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Goa is gentle
beautiful beach country: old Portuguese churches, lovely 17th
century mansions, clay-tiled roofs under swaying trees. The old
hippie haven of the 70s has gone modern. There is the
distinctive and delicious Portuguese-influenced cuisine and lovely
weather for most of the year, except for the monsoon season when
the Arabian Sea rages and rainstorms come swooping in.... The
Portuguese influence is everywhere. After all, this was
Portuguese territory for more than four centuries, until 1961, a
base that had initially been established for control of the spice
route. This is, after all, a story that revolves around food.
And at
Tabla,
appropriately, there is what is called a Spice Room! Floyd
Cardoz, the groundbreaking chef and co-owner of Tabla (whose
family hails from Goa) has said, "We go through $10,000 worth
of spices a month...We keep our spices in sealed containers in a
room separate from the kitchen away from the heat.”
Goan food is
essentially a fusion cuisine, local ingredients and spices, with
the Portuguese influence running strong – pork, beef, the use of
alcohol in food. A lot of fish dishes because it is on the
coast. The addition of vinegar which is quite uncommon in
Indian cooking. The use of coconut. Piquant fiery
vindaloos, or vindalhos (from vinho de Alhos).
Prawn balchão (prawns in a tangy tomato and onion based
spicy sauce, a dish which was actually brought to Goa by the
Portuguese from their outpost in Macau, where it is called
balichão), pork roasts, chourisso (a spicy Goan pork
sausage), xacuti (a chicken or meat dish seasoned with
coconut, pepper, star anise), heavenly fish curries, the famous
feni (fermented coconut liquor), bibinca (a delicious
custard of egg yolks, coconut milk, nutmeg and flour).
Vanilla Bean Kulfi at Tabla,
(Photo:
jasonlam)
Floyd Cardoz,
who began his career in India, says that he always wanted to
"...mix and match Indian with European food, but in India I was
told it couldn't be done, that Indian spices were simply too
strong for European food." What he had come across was
the dull place Indian cuisine had found itself in, the bastion of
traditionalists, a codified set of recipes that had stopped being
innovative. Scratch the surface of any cuisine and one will
find the disparate global influences, the use of local seasonal
ingredients, a lack of insularity. Cuisine, like language,
always the better for being open to influences, accretive, fluid,
innovative. Sublime when the innovation is handled with the
subtle sophistication of the master who has a wide vocabulary and
brilliant technique, so that here, in Cardoz’s hands, the menu is
no chutnified patois, but instead displays an almost Shakespearean
skill and audacity in creating new words and the knowing tweaking
of the traditional and familiar.
Cardoz
trained under Gray Kunz at Lespinasse and his work reveals
some of those influences:
Tabla
is all about
the use of seasonal American ingredients, French technique, Indian
seasonings, and always, and delightfully so, the Goan influence.
American standards come to breathtaking new life. Crab cakes
are served with Goan guacamole (this a Cardoz invention) and
tamarind chutney. Completely innovative and unfamiliar
territory that he has been charting for over a decade at
Tabla,
and why we keep going back.
Ruth Reichl
writing in the The New York Times after Tabla first opened
said, “The flavors are so powerful, original and unexpected
that they evoke intense emotions.”
Eat:
Tabla
Travel:
Hip Hideaways
in Goa at i-escape.com
Cook:
One Spice Two
Spice, American Food, Indian Flavors, Floyd Cardoz
Tags:
food
travel
goa
portugal
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