BharatSangraha

South Konkan · Western Coastal Strip

Foodways

Malvani cooking is one of the few Indian regional kitchens that is defined by a single ground blend and a single souring agent, and that can be identified in one mouthful. The blend is Malvani masala — a dozen and a half whole spices roasted and ground, in which two chillies do separate jobs, Bedgi for colour and body and Sankeshwari or Lavangi for heat — and the sour is kokum. The third marker is tirphal, the dried berry of Zanthoxylum rhetsa, a Sichuan-pepper relative that numbs slightly and smells of citrus and pine; it is used in fish curries here and hardly at all north of the Savitri. Coconut appears three ways in the same meal — fresh and ground into the masala paste, roasted dark for a dry sukka, and squeezed as milk for a thin hooman.

Primary cooking medium

Coconut, ground fresh, roasted dry and squeezed as milk — the body of almost every gravyGroundnut oil as the frying mediumCoconut oil in some households, more common as the coast approaches GoaGhee for festival food and for modak

Dominant sour agents

Kokum rind (sol or amsul) — the default, in fish, in dal and in the drink that ends the mealAgal, the salted kokum liquor, used where a cook wants sourness without adding rindRaw mango, in April and MayTamarind, used sparingly and mostly in vegetarian foodLime

Spice register

Hot, red and slightly numbing. The Malvani ground masala runs to fifteen to twenty spices — two kinds of dried chilli, coriander, cumin, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, star anise, stone flower, nutmeg, mace and tirphal among them — and it is roasted before grinding, which is why the colour is dark rather than bright. Against its neighbours it is hotter than North Konkan and less sweet than Goa, and it uses no vinegar at all, which is the fastest way to tell a Malvani fish curry from a Goan one.

Staple grains and carbs

Rice, overwhelmingly parboiled and hand-pounded in the older kitchensRice flour, for bhakri, ghavane, vade, modak and shevaiNachni (finger millet), on the plateau soils where rice will not goKulith (horse gram), grown on poor laterite and eaten as a thin peppery broth

Preservation methods

Kokum rind sun-dried into sol, and its salted liquor kept as agalAmbe poli — mango pulp spread in thin layers and sun-dried into sheets over several daysPhanas poli, the same process with jackfruitDried and salted fish, especially bombil, sukat and mackerel, for the closed monsoon monthsCashew and kokum syrups, and the fermented and distilled drinks made from cashew appleSandan and other steamed rice cakes made in bulk at festivals and kept for days

Signature techniques

The Malvani ground masala

Whole spices are roasted separately, by weight and to different degrees, then ground together and stored. The point of roasting first is that it fixes the aroma so a household can grind once for months; the point of two chillies is that colour and heat can be tuned independently, which a single chilli variety cannot do.

Also found in: Goa & Gomantak, Canara Coast

Tirphal bruising

The dried berry husks of Zanthoxylum rhetsa are cracked, soaked briefly in water and added to fish curries near the end, and the soaking water goes in too. Cooked long they turn bitter; the technique is a late addition, not a base spice, and it is the marker of the coastal Konkani-Malvani belt.

Also found in: Goa & Gomantak, Canara Coast

Kokum drying and agal

The rind of Garcinia indica is peeled from the fruit, rubbed with salt and dried in the sun over successive days, the juice that drains out being collected as agal. Kokum needs no irrigation, pesticide or fertiliser and grows on ground too poor for anything else, which is why it is a smallholder crop.

Also found in: North Konkan, Goa & Gomantak, Canara Coast

Fruit-leather drying

Mango or jackfruit pulp is spread in successive thin layers on a mat in full sun, each layer allowed to set before the next is poured, until a sheet a centimetre thick has built up. Ambe poli and phanas poli keep for a year without sugar or any other preservative, and they exist because the harvest arrives all at once and cannot be sold fast enough.

Also found in: North Konkan, Goa & Gomantak

Steaming in leaf

Rice batter with coconut and jaggery is wrapped in a turmeric leaf or a jackfruit-leaf mould and steamed, so the leaf's aroma enters the cake. Patoli and sandan are made this way, and the mould shape is household-specific.

Also found in: Goa & Gomantak, Canara Coast, Tulu Nadu

Sukka finishing

A cooked meat or shellfish is finished by tossing it with dark-roasted grated coconut and ground masala over high heat until nothing loose remains. It is the dry counterpart of the same day's curry, made from the same pot, and it is how a Malvani kitchen gets two dishes out of one animal.

Also found in: Canara Coast, Tulu Nadu

The foodway signature of South Konkan — cooking medium, souring agents, spice register, staple grains and the techniques that define it. (6)