By Marcellus D’Souza
It’s Easter again. Whew! 40 days of Lent are behind us. We can look forward to a sumptuous meal. Will we be treated to Easter eggs or bunny rabbits? The coastal region of Western India has many delicious that are prepared on Easter Sunday.
In Kerala, breakfast includes some ‘Pal Appam’ and ‘Chicken Stew’ or mutton mappa s with palappams or beef ularthiyathu, a dry roast and pork peralan in Kottayam. Alappuzha prefer duck prepared in coconut milk and mild spices. Pork is eaten in Angamaly, while in Fort Cochin it is pork vindaloo, beef chops and stew. In Goa, the must have Sannas are made for the first meal of the day. The East Indians of Mumbai have their fuggias which are airy, soft, deep-fried bread that is eaten alongside with tea, or savoured entirely on its own. The Mangalorean begins the festive day with neer dosa and Balthazaar chutney or with devilled eggs and hash brown potatoes.
Lunch and dinner is a combination of various dishes. Some tried and tested, while others are experimented with. Traditional recipes from tomes, handed down thru the generations or downloaded from the internet, are replicated.
Pork sorpotel and Sannas, chicken roast with a stuffing of nuts and fruits, breadcrumbs, sweet rice and Karam (a salad of cucumber and grated coconuts and mustard seeds) are a few traditional dishes that grace the table on Easter. The Easter table could have a gigantic roast of meat with vegetables, sour dough bread and a chocolaty desert.
The East Indians of Bombay will cook up a Duck Moile (though ducks are rare to find in Mumbai) and can be replicated with other meats like tongue or mutton. Then there is the usual fare like sorpotel and vindaloo and rice aptly called ‘wedding rice’. A creamy au gratin potato or a minced lamb pie may make it to the Easter table. Dishes like chicken Cafreal, Mangalorean chicken tenders, Angamaly Pork Belly, Goan Xacuti, Mangalore Pork Bafat, Goan fish curry, Pork or buff roast, roasted beer chicken, fennel and orange braised pork belly, and stuffed chicken roulade may be added to the menu. Those from Puducherry make the traditional Turkey Kurma.
People from the North East make the Anishi and Pork with Bamboo Shoot for Easter. A Punjabi Christian will make Meat aloo curry, mutton or jeera pulao, raita, a vegetable, salad and halwa for Easter, while the Anglo-Indians of West Bengal prefer to start their breakfast with buffarth, a chicken stew with bread. A pork preparation, with the choi jhal chilli from Bangladesh, is prepared either for Lunch or Dinner. The Punjabi Christians celebrates Easter with traditional cuisine. Meat Aloo curry, Jeera pulao, Raita, a vegetable dish, salad and a halwa is what is served. Things have changed though and instead of the church members cooking, there are caterers hired and the menu has an addition of western influence.
No Easter feast is complete without Tiramisu, Gadbad ice-cream and Chocolate Dada or Easter chocolate eggs and Blueberry Crème Brulle. How can anybody forget the brandy-spiked plum pudding and gossamer-light, deep-fried rose cookies, or the luridly coloured marzipan Easter eggs with thick splodges of royal icing covering them or those waxy-tasting chocolate renditions of bunnies? A Goan meal is incomplete without a dodol, the recipe of the sweet which is imported from West Java by the Portuguese, is guarded with one’s life. The Bengali makes Payesh and Pathishapta with Bengali rice crepes stuffed with coconut and jaggery.
Easter is the biggest feast in the Catholic liturgical calendar and it got to be celebrated with finesse and style.