Eat with your poie

The hot and spicy tongue roast is served with a homemade barbeque sauce. Pics/Sameer Markande

An authentic Portuguese-inspired Goan dish is most often a riot of flavours. While it is spicy and tangy in equal parts, it also offers a sharp hint of sweetness, all of which come together to give the meal a rare kind of piquancy. For Mahim-based home chef Aaron Albert D'Souza, it's these flavours from his late dad's cooking that he misses the most.

Aaron Albert D'Souza, manager at Lower Parel bar Lord of The Drinks, began cooking during the lockdown as therapy, sharing his meals with followers on his Instagram page, The Goan Poie. He started taking orders in September last year

D'Souza, 32, lost his father, Marshall, when he was eight. "But, I distinctly remember the curries that he made. My palate, I feel, was shaped by his cooking." Marshall didn't leave behind any recipes, but D'Souza's quest to recreate those flavours, drew him into the kitchen early. "I may have been 10, when I asked my maternal grandmother Anatasia to share some recipes with me. Later, I'd try them out, along with my mother Patience. I still have some of those handwritten notes." His godfather Agnelo Menezes, who recently passed away due to Covid-19, also helped him hone his culinary skills.

But, cooking, he says, was just a hobby. After studying hotel management, he chose to take up a front office job. This changed, when he launched The Goan Poie in September last year. The happy accident, he says, was a result of the pandemic-induced lockdown.

D'Souza was manager at the Lord of The Drinks in Lower Parel, when the lockdown was announced. With the pub temporarily shuttering, D'Souza suddenly found ample time to experiment in the kitchen. "Cooking was therapy. It distracted me from everything around." Feedback from friends and family encouraged him to put out a slim menu on Instagram, which has been growing since, with festive specials during Easter and Christmas. The idea for the name of his food enterprise, says D'Souza, came from his obsession with choris (Goan pork sausages) and poie, the traditional Goan bread.

Prawn rissois, a half-moon shaped beaded pastry, is stuffed with minced prawns in bechamel sauce

When this writer reached out to order from D'Souza, he had already been blocked for a week. He accommodated a request for the following weekend. He otherwise suggests placing an order at least 48 hours in advance, because this is currently a one-man show. Our order came to us on Sunday afternoon - the quantity enough to keep us full for two meals. While there is a generous mention of Goan specialties on the menu, D'Souza, who is a fan of Korean and Continental cuisine, has also infused his dishes with spices and herbs, otherwise unusual to Goan preparations. In his prawn rissóis (Rs 500), for instance, he chooses to go with jalapeno, instead of chilli. He also often turns to oregano and thyme.

Interestingly, he has dedicated an entire menu to prawns, titled the Prawn Hub. There's everything from Goan prawn chilli fry, recheado, prawn and mango curry to prawn pulao. We opted for a tiny jar of prawn balchao (Rs 500), a fresh batch that he recently made, and the rissóis. In the starters, we ordered the choris potato chops (Rs 500), and buff steak cutlets (Rs 600). For the main course, we tried chicken cafreal chops, pork vindaloo, tisreo sukhem (a clam dish) and tongue roast.

The tisreo sukhem is made of clams flavoured with coconut, onions, fresh herbs and spices

Having had each one of the dishes, it was easy to pick out a few favourites. We especially loved his rissóis, a recipe which D'Souza says he came up with during the lockdown. "Sometime back, I had eaten the prawn rissois at Infantaria [restaurant in Goa], and felt like I could do something with it. I was wondering how I could hype it up and take it to the next level." Rissóis, part of the Goan-Portuguese cuisine, basically means "reddish". The half-moon shaped beaded pastry is stuffed with minced prawns in béchamel sauce, and is either baked or deep fried. D'Souza's re-invented rissois filling comprised a thick, cheesy sauce mixed with jalapeños, and bacon, which gives it a delicious meaty flavour. The tiny exposed tail of the prawn at the edge of the rissole makes it look quite appealing. "This starter takes me the longest to make - anywhere close to four hours," he says. "It's cumbersome, because you have to make the dough, roll it out, stuff it with the filling and then coat it again [with bread crumbs]." We think it's worth the effort. There was really nothing to not like about it.

The chicken cafreal chops are best enjoyed with fragrant pulao or pao

In this writer's home, choris is always cooked with onions, green chillies and a whole lot of potatoes, and that's probably why we found D'Souza's choris potato chop an interesting experiment. It felt like we were eating the same dish, but in another form. But, because we like our choris with rice, we weren't sure if we'd enjoy it as a starter. Nonetheless, it turned out to be a standout dish - the Goan-ness still intact, and the combination a hit. The cafreal chops in a green marinade went well with pao. The buff steak cutlets came coated with semolina, fried to a crisp. Try squeezing lemon over it, to savour this one. The semolina crust, though, kept breaking, making it slightly messy to eat.

A dish that probably didn't work for us was the pork vindaloo. That's also because we dislike sugar in our meat. The tisreo sukhem, clams "flavoured with coconut, onions, fresh herbs and spices" was the most authentic coastal dish we had gone for, and we devoured it one shell at a time. It's the balchao, though, that we are most partial to. Even though we think that D'Souza could have upped the spice levels, we liked how it tasted even days on with our humble meal of dal and rice. It felt like Goa. It felt like home.

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