Cooking in:Lessons from the expert . . . Goan cooking with Namita Panjabi
Thwack! The coconut didn't know what hit it, but yielded up milk by the cupful and within seconds was being grated to within an inch of its life. "It's from Sri Lanka," my friend Namita Panjabi told me. "At this time of year they have a soft, milky flesh that is without compare. Don't even think about using coconuts from the Caribbean, they don't come close." Having watched her crack the coconut, I wasn't about to argue. Panjabi is a London restaurateur (co-creator of Chutney Mary, Amaya and the refurbished Veeraswamy), and I was standing in her own kitchen for a lessen in Goan cooking, yet as we talked and cooked, the huge diversity of this region's cuisine was revealed and I soon realised we were tiptoeing round the edge. Our squid with coriander and coconut has its origins in Hindu-Goan cooking, while the duck vindaloo is much more Portuguese-Goan.
Vindaloo is a much misunderstood curry reference, inclined to incite blokes to down pints with a vengeance and turn the chilli-averse white with fear. Yet what I ate was mellow, fruity, surprisingly rounded; with chilli certainly, but nothing untoward. There are two crucial steps in Indian cooking, according to Panjabi.
The first is cooking the onions - it must be long enough to caramelise the sugars, but not so long that they become crispy or burnt. This stage is often overlooked and misunderstood, to such an extent that the dish will never recover. The second stage is to understand the cooking of spices. "This must be done so they yield a well-rounded flavour, losing all of their rawness," says Panjabi. "This is where time and attention come in. We call it 'bhuno', the spice paste must stick, almost catch on the bottom of the pan and be gently dislodged with a wooden spoon to cook out the raw flavours.
"It is relatively easy to produce something that looks like an Indian curry, but to have something with depth and balance, subtlety and roundness, takes experience and a lot of practice." When her chefs - most of whom have come to Europe from India, recruited by Panjabi - work on a dish, they might cook it a dozen times before it is allowed on the menu, and each time there is a tasting to determine how, what and why things must be changed. I was more than satisfied with what I was eating, I was inspired.