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THE CHARMS OF HORCHATA… An Iberian sherbat! By Tara Narayan
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THE CHARMS OF HORCHATA… An Iberian sherbat! By Tara Narayan

Eating is Fun / Eating is Yuck! - A variety food column, July 11- July 17, 2026, Life & Living July 10, 2026 , by

BIRTHDAYS come and go and one may be a year older and no wiser. Some like to celebrate with friends wishing them and waxing lyrical over this or that…generally, “khao, piyo, majha karo” and maybe waking up feeling sick the next day – courtesy the excesses of the previous evening. But wait a bit, slowly and steadily Goans are becoming quite health-conscious finally, and at least of my girlfriends said hey, “if you don’t have enough booze forget the booze, tell people who want to drink booze bring their booze! Why don’t you get a bottle of horchata for her? What?
Horchata. Isn’t it an almond sherbat I haven’t seen around for a long time and almost forgotten in taste? Horchata is an almond sherbat of Portuguese vintage times in Goa and it used to be served one time at the upper crust Catholic marriage parties and receptions…whatever happened to it? Horchata was served at every table, I recall, then later on I think the bloody bottled and tetrapacked beverages took its place and maybe horchata was replaced by kokum sherbat which is also nice but I prefer horchata to be contrary, okay. It’s a more classy drink.
But to stay with my re-discovery of horchata one thing led to another and the friend procured a bottle of horchata from a guy doing it on the island of Divar island in Goa for me, and was a bit secretive about revealing the name to me…well, I’ll think about that later, I thought, and I bought two bottles of horchata sherbat for Rs600 per liter bottle. Did up a jug of one-third horchata concentrate sherbat and two-thirds water…traditionally, I’m told, horchata is served on icy rocks but I didn’t have ice at home.
Horchata is a sherbat as mildly sweet or sweeter as you like it. The Portuguese horchata is made of fine-ground almond milk, sugar and maybe vanilla in essence or real vanilla infusion. Nice, very nice, I can say cheers with horchata, may you live happily ever after, etcetera.
THEN later up while reading up a bit it was interesting how the lovely ivory sherbat of horchata actually traces its earliest origins to Egypt, then with conquests it travelled to the Iberian countries of Spain, Portugal where they used tiger nuts or almonds…some said Valencia horchata was the most delicious, then horchata went out to Mexico, to the Portuguese colonies out in the east like Goa.
Some say horchata started off as a farmhouse drink served to slaves working in the fields and the original base was barley or rice water flavored with cinnamon and a sweetener, it was some kind of an energy drink for the working classes of old. Then the rich folk took to it and turned it into a society sherbat with expensive ingredients in it!
Well. I’m happy with the horchata I got myself re-acquainted with last week and everyone who came for the birthday evening liked it, some saying don’t make it too sweet though. A quarter bottler of horchata sherbat is left and the next time I do it up it’ll be on the rocks when the hot days come…I suppose monsoon rainy evening is not quite the ideal time to serve horchata. Monsoon season folk pine for soups and rasams as far as I know and many of course do one meal a day because monsoon season is fraught with many infections in the air and if your immune system is not so robust as in young folk.
 Anyway, for some reason I couldn’t find the maker of my bottle of horchata because it came courtesy a secretive friend who does the marketing of it for somebody else who makes it on the island of Divar. Well, keep the secrets, I said, how much is a bottle of horchata then? I paid Rs600 per liter bottle of the lovely sherbat and it is almost three-quarters over; a purchased an extra bottle to give to a friend. And that’s my recent birthday time story re-discovery of horchata for you, I wish this delicious sherbat would come back into circulation in Goa. Goa’s horchata may have some caju in it too I dare say and some folk are allergic to kaju.
WHAT else did I order for the home-based birthday evening? My usual is the nostalgia cake bol sans rival which Sylvia d’Souza did for me along with her all time famous veg and tuna sandwiches. Then I got talking to the Terminal Banquets man Rahul Kuncolienkar and he send an impressive menu of things their kitchen does – it was raining but he managed to do home delivery of quinoa upma which I’d once tasted at one of their do’s and fallen for…then there were prawn rissois & bebinca, (courtesy Airito Andrade, who lives in the Fontainhas Heritage district) and more cakes and desserts and a sumptuous truffle cake garnished by sour cherries. The usual mix and match savouries and sweets for a tea-time which went on till 8pm when my friend Karen Dias came with dad Stephen and a huge cat-embossed square basket, packed with a range of Noise snacks – I must say these snacks are an interesting take because the packages broadcast “No Palmolein oil” and are marginally more reportedly health-conscious…to date I’ve only fallen for the best Noise thin potato wafers of them all!
ALL of this reminds me of some places where we should go to enjoy rainy day blues evenings to feed hungers of the mind and body, heart and soul…er…stuffing oneself with steaks non-veg and veg. Place: Clube Tennis Gasper Dias at Miramar is doing a sizzler’s festival and they’re very good – I rather liked the paneer steak laced in mustard sauce. The steaks came piping hot hissing and sizzling and inspired some coughing all around….and I took such a shine to one of the sauces served alongside that I asked for it to be packed up for me to take home – the next my lunch was ukdeche tandul (unpolished Goa rice) smothered in the tangy tomato-garlic-peanut sauce which I’d popped in the fridge. Well, this place has an agreeable menu, if you want to go one of these days.
It’s one more birthday over with. Not mine, my birthday I’m going to go off for a wellbeing retreat down south Kerala to see if I can treat myself to some … er…detoxing. Most of us and I’m no exception are generally speaking living to entertain a slow death by food – or something like that. You smoke on that if you want to.

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