Eat like a GSB

A Goud Saraswat Brahmin festival will celebrate the lesser-known cuisine from the sunshine state

Until February 2017, and during his first research trip to Goa, chef Hussain Shahzad was still looking at menus at small Goan restaurants, thinking they were shady, and referring to corn dangar — a GSB-style spiced corn fritter — as corn "danger". The dish is intrinsic to the culinary ethos of the Goud Saraswat Brahmin community, better known as GSBs. And a year later, chef Hussain has been inducted into the cuisine and culture well enough to pull off a two-week long festival taking place at O Pedro as part of the restaurant’s first anniversary celebrations.

But when he met home chef Vaishali Joshi all those months ago in Vasco, it wasn’t so much for
hands-on training as it was for a few tips on where to eat. "When we were opening the restaurant, we were trying to research every aspect of the state because we didn’t want to portray the whimsical Goa or the Goa that people already knew of. I was aware that the repertoire of Goan vegetarian food wasn’t great in our minds, but I didn’t know that a Saraswat community existed. And then, Vaishali aunty was kind enough to invite us into her home where I found her with this immaculate black board which had names of dishes written all over, and cooks with aprons and stuff. I was completely taken aback because I had landed up casually in my shorts," he shares.

(Clockwise from top on table one) Tender coconut pudding, vegetarian jay-vun, bhaj ke pohe, moong sar; (On table two) half plates, corn dangar, kokum kadhi, seafood jay-vun, bangda cutlet. Pics/Pradeep Dhivar

For Hussain, the seed was planted. This is a cuisine that continues to use traditional souring agents such as tamarind and kokum be it in the prawn who-maan or sprouted moong gaa-tee; glorifies vegetables, in such as, the breadfruit rawa fry made with a flowering plant reminiscent of jackfruit, and alsande, a variant of the common kidney beans, used in the alsande bean ton-dak cooked with brown coconut and fennel. And, it re-imagines by-products elevating them to entirely new dishes, for example, by sprucing up the residual stock from the moong gaa-tee into moong saar, a hot moong soup with black mustard and Shankar chaap hing. So, it is understandable that he has been nestling the wonderment for more than a year and has finally translated it into a table-full of sumptuous and authentic fare.

Moong Saar

But for Joshi, the motivation is less wonderment and more personal. "Have you ever thought about why people do not know about our food?" she inquires. "As you may already know, Goa was under Portuguese rule for centuries, so the influences are manifold. But unlike the British, the Portuguese were more interested in spreading Christianity than in engaging in trade. And the Saraswat community stuck on to its roots. However, it was the converts who went on to work in the houses of the sahibs, and accompanied them as cooks on voyages. That is why Catholic Goan food, which is as exotic as ours, reached more places than the Hindu community’s cuisine," she reveals, while serving a big helping of the piquant green masala loan-che along with a side of history.

ON October 8 to 21
TIME 12.30 pm to 3.30 pm; 7 pm to 11.30 pm
AT Jet Airways, Godrej, BKC
Cost Rs 1,600 (veg tasting menu); Rs 1,900 (seafood tasting menu)

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