<img style="float: left;" title="Rosalyn D&#96;mello" src="https://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2019/apr/Rosalyn.jpg" alt="Rosalyn D&#96;mello" width="120" height="60" />Ever since I managed to slip in a visit to the Pakistani-run &lsquo;Oriental&rsquo; shop in the city of Bozen last week, I&rsquo;ve been in a more elevated frame of mind. The absence of coriander in my life was beginning to haunt my consciousness.
I began to dream about what it would mean to pick at a big bunch, wash off traces of soil, drain the greens and have it available at hand. I have yet to configure a sustainable system of growing the herb. In any case, it wouldn&rsquo;t have endured the harshness of winter.
But these logistics aside, I enjoy visiting the Pakistani-run shop. I love how it&rsquo;s one place in Bozen where, as a migrant, I feel most at ease, because the other customers are also dislocated in their unique way; either migrants or refugees.
The term &lsquo;oriental&rsquo; becomes all-encompassing for anything non-European. I like being able to buy mustard oil from Bangladesh and basmati rice from Pakistan. I have found a treasure trove by way of masalas, and I love knowing that there are different kinds of bananas on offer, and often enough, karela, bhindi, and green chillis.&nbsp;
But the guy at the counter knows that what I&rsquo;m most excited about is the coriander. I find it amusing that they never keep it next to the parsley, or the chillis, but instead, behind the counter, under wraps, literally, as if it were a contraband substance.
The first time I visited the shop I looked all over for it. Finally, as I made my way to the cashier, I was asked if I wanted some dhania. I gleamed. I took two bunches. Since then, I&rsquo;ve been a regular customer. I like being able to speak in my questionable Hindi. There is an immense solidarity to the whole affair, as well as humour, and genuine warmth. Each time I visit, I buy a few things to populate my pantry, so that I don&rsquo;t overwhelm my in-laws with a large stock of unfamiliar ingredients.
It&rsquo;s possible that my minimalist approach is also a way of encountering the muscularity of my experience of culinary exile at the level of tongue. When I first moved to Delhi, to JNU, I had to wrestle with that peculiar monstrosity that was North Indian hostel food. I began to crave peculiarly Goan interventions with coconut.
When I&rsquo;d return to Mumbai for my summer and winter vacations, I&rsquo;d gorge on home food made by my parents. Later, when I lived in Delhi as a single woman, I began to find ways of sourcing ingredients. I&rsquo;d bring back from Goa a suitcase filled with chillis, tamarind, salt, spices, kokum, even bread, and of course, palm jaggery |and feni.
Whenever I&rsquo;d return from seeing my parents in Mumbai, I&rsquo;d bring back a bottle of my father&rsquo;s secret Reshad masala. This continued until last year, when, as I was closing up my apartment, I began to finally use up whatever was leftover. I had a koyta to break the coconut I&rsquo;d source from my local fruit seller, and a coconut scraper that I got my mother to gift me once. I had a Bajaj mixer that I managed to use for almost 10 years to make my masalas. I cooked many feasts over the 10-year span of my Delhi life. I saw myself as an ambassador for Goan food in Delhi.
Here I find I am more nervous about cooking food that&rsquo;s so close to my soul. I am apprehensive about its reception by tongues that are unaccustomed to its nuances and excesses, and I&rsquo;m often unsure how I might respond to visual evidence of someone not liking what I&rsquo;ve cooked. I&rsquo;m insecure because the cuisine is such an elemental part of my identity.
I often have to contend with my own disappointment, because I haven&rsquo;t managed to figure out the right substitute for an ingredient. Like how does one replace kokum? I know I can arrive at the tartness of flavour it offers, but the sight of triangular black bits of sourness swimming like sharks in a prawn curry?
Sometimes, when I&rsquo;m in an elevated frame of mind, the aspiration to arrive at equivalence excites me. But on days when I feel dislocated, I feel only frustration. Like on that December day when I tried to make a Xacuti with desiccated coconut, using pepperoncino instead of Kashmiri chillies, lime instead of tamarind, black poppy seeds instead of white. The ensuing mash tasted like a stingingly sharp dip. It was the unimpressive shadow of the flavour I knew was well within my powers to facilitate were the circumstances different.
Thankfully, I have moments when the consequences of my grief, pleasure and inventiveness are unexpectedly profound. This afternoon was a reassuring example. I outdid myself with the chicken cafreal. It was pitch-perfect. It was accompanied by boiled potatoes that I then cut in large rounds and stir-fried with garlic, dried methi leaves, a pinch of sugar and chilli flakes ground with salt. After a string of recent failures, it felt good to be moved again by something I had made.
Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D&rsquo;Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper

Having struggled to find the right substitutes for ingredients used in Goan cuisine, my spirits have been uplifted ever since I visited a Pakistani-run shop that, among other things, stocks coriander

When Dhania is a Treasure

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When Dhania is a Treasure

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