The B’luru Easter spread fit for a Vijayanagar raya

E-PaperSubscribeSubscribeEnjoy unlimited accessSubscribe Now! Get features like My non-vegetarian friends rejoice whenever Easter comes, and brings with it a feast of their favourite meat dishes. Representational image.But first, there is the sombre Good Friday, when “we drink rice kanji and chutney,” said Grace Pais, who grew up in Hubbali, but has lived in Bengaluru for over 35 years. There are variations, of course, as per taste. Brinjal chutney is popular and red rice is the staple. Some families opt for a high-protein mix of rice and padengi (green moong dal). After the austere restrain of Lent, this kanji acts almost as a pallette cleanser, before the explosion of flavour during Easter. Grace likens it to a pause. She is an excellent cook. Like most folks from the Konkan coast now settled in Bengaluru, Grace’s cuisine is distinct to her community, and its use of ingredients is deeply tied to the coast. Being vegetarian, the lion’s share of the Easter lunch spread at my friends’ homes eludes me, especially the pork bafat. Bafat (also spelled baffat, bafath and bafad. You’ll thank me when you’re googling the recipe) is a type of powder— a masala used traditionally as a staple (and a favourite) in Goan and Mangalorean Catholic homes. The basic spice mix includes red chilies, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, black peppercorns, turmeric, cinnamon and cloves. They are all dried under the sun, then roasted lightly before grinding and bottling, ready for use when cooking pork, beef, mutton or chicken. As with most household recipes that involve drying spices in the sun, the Konkan coast is full of tales of how grandmothers used to dry roast the spices unique to this powder on the terrace under the tropical sun, occasionally covered by a white muslin cloth to prevent the crows from eating up the spices. Each home had different proportions in the blend and so each dish would taste different. Today most people buy the powder, as did I, to use not with pork, but with paneer, and even though my non-vegetarian friends will not buy it, I would argue that paneer bafat was more delicious than the pork variant could ever be. This, then, is the difference between Christmas and Easter. In Bengaluru, Christmas still has flavours of our colonial past— English spices, mulled wines, and fruit-laden bakes that are a legacy of the British and Anglo-Indian communities. In contrast, the city’s Easter celebrations are characterised by distinct spicy traditions of Mangalore and Goa. The centre piece of this maximalist feast is pork. There is the pork bafat, of course, and then its fancier cousin— the pork sorpotel. Some families have their chicken and mutton dishes along with that, and most will make a sweet pulao coupled with a sweet chutney of bananas and dates to offset the spices in the meat. Yeasty sannas, which are light and are used to scoop up the gravy, are a must. The sweets are varied and depend on the community and family, but often an afterthought after the main courses. The other community where pork is the star is, of course, Coorg. As Kaveri Ponnappa writes in her book and interactive website, “The Coorg Table,” the Coorgs (they hate being called Coorgis) “smoke, dry, preserve, curry, braise, fry and roast pork, extracting every ounce of flavour, varying the texture as much as we can, sometimes scooping a spoonful of preserved pork fat from a ceramic jar into a dish, intensifying flavours. At the big village feasts and celebrations, besides the barbequed pork, there is always a deep, rich, pandi curry.” To release the flavours of pork, Kodava cuisine uses the tartness of kachumpuli, a deeply flavourful fermented vinegar that is a mainstay of this cuisine, and the bite of peppercorns. While pork is a delicacy for certain communities in Bengaluru, its usage as an aphrodisiac goes back centuries. Pork fried with cardamom, for instance, was considered an aphrodisiac, not just by the Vijayanagar kings but also going back to the 12th century King Somesvara III, who wrote a foundational text on the enjoyment of the arts. A ruler of the Kalyani Chalukya Kingdom, which lies in present-day Karnataka, the Manasollasa (enjoyment of the mind) covers topics in politics, economics, medicine, architecture, but also significantly the culinary arts. Here too, pork features as a robust health-giving meat. In fact, the book details how to clean a wild boar’s hair by pouring hot water on its skin so that the hairs become soft and easily removable. The strange thing is that modern Bengaluru does not have too many good Coorg restaurants. But the pork culture remains via the sun-drenched bafat masalas of the Konkan coast, the smoked and acidified pandi curry of the Kodavas, or the spiced wild boar of the Chalukyan court. In Bengaluru, the pork roast is not a European transplant but it is part of the city’s robust indigenous heritage. Indeed it provides a bridge between the medieval Vijayanagar palaces and the modern Easter table. (Shoba Narayan is a Bengaluru-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications.) Shoba Narayan is Bangalore-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications.