The heat is relentless, scattering everyone indoors and blanketing the village with stillness. I hurry along, seeking out an oasis. Then, around a corner I find it — a small farmhouse with a red tiled roof and a spacious balcony.
It seems a small village can hide many secrets. And here I am, in an unexplored part of my ancestral home, out to uncover one of them. Camurlim is a village in North Goa, near to the popular market towns of Anjuna and Mapusa. And the red-roofed farmhouse is where I’ll be learning about Goa’s Hindu Saraswat cuisine, courtesy of Shubhra Shankhwalker, a graphic designer and cook who runs a catering company, Aai’s (‘aai’ meaning ‘mother’ in Marathi and Konkani) and hosts sit-down meals for groups of up to seven people.
Shubhra greets me with a chilled glass of kokum (a sour tropical fruit) juice, and we sit on the balcony enjoying the coolness of the red oxide floor beneath our bare feet. She belongs to the Gaud Saraswat Brahmin community, in a country where concepts of caste and cuisine are often inseparable. “One of the biggest misconceptions about Goan Hindu food is that it’s vegetarian. But we eat chicken, mutton and fish,” she explains. “Goan Saraswat cooking is not only about following recipes
