A Regional Repast

Delving into Mangalorean Cuisine

Meet Kavita Sabharwal. A hostess par excellence, a house proud woman, a loving mum to her only daughter, Natasha, wife to Sunil, a supportive husband, a doting pet parent to Tequila and Sia, two really cute Pekingese and above all, a Mangalorean who loves, even lives to cook.

It was not easy to get Kavita to cook for the camera, though she simply loves to cook. She was getting all nervous. She shouldn't have. Facing the camera should come easy. In her case, it's been there, done that. Kavita belongs to that brigade of cricket buff’s wives who would be seen, looking glamorous on television screens, in oversized sunglasses, clapping hands with red-painted manicured nails, at sixers and successful overs at matches played in Dubai. This may have been in the rocking 80s, but none of the glamour has left Kavita, the only difference is now she enjoys ‘kitchen time’, off camera, a lot more and ‘social time’ a lot less.
Giving a throaty laugh Kavita laments, “Yaaa, I don’t know why I did not do much more of this kind of cooking in those days…” “Because,” I remind her gently, “you were too busy throwing parties and attending
as many!”
Yes, I have known Kavita and Sunil for the longest time. In fact almost three decades, for that’s when we moved into our respective apartments in the same building in Malabar Hill. So having eaten at their home often enough I can safely vouch for the excellent cook that Kavita is.
As the years rolled and Natasha went away for studies abroad and then got married and settled down in the United States, Kavita’s fervour for cooking only increased. Nothing like when your family descends from overseas with king-size cravings for home food! “You know, it’s quite crazy how food is on our minds all the time. When Natasha and I Facetime, all we do is discuss what I cooked for lunch, what we ate for dinner. I walk to the kitchen to zoom through all the food. And she is like, going ooo and aaa…”
I believe Natasha meticulously compiles the recipes because Kavita knows nothing about weights and measures. She is most frustrated when she calls from New York for a particular recipe and Kavita will say something like, "put a little, not too much."
“That’s true, I have always been a natural, instinctive cook who has never followed any recipes. Frankly, I can’t even tell you how much of what to put into each of the dishes I have cooked today. My maid helped with writing down. I am totally an andaz cook. While the ingredients I use will be what each dish must have and my cooking method will be traditional, I just go ahead and use teaspoons and my fingers to throw in the various masalas and spices. I am sorry but I do hope UpperCrust readers will get my cooking right.” Fear not, I tell her, our readers are pretty savvy and clued in and the ones who truly love cooking follow recipes, but do their own little jugaads as well.
So what’s been cooking all day in Kavita’s kitchen? Green Masala Prawn Pulao, Prawn Pulimunchi, mandli fish fry, Mangalorean Chicken Curry, tambli, a yogurt gravy.
“Mangaloreans love seafood and I am no exception,” says Kavita, “and we love to combine everything with coconut. Not milk, but paste, ground very, very finely. I never use the canned milk or the desiccated stuff. This is so because I learned my basics watching my grandma cook. And my great grandma was a legend in her time. She cooked with shaking hands right till she was 95 and her malpuas are still talked about.”
"My mother, until she married, could not cook to save her life. Later, after she did learn, she obsessed about making us eat well, especially me, I was thin as a stick! As a child I was always hanging around in the kitchen and she would let me grind all sorts of things. You know, on that big grey stone with a little hollow in the centre.”
“Once, when I was in class VII, I was home and totally bored. So with the help of a maid, I decided to cook some chicken. Believe me, I took everything there was on the kitchen shelves and I dunked it into the pot. I don’t know what all I put in there – every kind of sauce, worcestershire and soy included, every  spice I could find, and the end result was phenomenal. My dad’s face I will remember forever. He loved it. Eventually they had managed to put down all the ingredients I had used and many of my cousins till today cook what they call Kavita’s Chicken.”
“I think I also cooked to please my dad. He loved to eat good food. All his life he ate only desi chicken and desi eggs. When he passed away, for 13 days of mourning I cooked everything he loved.”
From Kavita I learned about the Mangalorean custom, how when a soul departs, for 13 days of mourning the food cooked is first served on banana leaves, to the crows. Till the crows come and eat the food, no one will start to eat. Crows, it is known love to swoop down and pick whatever edibles they will sight. But yet, often times, crows don’t come anywhere near this food, they may hover around for hours but not touch the food, proving that the soul of the one departed is in distress.
India is such a unique country and food stories never end. And food for us is as related to happy and celebratory times as sad and grieving ones.
But today is a happy occasion for we are learning more about Mangalorean cooking.
For example, did you know that in the prawn curry they do not use ginger paste like most recipes would advocate, but slivers of ginger? And that this ginger when cooked takes on
such a buttery texture. I loved it. Did you also know that most Mangaloreans will happily
eat just tambli with boiled rice every day! It’s
a simple coconut and yogurt, thick curry, without any seafood or meat in it. The thick, unpolished ukhda (boiled) rice is served in a bowl immersed in the hot water it is cooked in. The trick is to put in a slated spoon so the water trickles through into the bowl when you serve the rice, which remains piping hot till the very end of the meal. You eat this with O.D (sandige in Tullu), like the Marwari khicha or the Maharashtrian kuldi, made from rice, except vadi tastes better, has a sticky bite and seems just a bit fermented. I got the name of the Mangalore store you can buy it from; well, it's simply called Mangalore Store (022 2445 7542), it’s in Bombay, opposite the Mahim church, run by Doreen, a sweet old lady, who everyone calls, 'Aunty'. Many of these stores, over the years, have closed down for lack of custom. But doughty Aunty is at it, fortunately. She sells all kinds of masalas that go into Mangalorean cooking, as well as Mangalore sweets. I intend to go there, one of these days, soon.
As for Kavita’s kitchen it is always well-stocked, for she is always cooking, especially now that she has discovered a fantastic courier company which delivers cooked, but frozen foods to America. “Honest, I am so happy. When Natasha comes down all she takes back is kilos of food, now all year long I send her home-cooked stuff and she loves it.”
It’s the only time Sunil, who has been patiently hanging around pips in, “Mind you, it’s not just Mangalorean food that she cooks well. Also Chinese, Continental, Italian, you name it! Her repertoire includes the best
pani puri, the best American chopsuey. She can eat in any restaurant and come home and replicate it. Her garlic crab is better than Trishna’s, sizzler better than Kobe and roti roll better than Frankie’s!!”
Clearly the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, especially if he is a Punjabi!