, I obtained down to look at (and eat!) as lots as I would of the fare that Maharashtra has to produce.” In the end, she moved on-line, “to rediscover the numerous sub-cuisines of the state and understand them throughout the context of topography and produce, historic background and migratory patterns, and literature.”

That 2015 switch was throughout the thick of an unprecedented improvement of - primarily women – passionate residence cooks, college students and professionals flocking to the Net to debate, debate, and have enjoyable meals. On this exponential enlargement of the culinary media universe (Shahane is one different pioneer blogger), our info of the spectacular number of the subcontinent exploded in all directions. All that’s in Pangat, as Koranne-Khandekar ranges very extensively from Khandesh to Marathwada and Vidarbha, and once more to the coast, about which she exactly writes, “the variety of cuisines obtainable by the dimensions of the Konkan is mind-boggling.”

Be taught further: Evaluation: Enterprise of Type by Centre for Science and Setting

Coincidentally, exactly as soon as I began to be taught Koranne-Khandekar’s e-book, I obtained the distinguished historian Fatima da Silva Gracias’s quirky and absorbing Cozinha de Goa: A Glossary on Meals . The two readings flowed productively into each other, completely completely different approaches to comparable storehouses of private experience and evaluation.

Whereas her e-book contains too many typos to be fully forgivable, Dr Gracias has compiled a helpful repository of fascinating info all through contexts, and as well as admirably states up entrance “it does not declare to be all full, it is going to be troublesome to take motion given our composite custom.”

Vivek Menezes is a photographer, creator and co-founder of the Goa Arts and Literature Pageant