Serving Goa On A Plate!

There must be very few people in all of Goa who do not know or have not heard of Chef Urbano do Rego. He is the Taj Group of Hotels� Corporate Chef for Goan Cuisine. And there can be no finer man for the job in all of Goa. Or one more talented and versatile in the art of preparing a good Goan meal. Chef Rego has been doing this for years, well 36 to be precise, though he actually began to specialise in Goan cuisine only as lately as the 1990s. Before that he was an awesome Continental chef. One of the brightest of the first batch of catering and management apprentices turned out by the Taj in the 1970s, when that culinary genius Miguel Arcanjo Mascarenhas ruled the kitchen. Chef Rego talks of working under the legendary �Masci� and other European experts from whom he learned the ropes and the tricks of the trade. But that was not Goan cooking. Virtually nobody had heard of Goan cooking then except the housewives of Goa. And there was no such thing as a Goan food speciality restaurant. So Chef Rego�s early lessons came from home. Today, look at him, he has taken the cuisine out of the Dabolim Airport in Goa and to all kinds of foreign shores where the fame of the food had travelled, but not its exciting tastes and flavours. Is it easy to cook Goan food? �Easy? Not unless you know how,� says the simple and unassuming Chef Rego. �And knowing is not enough in a foreign country, you must have the ingredients as well.� He carries his own ingredients when he is traveling. And with kokum, palm vinegar, Goan parboiled rice, toddy (tender coconut is a poor substitute), and the masalas to make a Xacuti or Vindaloo, plus the main ingredients, of course, the fish, fowl and meat, Chef Rego is confident of making a Goan meal fit for Presidents and Kings!

He is a happy and content fellow. The thing that pleases him most is to see empty plates returning to the kitchen sink from the Taj Holiday Village restaurants in Goa where he is the Executive Chef. �If the guests finish what is on their plates, I am satisfied, I look at the dirty plates... they tell me how well the meal has gone down at every table. I see the first plates that come back to the kitchen and then proceed with the rest of the meal,� explains Chef Rego. This is a practise followed also by the Michelin rated Chef Anton Mosimann of London. In fact, unknown to Chef Rego, Mosimann once dined at the Taj Holiday Village. He was to later write in a food column for a popular London newspaper that out of his whole trip to India, the most memorable meal he had was the one prepared by Chef Rego. The Goan in him makes him shy of praise. But he is delighted to know that Mosimann rated him so high. �I did not know him, I gave him six or seven dishes, all different flavours, and he was happy and impressed,� recalls Chef Rego.

He comes from Divar, a small island in Goa, where as a young man growing up Chef Rego really had no fascination for food or interest in cooking. �I was more into football,� he says, telling the story. �And I was a good footballer. I was supposed to join Tata because they had a good team in the Tata Sports Club. But I damaged a ear-drum while playing and when the ball hit me in 1969. The ENT told me to give up football. I went ahead and had three surgeries for the ear. But I had to give up football. Now, I only watch and follow the sport! I finish my duty and go home and sit before the TV. The European championship leagues, the World Cup, I wake up at 3 a.m. to follow. I don�t need an alarm. And I watch the matches at home in the dark, with the volume turned down, so that I don�t disturb the household,� he says.

The household includes a wife and three children. He has a son studying fine arts, another who is in the third year of catering college in Goa, and a daughter who is in the SSC. Chef Rego does not cook at home. �The wife is the boss,� he says with a shy smile. �She cooks what we call simple, daily food, and she cooks it well. I have learned a lot from her. Like how to do clams in their shell with breadcrumbs, for instance.� What happens when they entertain at home? Who cooks then? �Where do I get the time to party at home,� Chef Rego demands! Isn�t working in Goa like a holiday, then? �For me, there is no such thing as holiday. I don�t take offs, I don�t accept leave, I believe if you take interest in your job, then you don�t need to think of leave!�

It is this attitude that he brought with him right at the start in the 1970s when he answered an ad. in the Times put by the Taj for apprentice cooks. He started by cleaning sacks of shrimps on his first day in the Taj main kitchen. �I entered the kitchen and saw lots of things happening. And though I was fascinated at how they were preparing cold platters and decorating salads, I wasn�t prepared to just peel prawns and boil rice,� says Chef Rego. �Those that couldn�t take this quit, but I stayed on.� He was transferred as a cook to Goa in 1974 when the Taj opened the Aguada Beach Resort. Chef Rego was happy to be home. But then the Taj sent him to Muscat, from where he went to Orlando, before returning to Bombay. In 1985, Chef Rego returned to the Aguada in Goa. And in 1990, he was made the Executive Chef of the Taj Holiday Village in Goa. He is still there. �Our guests used to go outside the hotel to sample Goan food, so I started taking interest, I learned authentic recipes from Hindu and Portuguese homes, and now I only do Goan food,� he says.

He carries his own ingredients when he is traveling. And with kokum, palm vinegar, Goan parboiled rice, toddy (tender coconut is a poor substitute), and the masalas to make a Xacuti or Vindaloo, plus the main ingredients, of course, the fish, fowl and meat, Chef Rego is confident of making a Goan meal fit for Presidents and Kings!