Goan Vegetable Xacuti

As diverse as the menu often is at our home – decided by a love for foods we’ve picked up during our travels, at our favorite restaurants, and from friends – our comfort food is still the one mom made. For Desi, it’s a small mountain of rice with sambar or rasam and a vegetable curry of okra or eggplant. For me, it’s varan-bhat (dal and rice in Marathi) with limbache lonche (lemon pickle). But there was one more cuisine that left deep roots inside me: the cooking of my Goan stepmother who raised me after my mom passed away. This was delicious food, and needed no getting used to, although I was a rather unfussy child when it came to food (I refused to eat fish, though, a prominent ingredient in Goan food). Goan cuisine, as I’ve told you before, is an interesting and delicious amalgam of the food of the coastal Konkan region, where Goa is located, and the state’s Portuguese colonizers who left just over 50 years ago. Xacuti, a meaty, satisfying stew characterized by a complex mix of spices, is one of the more popular recipes born of this union, and it is usually made with chicken or with beef. Xacuti (sha-koo-ti) is a specialty of the large Christian community of Goa, whose cuisine has many common denominators with the Goan Hindu food my stepmom cooked, even as it stands apart in a distinct and delicious class of its own. It truly combines the best ingredients from the two worlds: coconut and tamarind from the Konkan coast, and vinegar from the west. The liberal use of a variety of spices in this recipe – and in many Portuguese Indian recipes – is not surprising when you consider that spices pulled the colonizers to Indian shores in the first place. What makes this Goan Vegetable Xacuti truly special is that it combines all flavors, creating the perfect balance: the bitterness of fenugreek, the sweetness of coconut milk, the sourness of tamarind and vinegar, the pungency of the onions, and the umami of the mushrooms. And then there are the textures: the creaminess of the potatoes, the slight bite of the red peppers, the satiating meatiness of the mushrooms. Even a meat-eater would not miss the meat here. Check to get new recipe updates by email.

This Vegetable Xacuti is a slightly more indulgent recipe than I make on weeknights, because of the longer list of ingredients and also because of the slightly longer cooking times to ensure the spices get done. Still, it is a one-pot meal and comes together in under 45 minutes, so it is by no means time consuming. And it does make a weeknight meal – or a weekend one – rather special.