With the festive season in full swing, Christmas goodies have flooded markets all over Goa. And, shoppers go about making purchases, picking up traditional sweets – or, more likely, a mishmash of these.
Due to the high cost of ingredients and time-consuming preparations, most commercial Goan sweets in the market are being made by compromising on ingredients, these days.
While the sweets may look like the real thing, their taste and texture tell a different story.
GT Digital spoke to some professional and home cooks, who prepare authentic Christmas goodies, to find out how buyers can be more discerning with regards to sweet purchases at festive time.
TOO SWEET, TOO HARD
Augusta Mascarenhas from Moira, who makes traditional Goan Christmas sweets, says there’s a vast difference between the sweets made at home and those sold in many shops in local markets.
A common refrain, with regards to the sweets not adhering to the traditionally-made format, is that they are too hard – for example, kulkuls and kormolas.
While these sweets (whose primary ingredients are flour and sugar) are meant to be hard, they are certainly not expected to be so hard that biting into them becomes a reason for buyers to break a tooth or two!
The reason for this hard texture is the extra doses of sugar that are added to the ingredient list.
Another sweet is marzipan. Marzipan is actually made of almonds, yet in Goa, people generally use cashew nuts because of the easy availability of the latter. However, this doesn’t translate into 'economical'.
Cashew nuts are also expensive, and so, in order to tide over the costs, marzipan is made of extra sugar and fewer nuts – and once again, these sweets are also very hard and sugary to taste – far from their original flavour.
Another sweet that has commercialisation eating into its authenticity is the cocada, a sweet made of coconut and semolina. This one turns out too hard because too much sugar and rava (semolina) is used, and less coconut. Here again, it’s the coconut that is being skimped on.
The dark yellow diamond shaped sweet, doce or doce de grao, made of chana dal or split gram dal, is supposed to be soft to eat. However, the cheap imitative variant contains lots of sugar and little chana dal.
As if that was not enough, some cooks use packaged besan (gram flour), add sugar to it and boil, the result being a rather hard sweet!
Some cooks aver that adding all that extra sugar to the sweets helps to prolong the shelf life of commercial sweets because sugar is a natural preservative.
But, purists of traditional cooking dismiss this theory saying authentic Goan Christmas sweets, which have a short shelf life, can easily remain fresh if kept in the fridge.
NOT SO MELTING MOMENTS
Goa’s famous layered delight – bebinca – is not spared, either, from those marketing it with pure commercial interests.
Due to the high cost of its ingredients, coupled with the laborious process of preparing it, there are some who simply ditch ingredients in order to save on costs and time.
Some cooks simply ditch ingredients in order to save on costs and time.
This sweet needs to be made with only egg yolks. However, the cheaper variants also include egg whites in its preparation.
Celine Abranches, a hotelier from Verna, who makes her sweets the authentic way, mentions that instead of adding butter, quite a number of cooks substitute it with margarine, which affects the taste, and not in a good way!
“Those who don’t prepare bebinca the old-fashioned way add more maida (refined white flour) so that the layers (of bebinca) can get cooked faster. When eating such a bebinca, it feels like one is eating a layered pancake with a sweet syrup running in between!” comments Augusta.
Melissa Martins, who conducts regular cookery classes, says that even the delightful dodol is not delicious when people compromise on its ingredients – jaggery and coconut milk. Such people use both ingredients in smaller quantities than required, she says.
Quite often, in order to compensate for the reduced quantity of jaggery, a dark liquid caramel colour is used, instead.
Melissa Martins, who conducts regular cookery classes, says that even the delightful dodol is not delicious when people compromise on its ingredients – jaggery and coconut milk. Such people use both ingredients in smaller quantities than required, she says.
And, in order to compensate for the reduced quantity of jaggery, a dark liquid caramel colour is used, instead. This alters the finished product to a great extent, she explains.
Dodol is traditionally made from rice flour, coconut milk and jaggery. This mixture is then stirred till a jelly-like consistency is reached. She rues how people, nowadays, add sugar, while traditionally only jaggery was added.
“And, some people even put in extra flour just to make it thick,” she says wryly.
So, how can one know where to buy authentic sweets? The taste of the pudding is in the eating, and the same goes with Christmas sweets. However, this is not the case with all shops selling festive sweets.
Melissa suggests browsing through social media where people put posts on traditional Goan cooking. She says word of mouth is your best bet to know about them and get delicious festive sweet treats.
For authentic Goan sweets, you can contact:
Augusta Mascarenhas: +91 93097 84719
Melissa Martins: +91 93705 31275