Cusines of Goa

Goa Holidays India > Goa Tourism > Cusines

Visitors to Goa tend to think that food and drink in Goa means the famous fish, curry, rice and feni package. And for most Goans these are indeed the three basic necessities of life -- fish, curry and rice. They combine to make a heavenly daily meal for the average Goan. But Goan cuisine, like the land itself, has many flavours and tastes with its vast treasure trove of culinary delicacies.
Seafood such as prawns, lobsters, crabs, pomfrets, clams, ladyfish, mussels, and oysters are used to make a variety of curries, fries, soups and pickles. Besides fresh seafood, dried and salted fish dishes are also highly prized by Goans.

Daily Food

Curries
It is a daily preparation that accompanies boiled rice. There is a whole host of them: Fish curry, chicken curry, meat curry and plain coconut curry. The taste and flavour of Goan curries are improved with the addition of red chilly and the milk of the coconut kernel.

Feni
FENI -a liquor distilled either from the cashew or the coconut palm. It is drunk by all and sundry- poor and rich - and is one of the local produces much appreciated by foreigners. There is also a milder variety called URRACA.

Fish
It is a daily item of food even in the most modest household. In season, mullets. crabs, oysters, shrimps and other varieties are supplied by the rivers which, being close to the sea, are of salty water, while the sea pours out its abundance of sardines, mackerels, mussels, lobsters, etc. which the markets display daily on their stalls.

Fruits
We have the pineapple, the melon, the banana, the pawpaw, the custard apple etc., but surpassing them all is the MANGO- a variety of them- but the sweetest, the most luscious and the most ravishing in taste, are the ALPHONSO, the FERNANDINA and the MALCORADA, and without exaggeration, the best in the world.

Pastries
There are lots of them -some for common days while some are reserved for weddings and feast-days. Christmas and the Ganesh Festival are occasions when they are prepared in all their varieties. Being the land where coconut is abundant it is not surprising that in quite a good number of these sweets coconut milk is used. However, the queen of the delicacies is the BEBINCA. It is made of eggs, pure ghee, flour, coconut milk and sugar. Other Goan pastries would include Doce, Cokad, Dodol, Bolinhas and Jia de Aronhas.

Rice
Rice is an important item of our diet. You will find it at every table and almost at every meal. We eat it with delicious fish or meat curry, or in the form of PULAO, and many other ways. A leavened and steamed bread called SANA, another a round pastry called ODDO, the steamed South Indian DOSSA and IDDLI, a great number of sweet dishes made with rice and jaggery etc. are some of the regional preparations of Goa.

Xacutti
This is a must when visiting Goa. It is a curry made of chicken, or lamb or pigeon and sometimes of turtle-dove. It is pungent, spicy and delicious. It is generally eaten with the local wheat or rice bread and (for men) preferably washed down with feni. One can taste it in almost any local restaurant.

Snacks
Along with a cup of tea or coffee, one usually takes snacks -potato-bhaji and puris, or dossa, or iddli-sambar, or patties of meat or vegetables, or Indian sweets.