Konkani food from granny’s kitchen

Actor Tara Deshpande Tennebaum, takes a trip down memory lane recalling her grandmother’s traditional cooking and her love for Konkani cuisine
I come from a Konkani family, passionate about good food and good times. Konkani food is diverse, fresh and simple. The Konkan coast starts from Raigad and extends all the way upto Mangalore and although many would disagree, but we consider Udipi dishes to be a part of our cuisine too. There is a lot of sea food involved in our cooking. Fresh catch from the sea — fishes, oysters, clams, mussels and shrimps — would be cooked in delicate gravies or simply fried with spices. I love the way that Konkanis use coconut in their food and that too in every form — coconut milk, finely grated, desiccated or simply scatter a few pieces here and there. Another important part of our cuisine is smoking up the dishes. It’s very similar to dum bharna. We dip a piece of coal in coconut oil and then light it up. The fiery hot piece is then placed right in the middle of a dish, like say a kanda poha and tightly covered. After few minutes, when the smoke makes its way into the dish, we stir it well and serve.

We had an ancient huge house in our ancestral village and although we sold that house long back, I still have fond memories of the place. The very mention of it makes me nostalgic. Our house had a traditional kitchen with no fancy equipment. Food was cooked on fire and the woman folk in the family would sit near the threshold, doing all the basic chopping and cleaning. I grew up watching my grandmother tediously prepare food from scratch with basic ingredients and she would always hand grind on the pestle motar. More than the smell, I loved the sounds of cooking. Like the sound my grandmother’s bangles made every time she rolled out polis or rotis. She had different belans for each of them. When she rolled out polis, her bangles would make a soft sound, but when it came to rotis, the bangles would make heavy rhythmic jangles, along with the sound of her chaabi ka guccha. I remember it all — the sound her ladle made when she would sauté ingredients in her clay mud pots, the sounds of the bubbling sambar or the sound of fermented batter when it was mixed — they were so mesmerising. Today as I look back, I realise that the kind of cooking she did was so fuss-free, yet oh-so delicious. Everything my nani cooked was with andaza, no specific quantities and she would never waste a single morsel. If I ever had to cook that way, I’d never be able to step into the kitchen!
(As told to Dipika Pillay)