GOA FRUIT SPECIAL ................The Fruit is False, not the Feni

GOA FRUIT SPECIAL The Fruit is False, not the Feni





The writer hits the cashew trail in Goa and rediscovers the fruit in a million ways

Anacardium occidentale. That's the name. I stood under that tree. Blossoms tipsy with their own incandescence.

Fruits hanging like buntings from wind blown boughs. Countless fruits. Red.

Yellow. Green. Burnished orange. Few scattered and bruised on the ground.

Like fallen angels. Each fruit with one nut dressed in a charcoal sheath. Hard shell with resinous filling. There is noth ing true about the Anacardium occiden tale fruit. It is a false fruit -not a fruit but a swollen stalk with the nut dangling precariously outside. On the Valpoi cashew farm of Cedric and Mac Vaz, I was falling in love with a thing untrue. A false fruit. Picking the ripe fruits with a stick. That's the rule of cashew apple picking. Pick the fallen fruits. Never pluck them off the tree. That was my first lesson during the Cashew Trail, a 10-day annual festival by Park Hyatt Goa Resort & Spa that harks back to the old legend of cashew.

Anacardium occidentale? That's the botanical name of the cashew tree, which was first brought into India by the Portuguese near ly 500 years ago. Five centuries ago, a sailor with chapped lips and tanned skin must have clung to the cashew sapling, hopped off a ship, dug dirt and planted the first cashew tree in Goa. Five centuries later, an ingenious man decided to string the cashew narrative into a Cashew Trail -a tell-all, know-all one-of-itskind cashew event. That man, Thomas Abraham, general manager, Park Hyatt Goa, who conceived the trademarked Cashew Trail to coincide with the harvest season. And to complete the tree to bottle story, he joined hands with the Vazs -Valentino, Mac and Cedric -of Madame Rosa Distillery, Goa's largest feni maker.

The annual Cashew Trail is not a dreary jaunt into history, a mere mishmash of facts. It rediscovers cashew in a million methods -cooking classes with executive chef Saulo Bacchilega; cocktails lessons with mixologist Shatbhi Basu and India's first `fenilier' Jeffrey Manuel; a cycle ride that begins at the Vaz farm in Valpoi and ends with barbecue and feni-infused cocktails at the Park Hyatt's Palms restaurant; cocktail-making clash; visit to a cashew factory to learn how cashew nuts are steamed, roasted, peeled, buttersalt-roasted as a snack; couple cook-off and a cashew-themed brunch as the grand finale. Abraham sure strung the cashew narrative perfect. Each chapter flawless.Every moment sublime. That explains why at the Cashew Trail, time seems caught in a ritual of reenacting the glory and mystery of cashew and feni.

As Dominant as Deities

For those 10 days, cashew and feni are dominant as deities. Everything else remains redundant. Obsolete. Nothing.

The April Goan sun was scorching and sweat was gathering at my pores. If my pair of lungs were not as duff as that of a languid horse, I would have pedalled for a cashew redux. I did not. With cashew farm dust still stuck to my shoes, I sat by colossal copper stills sealed with anthill clay in which cashew apple juice is simmered. As the cashew apple juice vapour swirled out of a thick hose, I listened to Cedric Vaz as he explained the feni-making process. Exactly 90 litres of cashew apple juice can produce 30 litres of urak. Ferment more. Do mathematics. Divide by 3. That's feni with roughly 42% alcohol content.

Feeling like a dexterous feni-maker, that afternoon I sat in the swank ballroom of Park Hyatt Goa to sniff feni-infused cocktails that bartenders were tossing and twirling with ingredients out of a mystery box.The air was rife with banter and the aroma of urak and feni, the two most popular cashew drinks that were later paired with a de lectable five-course dinner at Casa Sarita.Chef Eldridge and his team were rustling scrumptious cashew-inspired dishes behind impeccable glass panes while Mac Vaz, president, Goa Feni Distillers and Bottlers Association, delivered homilies about the bounty of urak and feni.

In Goa, cashew had gotten under my skin. But I was still yearning for more cashew. For the Sunday brunch. As the sun sped into the afternoon sky, I walked into Park Hyatt Goa's Magical Forest. At the entrance hats lay stacked, cashew apple posing as dainty flowers in vases, white gazebos were bustling with giggly kids and men and women measuring their happiness in pints of feni. In a rock-hewn pit mounds of cashew apple were being stomped, couples were squawking over what to cook for the cashewfeni culinary competition; Latin Con nection was crooning on stage and in another corner lay a lavish lunch: cashew ice cream, cashew jam, cashewmango chut ney, cashew des serts, fresh cash ew apple juice... Cashew. Cashew.And more cashew.

A Cashew-esque Madrigal

In the middle of the Magical Forest, on a wooden palanquin sat a stout Big Boss. A glass bottle full to the gill with 45 litres of Big Boss feni ready to be auctioned for a charitable cause. Then, I saw him. Not him, really. His sketch. A deft rendering of a Goan tavern etched in ink on a bottle of feni. It is the first and only sketch iconic cartoonist Mario Miranda has ever done for a feni label. Drawn more than a decade ago, Mir a n d a's d r aw i n g n ow adorns the bottle of Lembrança, Madame Rosa Distillery's newest feni brand which is a traditional copper-pot distilled feni charcoal filtered for smoothness and blended with oak barrel aged feni. The first bottle of Lembrança was presented to Miranda's wife Habiba Miranda by Valentino Vaz, whose father Pedro Vincent Vaz set up Madame Rosa in 1933.

At the Cashew Trail, cashew was everywhere. Basting on my skin. Stuffed in the stomach. Mind tipsy with the whiff of cash ew fruit. Iris laden with cashew montage. Toe nails gleaming with fresh cashew apple stomping pedicure. Cashew twig caught in the hem of my skirt.

Cashew farm dust like stickum on my black stilettos. The tang of Lem brança feni trapped in the curls of my long hair. At the Park Hyatt Goa's Cash ew Trail, I sure ODed on cashew. A feni-induced drunken stupor without a drop of the cashew liquor down my gullet. Call it a cashew-esque madrigal.Not a prosaic cashew trail, please.

Preeti Verma Lal

ETM31MAY15