Indian Takeaway (22 page)

‘Are you sure you want to cook, man? We can bring food in or go out and eat.’

Orlando hasn’t quite grasped the point of my journey.

‘I am here to find myself. To try and discover who I am and how I fit in to all this.’ I make a non-specific hand gesture out of the window.

‘OK. But why cooking?’ He looks genuinely quizzical. His kind eyes search for an answer.

‘Because I believe in food. I think food is the way to people’s hearts and souls. Understand someone’s food and you understand them.’ I feel enthused by my eloquence, robust in my rhetoric.

‘OK, man.’ Orlando is less than convinced.

Rosewell comes with his Ambassador to take me shopping. It is a twenty-minute drive from Orlando’s place to Margao. The Goa I’m seeing on this trip is very different to the Goa I have seen before. Since the moment I landed I have seen the real Goa, with real people, living real lives. I have seen but one westerner in the day or so I have spent here.

Goa is a conundrum, a contradiction. There are miles of the most beautiful beaches, homes to the hedonists, the winter sun-seekers. Yet drive inland, as I am now, and there are still vestiges of the commercial history of the principality. Large municipal buildings, shabby now with the passing of time, which were once administrative offices of the Portuguese authorities; warehouses that look as if they belong in Lisbon or Porto rather than by the Arabian Sea. Goa was one of the most important trade hubs of the Portuguese empire. Churches and
Christianity seem to be ubiquitous and this doesn’t feel like any sort of India I have witnessed before.

This Portuguese and Christian influence brings a rather unique culinary proposition. Given that a quarter of India is Muslim, not only is it hard to find pork in an Indian restaurant in the UK, it is very difficult to find pork anywhere in India, too. This is compounded by the fact that Hindus are not particularly fond of pig meat either. The state of Goa is the honourable exception. With its overwhelmingly Christian population and fierce sense of independence, pork is the staple dish wherever you venture. A local delicacy is stuffed piglet which roasts for five hours while the men fish in the backwaters for snapper and crab. By the time they return the piglet is cooked.

So there appears to be only one thing for me to cook in Goa. I love pork. And my favoured cut of pork has to be belly. The crispy crackling hiding the tender fatty flesh, deep with flavour. I shall cook roast pork belly, mash and peas, all to be served with home-made apple sauce. What could be more British?

MMC New Market does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a market that’s quite new. After a challenging ten minutes or so finding parking in what seems a veritable vehicle free-forall, Rosewell turns the engine off, taps the steering wheel and smiles that enigmatic Indian smile (the Goans may not think of themselves as Indians, but when it comes to enigmatic smiling, boundaries seem to disappear). It is earlier in the morning than I hoped after a night of little sleep, much sweating and borderline hallucinogenic dreaming. But early morning is the only time to procure pig in Goa. They are freshly slaughtered as the sun settles into the sky and then disappear into the
homes and kitchens of Goan locals. This place is as real as Goa gets, no white faces. You might think that I blended into my surroundings perfectly, but no. The locals could be staring at me for one of two reasons:

I think both you and I, reader, know which is more likely. My lilac turban and clashing pink kurta top might seem to be quintessentially of the subcontinent, but I now realise it is clearly more sub-fashion. I am dressed the way white people dress when they wish to make a statement about how they are embracing India. Indians don’t really dress in the way I do. That much has become painfully apparent. I stick out like two sore thumbs.

The market itself is unremarkable, brisk and businesslike. There are four roads, forming a square and it is within this area that the market functions. Each road has an entrance. I walk in through gate four; this is where the pork is to be found. It is rather ramshackle, a place that has grown organically through use rather than a business that was planned and structured. As many stalls are empty as are being used. There is a smattering of vegetables, some clothing and a few cheap plastic toys, no doubt imported from China. This is not a tourist market. I turn a corner away from the street and suddenly my world has changed: all I can see is pig and pig entrail. But before you see it, you smell it. I’ll let you work out for yourself the smell of freshly slaughtered pig. Unlike a character from a Coppola movie, I’m not so fond of the smell of new pig in the morning, and I’ve never in all my life seen so much freshly killed animal.
It’s still warm to the touch. It seems that every part of the pig is available for purchase, including the oink. Offal is tied in bundles and hung over the portioned legs. The belly remains uncut and looks too like the animal for me to feel wholly comfortable about purchasing it. But purchase I must.

On closer examination the belly is very fatty, too fatty. More than half the joy of pork belly is in the exact science that melds fat and meat so that after cooking it becomes crispy and earthy all in one mouthful. I fear this belly may be too crispy and not earthy enough, but it would appear to be too late. I have no option. I take three pieces of pork belly, which causes no small degree of consternation to the vendor who only seems set up to sell one kilo or two, nothing in between. Since he only has the 1kg and 2kg weight to balance his scale, he forces me to buy a fourth piece, the equivalent of an entire piglet belly costing me a king’s ransom of
£
2.20. The pig is wrapped in what I hope is yesterday’s newspaper. I fear the ink from the page may transfer its story onto the pork.

I now wander the market looking for potatoes for the mash, peas and apples. Apple sauce and pork are like Astaire and Rogers, Gilbert and Sullivan, Morecambe and Wise; some things are simply meant to be together. It’s a strange sort of market, a blend of food and fancy goods. Now you probably take for granted the phrase ‘fancy goods’. Fancy goods however are the most troubling sorts of goods for me. Their very description is oxymoronic and deceitful. These goods are bad and they’re anything but fancy. Rovi, my beloved cousin, is an expert on fancy goods. He has travelled the world sourcing fancy goods; buying fancy goods; selling fancy goods. He is the king of fancy goods. Quite how to define fancy goods is a challenge. They are curios or trinkets, made in bulk and more often than not plastic or acrylic or otherwise manmade.
There isn’t a good that’s fancy that Rovi hasn’t an opinion on. Even Rovi would survey these fancy goods and question the platonic essence of their fanciness and their goodness. A small multi-coloured, plastic monkey with a ball attached to its hand by an elastic string? Not fancy and not terribly good.

I leave the market potatoless, pea-free and without apples. Panic sets in. What is the point of roast pork belly without mash and apple sauce? Rosewell, through the gift of broken English combined with my irreparable Hindi, tells me there are some roadside stalls where we can purchase vegetables and fruit. We extricate the Ambassador from the mayhem of ice delivery, which seems to be turning into a full-blown musical outside the market, and escape, the pork warm against my leg (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d find myself writing).

Now, you would think it would be relatively unchallenging to purchase potatoes in a country that does more things with potatoes than the National Association of Potato-growers on International ‘Do something different with a potato’ Day. You would think. Or perhaps this is my ignorance of pan-Indian vegetables. Given my Punjabi ancestry, I assume all of India is the same when it comes to food availability. The Punjab is rich in agricultural resources. There’s nothing the Punjabis can’t grow. Potatoes are a staple of the north Indian diet. Potatoes with everything. That would appear not to be the case in Goa.

Four stalls later I am still bereft of carbohydrate. The good news is that I’ve managed to purchase some peas; at least I think they’re peas. If projected at high velocity, one can imagine these green spheres becoming military missiles of mass destruction, perforating any person who would dare to come into its path. They’re bloody hard. Nonetheless, they are, technically, peas. I have also acquired apples. Fifty rupees for four apples; it is not much cheaper than British prices. This is explained as we drive
away. Rosewell tells me these are imported apples. Even India thinks other people’s apples are better than theirs. I return to Orlando’s tattie-free.

‘Don’t worry, man,’ Orlando says. ‘We got some sweet potatoes somewhere.’

But sweet potatoes are nothing like potatoes at all. In fact, I’ve often wondered why grocers and supermarkets are not prosecuted under the trade descriptions act for wilfully misleading us into thinking that a sweet potato is a potato that’s a bit sweet. With the pork belly being too fatty, what I really need is the floury mouth-filling comfort of a real potato. Don’t get me wrong, I love a sweet potato like the next man. There is nothing finer to accompany Caribbean goat curry than a deep fried sweet potato. Roasted in the oven with thyme and honey, sweet potato can be a significant launch pad to any sort of main course experience. Even mashed with chilli, garlic and spring onion (a sort of Caribbean champ), it is a meal in itself. But it simply won’t work with my over-fat piglet pork belly.

In the late-morning light of Orlando’s first-floor kitchen, my suspicions about the fat to flesh ratio of the belly are confirmed. Not only is it too fat, the skin still has nipples on it. Thankfully, the nipples make the hair seem more palatable, unlikely though that seems. I’ve clearly been sold a pup. Before I spiral downward into a porcine nightmare, Rosewell returns, a bag of potatoes in his hand. Never before have I felt the desire to kiss a man full on the lips. Rosewell knows he has done a good thing and I ask him to stay for lunch. Unfortunately he can’t, such is the life of a freelance cab driver in Goa. At least I have potato now to assuage my issues with the pork.

I decide the best course of action is to trim the belly as much as I can. The problem with fatty belly cuts is that fat is by its very nature slippery, and grabbing hold of the fat before
gently divorcing it from the flesh is trickier than one might think. Thankfully some of the fat allows itself to be removed but in amongst the nipples and hair, there seem to be mud marks on the belly; the sort of mud that even Ariel at sixty degrees would struggle to shift.

In amongst shearing nipples, slicing fat and removing hair I find myself thinking of Keith in Waitrose. I never have to do this to the pork belly he sells me. But then Keith and Waitrose on Finchley Road feel like a million miles and many lifetimes away from here. Short of an oven to roast the belly, I have to rely on an old north Italian method. They are renowned for twice cooking their pork belly. First they poach the pig slowly in milk, then roast it to a crisp finish. I will poach and then fry, keeping my fingers crossed for the selfsame crispy finish.

Orlando’s kitchen is not a cooking kitchen, it’s a kitchen to be looked at; he can’t remember the last time they didn’t eat out. The de-haired, de-nippled, de-fatted and de-mudded pork fills Orlando’s biggest glass pan. I can see, through the smoked glassware, the defiant pork, insolent in its milky bath, willing this recipe to fail. If I’m to be honest, I can’t say I’m feeling so confident myself. As the milk starts to warm, I peel and chop the apples. I chop half the apples very finely with the hope that these will break down and dissolve more readily, forming the sauce around the larger chunks of apple; it’s my intention to give Orlando and the kids a two-textured apple sauce. The apples sit in a large pan with a dash of water and more than enough sugar to help the process on its way, bearing in mind Indian sugar for some reason seems to be significantly less sweet that Tate & Lyle. My pork and apple sit hob by hob, side by side and I watch and sweat. Inspiration takes hold of me. I add a healthy slug of cashew fenny into the apples. When in Goa … I peel the potatoes and the trinity of pans in front
of me suggest a meal may well be served. As to the quality of the repast …

I can’t help but wonder about Orlando’s wife stuck in London miles away from her family and then I realise the parallels with my own family. My mother was stuck in that Sinclair Drive shop while my father showed his sons his India. Are Orlando and his family any different?

The milk comes to the boil and I turn it down to simmer. The apples look about as saucy as they’re going to get, which doesn’t look nearly saucy enough. When you read the ingredients on the side of Bramley apple sauce, you wonder how difficult it can be to make yourself. I suggest you try it and soon you will know the alchemy of apple sauce. I hope that having turned out the apple sauce and refrigerated it, the sugary syrup will thicken, and it might just work. The pork has been simmering now for twenty minutes. I know I keep banging on about the fat content, but you have to understand, the very composition of this Goan pork has rendered my every calculation meaningless. I’m not sure whether I should boil fattier pork for less time or more time; I’m not even sure whether I’m meant to boil it at all. Too late because I have. I turn off the heat and allow my piggy friend to sit in its milk bath for a little longer. There’s one thing I’m sure of; I’d rather have overcooked pork than undercooked pork. I am also acutely aware that this evening we are to return to Travellers for that elusive pork vindaloo. My pork offering had better be good.