BY TARA NARAYAN

HAVE A sweet, go on…nah! And then pop, after all the initial nonsense about not loving or even liking sweets I’m invariably tempted to pick up a slender golden slice of doce de grao from the platter of Christmas time Goan sweets to nibble on…appreciating its velvety soft sweetness with a gentle hint of coconut about it. This doce de grao was not hard and sickeningly sweet. Where did you get it from? If this sounds like familiar Christmas turning into New Year scenario in Goa you’re right. Yes, familiar enough for me, as I go wishing a few friends a spicy sweet Christmas and a happy New Year!

Or as a friend SMSed eloquently, “It’s the month of cakes and candles, carol singing and laughter, peace and happiness, speak the language of love, take a leaf out of the life and times of our Lord Christ.” Thank you, dear friend, I need reminding of that in a world filled with insecurity and hatred. Hey, I’ve never been able to make up my mind about whether it’s insecurity which breeds hatred or hatred which breeds insecurity, what do you think?

But to stay with the soft, silky, dark gold taste of doce de grao, I confess it’s become my favorite Goan sweet. It can replace any dark chocolate in my life.

YULE LOG HUNT

I WAS squabbling with the hubby about which was the best Christmas cake we’d eaten to date. Unable to be patient I went and purchased an early Christmas cake…then friends sent me a monster Christmas cake…and soon there was more cake than the two of us could eat at home. So the cakes were naturally parceled out to whoever came by or was around. The Rs.400 Fab Organics cake was rich with raisins and the least sickeningly sweet of them all. The Rs.300 Mr. Baker’s cake was dark flat moist rich cake…it got consumed in the office. Then the Rs.280 Cremeux cake was a treat. Most Christmas cakes were selling in cake shops down town between Rs.150 to Rs.350 to Rs.500 to Rs.700-Rs.800…the rich, I learned, don’t go out buying cakes, they order their five-star cakes over the phone and send their drivers to pick them up!

Christmas morning, ready to sail out of the house, I asked the hubby if there was anything he wanted and said, “Get me Yule log!” I was flabbergasted, I wasn’t even sure if he knew what a Yule log is, but asked for it any way because it sounded so good…he must have picked it somewhere and it rang a bell in his cake consciousness. I wasn’t too sure myself if Yule log is more cake or more chocolate and was in no mood to consult my library of cookbooks…as usual I was in a hurry to run away somewhere.

I hunted high and low but there was no Yule log to be found for love or money at any of the bakeries I normally visit in Panaji and as a last resource, the Marriott Cake Shop - there they said they made Yule logs only on order. Take their Christmas cake or any of their other cakes - their chocolate and orange cake usually sells on fast! I bought an Italian pizza-styled savoury flat bread and wondered about the Dresden and Marzipan stollen bread which was on display. There’s a whole class of sweet breads which come very close to being cake but they’re not cake, they’re more bread than cake and I dare say preferable to all the light airy cakes which look good but melt in the mouth in seconds…like angel cake!

At the Taj Vivanta’s Caramel, Executive Chef Gyanendra Gupta, too apologised for there was no Yule log around. He said special things like that they do only on order, next time give him a ring and I’ll get my Yule log or whatever; we ended up having an interesting conversation of sorts though. It’s true that foreign tourists look for more health-conscious fare in patisserie chops e.g. fresh fruit cakes, carrot cakes, pumpkin cakes…cakes packed with almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts (most expensive of nuts), or pumpkin-sunflower-sesame seed cakes. Indian tourists with fat wallets look for frothy Black and White Forest cakes, Death By Chocolate cakes and other style-but-no-substance cakes!

Chef Gyanendra admitted Indian tourists in five-star hotels have a lot of money to burn and they love Western confectionary of chocolate and cream cakes, pastries — never mind if cream in most cakes is not fresh dairy cream but plastic-tasting synthetic cream! Most patisserie chefs have to cater to the Indian taste for confectionary …so they have this large range of otherwise obsolete gooey sweet cakes and even fancy doughnuts lined with powdery sugar, oodles of jam or orange marmalade, and chocolate enshrined doughnuts. Ugh, doughnuts are not my poison, thank you!
Okay, no more cake talk.

BUT back to more doce de grao talk, indulge me. Like I said I’d dropped by at a friend’s home and instead of cake she made me eat some doce de grao. I flipped. Doce de grao is a most agreeable Goan sweet and if it’s made with chana dal, it’s protein rich. Reminds me of sweet gram dal puree stuffed chappatis so popular in Goan Hindu homes… doce de grao is purer. The friend tells me that the fresh soft doce de grao is hard to find because like all the other Christmas time Goan sweets, even doce de grao has fallen prey to today’s excessively commercial Christmas time spirit! What is seen in most local Goan sweetmeat shops is the coarse hard doce de grao with more sugar than gram flour and more ghee than butter in it…may be at the T Centre in Panaji’s old market, I may find some honest doce de grao, a packet priced at Rs.40 or Rs.50. More economical than Christmas cake anyway!

Hey, Christmas cake or doce de grao? This Christmas I’ve quite decided that better than all the cakes and pastries of the market place are the traditional sweets of Goa. Doce de grao or coconuty cocade or evocative teias de aranhas i.e. tender coconut candy — a bit like Agra’s petha except that petha is made of pumpkin and teias de aranhas of ribbons of tender white coconut — crunchy kulkuls or a rose cookie…even a slice of the “emperor of all Goan sweets” i.e. bebinca, but make that a very fine thin slice because one can relish the very rich bebinca only in very fine thin slices! Am I imagining it or are Goan sweets going miniature? Not a bad idea at all, I’ve got some really itsy bitsy cute bolinha, nankhatai, marzipan, toffee, colourful fruity jujubes and other temptations. I don’t think I want to eat another sweetmeat till Christmas next year!

REAFFIRMATION

DID I tell you that my resolution reaffirmed anew this new year is to reuse, reduce and refuse? Reuse whatever I can, reduce whatever I can and refuse, refuse, refuse if it’s going to hurt the bosom and womb of Mother Earth in direct or indirect ways! And another rider: Do you know that less is more when it comes to revving up your immune system (as opposed to a struggling, dying immune system)? It means eat less and less quantitatively but more and more qualitatively and your immune system will do better vis-à-vis petty afflictions like the sundry flu, post-50’s arthritis and skin infections and just about everything else which makes one entertain maudlin depressing thoughts of dying rather than living. Think about all this and don’t just think…on that note, have a thoughtful, sensitive, happy New Year! Roll on 2010!