COME THE MONSOON SEASON AND EVERYONE WANTS TO FEAST ON FRYUMS!By Tara Narayan

Why can’t we change for the better for our own wellbeing?

IT’S an old story. We wait for something to shock us out of our complacency before we condescend to make some token action to catch up with lost time! My friends now get very irritated with me when I tell them most Goan snacks are bad and especially the fryum series of this or that. Fryums are not by any stretch of imagination good food to snack on or make a meal of — not the batatvada, samosa, mirsang bhoji, puri-bhaji…not “buns” (which are Mangalore bun with or without banana which for some reason has become very popular in Goa and come in indifferent avatar, the better ones will enshrine the softness of bananas in it for a wee bit of spongy sweetness, try the one at Café Bhonsale and Café Tato or Cafe Real downtown Panjim, price has shot up from Rs10 to Rs25 and Rs30 now in the space of two years.
Indians hog on so many fryums and it’s to the point or pointless to reiterate here again, it’s not for our wellbeing in the long run; we don’t care, thinking food is not important as long as it is tasty to the palate, the subverted spoilt palate of today over time. How come our ideas of tasty is more oily, more salty, more spicy…some 20 years ago I don’t remember Goan food being so spicy, say in the 70s, when I first started coming to Goa on holidays. Today, whenever I eat out I find food over-oily or over-salty or over-spiced and so I’m eating out less and less which is great news of course!
Okay, okay, try telling any Goan that onion pakora (or potato kappam) are a bad treat for a rainy monsoon evening…they will say once a week is fine, not every day, don’t fuss, leave people to make their own choices in life and it’s none of my business. Okay, but do you know how many times the fryum oil is recycled for the deep-frying of any fryum, pakora (fritters) in tens of batches?
Recently, at a fancy stall out at a petrol pump I dared to try out their new-fangled “mock meat” or “jackfruit kheema” (jackfruit is now being seen as a wonder fruit of the future) and was shocked when the boy there to a query shared, “We put in fresh refined sunflower oil for frying the samosa yesterday and the oil has lasted us today too, maybe we’ll pour in fresh oil tomorrow…” The same oil for fryums for two days running…no wonder, I thought the fancy jackfruit kheema samosa had a warning sick aroma around them. Of course, I ate one of them and friends ate the rest and none of died overnight. But am I going to buy them again? No.

Really, eating out is becoming fraught with too much stress nowadays even in the much loved Goan eateries…a batatwada will undergo a fresh re-fry so that it’s hot on the plate when it arrives before a customer at table. Who wants to eat or even enjoy a cold or even room-temperature fryum!
OKAY, no more. You want to eat fryums this monsoon, by all means eat them. Eateries nowadays have all kinds of tricks up their sleeve to serve food conveniently….basic snacks are made way in advance and kept in deep freeze to be thawed out in microwave ovens and fried to pretend they are freshly made as in the old days…yesterday and today just doesn’t taste the same, my palate of old and today’s struggling new one remembers this! So does my mind, I’m not so in my dotage yet.
You may or may not know that the refined seed oils are top on the list of fueling heart disease and younger and younger folk are getting heart attacks because of clogged arteries. Delhi’s heart specialist Dr Bimal Chhajer has been telling us this for years now and so are several doctors from mainstream medicine…avoid refined, hydrogenated vegetable fats (dalda, vanaspati), refined seed oils (there are so many mixed versions now), refined palmolein is the most popular in industrial foods and is much reviled by nutritionists.
About the only saturated fats and oils prescribed in small quantities is good ghee or coconut oil or olive oil and personally, I also like to use rice bran oil. Cold pressed groundnut, sesame seed and mustard seed oils are very flavorful and popular and if you’re using them, use them judicially (you may not tell a Bengali or Odisha or Bihari housewife not to favor mustard and sesame seed oils in their kitchens).

Actually, on the north a lot of folk like to smear some mustard oil on their skin post-bath to keep the skin protected. Coconut skin is also a great skin oil, ask any native Goan or Kerala and Karnataka folk. Well, this is only to say if you’re thinking fryums this monsoon days – do your fryums in a rice bran oil and don’t re-use it too many times! Enjoy your onion bhoji – you get some soft agreeable ones at Café Real and Café Tato, at Café Tato recently I discovered an alternative to the Mangalore “buns” (as it is ordered), they have these wholewheat or atta biscuits put out in a see-through tall glass bottle at the cashier Ms Parsekar’s ’s desk, Rs30 per biscuit. According to Ms Parsekar they’re made specially for them. Café Tato is one of the few Goan eateries offering custard style nachnyache sattvo and yes, “haldi dudh”(hot golden turmeric milk, Rs50)….I like both biscuit and haldi dudh if I’m in the area on some work.
WHICH reminds me the monsoon season is traditionally a season for rasam south Indian style and the only person who makes great rasam powder for me is Sona Nathan of Sona Nathan’s Kitchen. Sona has started her Sona Nathan’s Kitchen down DG Mart (or Chamunda Residency) lane just next to me at the Caranzalem children’s park – this lane was in a terribly nerve wrecking condition but some doing up has worked wonders in opening it up. So DG Mart is easily accessible and just before it Sona Nathan’s Kitchen with its sparkling mod con kitchen and little terrace sit-out where one may sit down for an exciting south Indian or Tamil Iyer cuisine delights …. If I’m passing by I like to stop for a plate of her three-to-a-plate wonderful idli with rich, real sambar and dry chutney powder “molgapodi”…or a tomato-onion uttappam.
There’re lots of things to savor on Sona Nathan’s Kitchen menu and she also does on prior order a mini-sadya meal on weekends. Sona’s been making me my rasam, sambar and dry chutney powder “molgapodi” and it’s always freshly and authentically made, not spicy like it is not meant to be! She uses Kashmiri chilis, she shared, when I asked her. She also does meals to order and is so worth discovering if you haven’t already. More and more home-spun women cooks/chefs are opening their own speciality kitchen sit-down meals at home or at a rental place…and doing good, but more about this another time.

The monsoon season is for soups Continental and desi as in south Indian cuisine: Check out my friend Sona Vaidhyanathan’s very freshly arrived Sona Nathan’s Kitchen fare for shudh southern rasam, sambar and dry chutney powder “molgapodi”…also her idli and utthappam. The picture here is of Sona Nathan with her staff Sania Shaikh and Fatima Shaikh (left to right) in Sona’s up-do-date kitchen down DG Mart lane off Caranzalem street, Panaji.

If anybody is doing Tambrahm food it is Sona Nathan in Panjim. Look her up! These days I only want to do ponni rice from the Kaveri delta in Tamil Nadu with drumstick redolent sambar for lunch….keeps the tastebuds alive, whatever that means. Alas, once again, I’m back to telling myself it is actually best to do it oneself at home (if only I had some help washing up afterwards). This is just to say that eating out is fraught with too many hassles because really standards have fallen – as few are health conscious; there a few exceptions, of course.