With human beings going back to natural and organic food, free from artificial preservatives, the purument package of practices is bound to make a comeback. Technology has helped us to evolve it to the present needs, but we can still make it better by researching our roots. Experience it at the Purumentachem Fest of Milagris Saibinn, beginning Monday May 5 at Mapusa.
Some of the ingredients for our food are seasonal. In the era before vacuum drying, ‘blast freezing’ and cryogenic storage technologies were invented, dehydration by sun-drying or preservation by pickling in salt, candying in sugar or fermenting into wine and vinegar were the only known methods of accessing these during the offseason, especially the monsoon period from June to September. Even canning and pouch packing are recent technologies as are freezing and refrigeration. Since everyone cannot grow and process everything, these items were either bartered or sold. The traditional platform for this was the Purumentachem Fest or the village zatra, a veritable ancestor of the ‘Pop-up’ markets.
The Purumentachem Fest is a Konkani rendition of the term ‘Festa de Provimenta’ or a ‘Feast of Provisions’. The primary item for the monsoon provisions was salt that gives flavour to our food like nothing else. The inter-tidal mudflats in estuarine sections of our rivers had salt pans or mithagar, where the saline water was impounded and allowed to evaporate in the summer heat to produce sodium chloride crystals or ‘common salt’. The Agar-vaddo exists in most of the coastal talukas but the area under salt production has either decreased or become extinct. Pernem, Merces and Curca still have functional saltpans. A revival is possible if Goa can hold its own against the onslaught of land conversion. The salt was stored in konddo or kornno, a bamboo basket with a lid, and placed on a basalt stone because it would disintegrate a chira or laterite stone.
The logical next step is from the saltpan to the fire. That is when we think of salt-fish or kharem. The salt-fish is traditionally roasted on hot coals and eaten with rice or pez in the mid-morning, at lunch or dinner. Bangdde (mackerel), Dhoddiyare (Sea Bream), Vagollem (Sting Ray or Kite fish) are the primary salt-fish that is sun-dried in Goa. The dried Bombil generally came from Daman and Diu, once a part of the Union Territory with Goa. The Kharem-bandh area between Margao and Benaulim is now just a name. In many other areas, it is a clash between a tourist destination and a fish drying yard. Perhaps, better planning and new technologies can save the situation. Otherwise, it could vanish like the tigers or cheetah.
Chilies are an integral part of the cuisine in Goa. The Khola chili is cultivated during the monsoons on the hillslopes while all the other chillies are grown in the winter-spring vaingonn season and sun-dried in the hot summer to stock for the monsoons and the year beyond. ‘Khola Chilli’ is the second GI tag for Goa State. Now, Harmal chili also has a GI. The Aldona black chilies, the Masuri, the Byadgi and the so-called Kashmiri chilies are also grown, sundried and stocked for the monsoons. The chilies are also ground into a paste with coconut vinegar or feni or both. This masala was generally mixed with onion and used to stuff mackerel that was slit along its bone, hence, the word recheado which means ‘filled with’ or stuffed. I discovered this at Easter when I received a message wishing that I be recheado with joy. I looked it up the dictionary. The chilies are in a better status than salt and salt-fish.
Summer in Goa is incomplete without our Ambe ani Ponos or mangoes and jackfruit. We yearn for them during the monsoons. So sundried mango and jackfruit saath or xattam are a traditional preserve of the Konkan, including Goa. The panas-poli is a variation in North Goa that is closer to Maharashtra. The speciality of Goa is the chepnechem tor or raw mango preserved in common salt under pressure and without addition of water. A whole glazed clay barrel would be filled with alternate layers of raw mango and salt. This would be pressed down with heavy basalt or granite stone obtained from the hilly streams. The mango would lose water due to the osmotic pull of the salt and get wrinkled as one’s skin after a few hours in the sea water during a summer dip. The raw mango slices in brine or khalatale tor or korom is no match for this. Neither is the mango pickle with masala and oil, with or without mustard tadka.
The soul of the Konkan is in the kokum or bhindanchem sol, the dried rind of the Garcinia indica fruit. The sol is used as a souring agent for curries, to break the mucilage of the ladyfingers and to remove the sting of the bees and wasps as well as the spines of the hairy caterpillars, common during monsoons. The xarope de brindao or kokum sherbet are summer drinks but the salty agal is for the monsoons and beyond.
