It’s that wonderful time of the year and before you know it, Christmas will be upon us, and with it will be all the delicacies that hold the flavours of the season. It’s the time for marzipan, ‘nevryo’, ‘dodol’ and ‘bebinca’. It’s also the time for the grandest of culinary affairs – the Christmas meal – a sensational feast, quite literally fit for a king, that brings the entire family, and friends, together. “The Goan Christmas meal mostly consists of staple ‘feast’ foods like pulao, roast chicken, roast pig, ‘sorpotel’, ‘sanna’, and ‘baath’. Some ask for turkey too, which are mostly the locally grown, smaller variety ones; you can get imported turkey but it will cost you more. The spread is a mix of both Goan and western food really; the turkey is American, and there are other elements that are of foreign origin,” says Goan culinary maestro Chef Vasco Alvares. Referring to his catering business, ‘Vasquito’s’, he continues, “Most traditional food requests include roast tongue and suckling pig or roast pigling. The more offbeat requests are items like lasagna, a Greek dish called Musaka, roasted ribs, etc.” Vandana Naik, who spent over a decade in New York before returning to Goa 6 years ago and is now a chef at Bodega, informs, “The Christmas spread here and in New York is vastly different. They have roasted turkey and ham; we don’t get turkey easily so it’s usually roasted ham and beef. We also follow British traditions like the Christmas pudding. Americans have Christmas cookies like gingerbread cookies. Goans too have started baking gingerbread cookies but we have to choose from a different set of ingredients, so it is really not the same.” Speaking about how our Christmas has changed under the influence of the West, Vandana adds, “We try to emulate everything, even Halloween, so yes, we try to emulate the American Christmas. We have our own older traditions but we are not always keeping up with them. We have our own Goan Christmas sweets too, like ‘kulkuls’, but we conveniently forget those. I don’t know if that’s good or bad but we do try to follow their food and traditions.” Peter Fernandes, hailing from Pilerne, has been a chef for 29 years at Bay 15 and remembers what the Christmas meals were like earlier and the delicacies that they comprised when he was younger. “Things like caviar and sorpotel have been forgotten over time, but we have added new dishes like capons and serradura; there is a larger variety now. But it is a shame that some traditional dishes like angel ribs are forgotten. Not many have heard of them today. First there used to be fewer dishes, but they were homemade; now most things are simply bought, even ‘nevryos’. Some of these ready-made ones don’t even have a proper filling.” As Goan Christmas traditions change under the influence of time and modernisation, some things still remain the same. A Christmas meal is still a helping of love and joy; something to look froward to.
