Dear All ,
Permit me to share a post that appeared on the Navhind times of the 14th June, 2012 and carried by the Goan Voice UK too. Thanks to all of you who have supported us, we hope many more will support the cause in the years to come. rene Navhind Times - Goa The Goan food connect Published on: June 13, 2012 - 22:25 More in: * iLIVE My grandmother was a fabulous cook closely followed by my mother. And is it not always so? The previous generation seems to have got their cooking right and try as we might we cannot replicate “that taste”. Here to help all of us struggling to get our Xacuti, Kodi and Caldin just right is the Goan Culinary Club Goa Chapter, which aims at preserving, promoting and standardising Goan cuisine for Goans, now and forever By Anuradha Das | NT BUZZ While Goans are crying themselves hoarse that their culture is losing out to the various influences (cultural invasion including the Western and Indian), while Goans are fighting fiercely for the survival, growth and continuity of their mother tongue, no thought is being given to another aspect that is as intrinsic to this land as its culture and language - its food. And the fault does not lie only in Goan homes where Goan cuisine competes with Continental, Thai, Chinese and other more popular Indian cuisine to win favour with the younger generation. The fault also lies with public eating places – shacks, restaurants and hotels – that are marketing Goa to visitors through so called “local” food. “What is authentic Goan food?” questions Odette Mascarenhas bluntly. “Do even we Goans have an idea?” “Look at what is marketed as Xacuti; as simple as that. We have been to so many places and been shocked at what is being passed off as this very fundamental Goan dish,” grouses Odette, saying that while it is understandable that there is a Goan Hindu and Goan Catholic variation of the dish with sub variations depending on whether the dish is cooked in North Goa or South Goa, what local eateries are passing off if beyond understanding. “In restaurants and star hotels in Goa there modified version of Goan dishes - more suitable to the foreign or non-Goan palette – are being marketed. Look at the Punjabis. Do they modify their chicken makhni to suit the world’s taste buds?” shoots Odette, winner of the 2008 Gourmand World Cook Book Awards. This apparently is not the end of Goan culinary woes. Young Goan chefs, training in the industry, do not want to specialise in Goan cuisine. Why? Because there is no market for Goan food. Not in the star restaurant in Goa or anywhere else. If you want to cook and sell Goan food then your best options are a small restaurant or shack. So, in short, mastering Goan cooking does nothing to further careers in the hospitality industry. “Nobody knows anything about Goan food. When I was in Paris to receive the Gourmand award I was asked what Goan food was like. The people there knew about Indian food, but not Goan food,” says Odette. With all this background, when Rene and Maria Baretto, co-founders of the Global Goan Club, a club that links Goan Associations all over the world and keeps Goan updated about what is happening where with the community, approached Odette to save and promote Goan cuisine, it was a meeting of minds on the same wavelength. And from this meeting was born the Goan Culinary Club Goa Chapter, with Odette and Joe Mascarenhas as co-founders. Slyvester D’Souza, Sheila Bar and Restaurant, Michael Mascarenhas, Flying Dolphin, Peter Fernandes, O Coqueiro, Edia Cotta, Alila Diva, Chef Rego, Taj, Mariotts, Resort Rio, Grand Hayatt and several other like-minded Goans are members of the club. The aim of this club is to educate people in what is authentic Goan cuisine while promoting the same worldwide. “It was important to revive the pride we have in our food,” says Odette, whose one hope for this club is that somewhere in the distant future it will have helped standardise local fare while maintaining indigenous authenticity. “We will take it one step at a time. First we have decided to convince professionals in the food industry to standardise the taste of Goan food. After all they are our ambassadors to the visiting world,” says Odette, co-founder of the Goan Culinary Club Goa Chapter, who is making it a point to tell star hotels that they have to at the very least have a corner for Goan food. “Just imagine, they are catering to tourists in Goa and don’t have Goan food on their menu. And if they do, it tastes nothing like the authentic stuff.” For starters the club has standardised the reichado masala, Xacuti (both north and south Goan) and prawn curry. Caldin and cafreal are on the list next. “At club gatherings, chefs from various hotels and restaurants interact with locals, cooking and tasting impartially, before finally zeroing on what judges think is the most authentic taste,” I am informed. Not only that, five-star chefs are taking the initiative to go to homes of local ladies to learn the entire process of cooking Goan dishes right from choosing of ingredients, to making of the masala, to the final preparation. The club also hopes to fix measures of various ingredients. “For most cooking done in Goa, if you ask the lady how much of what goes into the dish, you will be told one pinch of this and one fistful of that. The height is when you are told to estimate and add an ingredient. Everything lies in ‘haat gun’ - literally translated meaning “skill of the hand”,” says Odette in conclusion, maintaining that if the cuisine has to go on to the next generation, which is programmed to follow logical measures, then standardising measures is a must. Cuisines the world over are closely guarded to maintain authenticity and proprietary rights. Ladies who are gifted cooks closely guard their recipes seldom divulging key secret ingredients or methods. But for the sake of Goa and Goan cuisine these few like-minded individual have got together to share and take forward our food.in this Section 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 GOAN CULINARY CLUB : FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/394128890597761/ HAPPENINGS : BLOG: http://globalgoanculinaryclub.blogspot.co.uk/ Goan Voice UK : http://www.goanvoice.org.uk/ 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 WORLD GOA - KONKANI DAY -20TH of AUGUST, EVERY YEAR. GLOBAL GOAN FOOD FESTIVAL - 10TH to 20th of August, 2012 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
