A taste of Goan cuisine at Whistler's Four Seasons Resort

G.O.A. Pop Up

Where: Four Seasons Resort, 4591 Blackcomb Way, Whistler

When: Dinner, Dec. 9 to Jan. 8

Info and reservations: 604-935-3400. fourseasons.com/whistler/dining

One Christmas memory lingers golden for me. I was in Benaulim in South Goa, staying in a guest house operated by a Swiss woman called Karen. She had two dogs and many cats. Tropical birds gossiped and yakked on the property. I felt as if we were bit players in the movie, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel complete with Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy look-alikes.

On Christmas Eve, Karen cooked for the guests. She made a gorgeous beef vindaloo, braised for six hours in vinegar, wine, sugar and spices. Karen had recently lost her Goan husband but he was with us in the dishes he’d taught her to cook — dal, chicken curry, chickpea curry, chapati, and a couple of fish dishes which are central to Goan cuisine. We contributed some port and chocolates we’d bought at Panaji, a town built by the Portuguese during their colonial rule from 1510 to 1961.

Portuguese influence runs through Goan food and Karen’s vindaloo, or carne de vinha d’alhos, is an example. As well as wine and vinegar, the Portuguese brought tomatoes, green chilies, chorizo, corn, cashews and yeasted breads to the area.

We spent Christmas Day lazing on an endless beach. This is the only place in the world where I loved swimming in the ocean. We ate lunch and dinner at the famous fish shacks lining the beaches and for dinner, it was beef vindaloo once again along with a whole grilled pomfret. Our walk back to the guest house was illuminated by a full moon and Christmas lights and lit paper stars festooning everyone’s homes. It was magical.

Cut to Whistler. You won’t get the sandy beaches or the fish shack experience at Whistler’s Four Seasons Resort, but from Dec. 9 to Jan. 8, in the resort’s Harmony Foyer you can enjoy a Goan pop-up dinner called G.O.A. And it’ll be true-blue and delicious.

Executive chef Sajish Kumar grew up in Goa, then went on to cook at Grand Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons hotels in the Middle East. He’s loving the super fresh local products from Pemberton and even the snow.

“It’s an amazing place to be a chef and show your culinary skills,” he says.

A media group previewed all the dishes from the G.O.A. pop-up menu recently and as Decanter Magazine’s U.S. editor said afterwards, “Good luck to him ending this pop up.”

I agree. The colourful, vibrant dishes — appetizers are $26 to $32 and main dishes are $34 to $44 — were addictive.

Kumar has been cooking Goan food since he was a kid.

“My mom loved cooking and I was her helper,” he says. “I saw the science behind it, the flavours, how you marinate, cure, smoke, cook. It impressed me and I’ve always wanted to be a chef. She learned about spicing from her mother and she taught me.”

The G.O.A. pop up, he says, is a 100 per cent reflection of this.

“I’m trying to keep it as authentic as possible and even use fresh coconuts for the coconut milk and roast my spices. I really wanted to get the home flavours of Goa.”

He explained the history of vindaloo: “The Portuguese used to travel around and they’d marinate pork in vinegar (to preserve it) and they took spices from Goa. The Goans refined the dish. Vindaloo goes very well with lamb so I use lamb chops.”

He’s learned to spice and smoke chorizo sausage, another Portuguese handoff.

The beguiling 15-dish pop-up menu began with oven-roasted balchao prawns with shaved garlic and squid ink rice crisp. Balchao prawns are pickled and roasted in a spicy sour tomato chili sauce. 

It was followed by a lovely tamarind flavoured seafood soup with clams, mussels, prawns and tomatoes. Tamarind broth is considered a remedy for indigestion and other ailments and seafood is an everyday food in Goa, which is off the Arabian Sea. 

Pork belly, brined in rum and deep-fried, was served with a cafreal rum sauce. Cafreal, a spice mixture, was brought to Goa by African soldiers serving under the Portuguese.

Other appetizers were seared octopus marinated in vinegar and oil, cooked with onion tomato masala and served with potatoes and fried chilies and soft shell crab, battered and deep-fried and served with coconut masala and paratha bread.

“You eat it like a wrap with salad,” says Kumar.

Carrot, marinated and braised in tikka masala and smoked, was served with pumpkin dal purée.

Main dishes started with lamb rack vindaloo and a braised veal shank, slow-cooked in masala, chili, vinegar and wine for five hours. It was fall-apart tender.

Lobster replaced the traditional prawns in the coconut-based curry and was served with poached okra.

“Prawn curry is famous in Goa and okra is what we eat with it.” Kumar says. “Growing up, it was one of my favourites.”

His family bought seafood from a neighbour who fished in the morning and sold his catch on the beach.

“We didn’t go to the market, we went to the shore.”

Sablefish was marinated in spices and fried on a hot tawa or griddle pan and served with mussels and clams. Dosa, typically, breakfast food, was dinner-ized with duck curry masala and a fried egg. Porcini mushroom korma is a vegetarian option. Local mushrooms were cooked in a creamy cashew korma sauce, the cashews, cooked until it turned to sauce. And a seafood rice dish, cooked to creaminess, was plied with seafood.

For dessert, we sampled mango lassi ice cream and gulab jamun, dumplings bathed in rose-flavoured sugar syrup.

And in case you’re wondering how I packed away such a gargantuan meal, it was served family style so I could have civilized tasters of each dish. Appetizers are $26 to $32 and main dishes are $34 to $44. 

While Indian restaurants in Metro Vancouver serve some Goan dishes like prawn curry and vindaloo, there isn’t a strictly Goan restaurant, and certainly nothing doing a deep and personal dive like this pop up. How great to get a taste of the Portuguese-inflected history in this tiny part of India. Kumar says some of the dishes might change during the pop up if there are supply problems with any of the ingredients.

“I’ve told my mother (in Goa) and she’s very excited,” Kumar says. “She wishes she could taste it but once it starts, I’ll send photos.”

SIDE DISHES: Caviar season

Recently, I was introduced to the ‘caviar bump’ at Bearfoot Bistro’s Vodka Ice Room. You place a scoop on your hand between thumb and index finger to warm it, then lick it off and crush the caviar on the roof of the mouth. We followed with a shot of vodka. Caviar is food code for something worth celebrating.

With the holiday season coming up, it’s time to cautiously put the pandemic behind us and really celebrate. What better way than with champagne and caviar?

Behzad Ami, of International House of Caviar in Burnaby, has been selling caviar since 1997 and says Christmas is the season for it with a third of his sales in December.

B.C.’s Northern Divine, the only certified organic caviar in the world, is a big local favourite. But these days, most caviar is from farmed sturgeon, not wild, and is sustainable. Beluga caviar, with the largest roe, is the most expensive and takes 22 years to mature.

France and the U.S. are the biggest caviar consumers but Canadian appetites grew by about 25 per cent in the last two years, Ami says.

What’s the allure of this precious and expensive sturgeon roe?

“It’s phenomenal. To me, it’s the most delicious food,” says Ami. “It’s also nutritious. A 16-gram serving gives you 53 per cent of your daily vitamin B 12 need and you also get Vitamin A, D, E, zinc, iron, magnesium, and potassium.”

International House of Caviar sells wholesale and retail, online, with free delivery in the Lower Mainland. Unopened caviar keeps for five weeks in the fridge. Once opened it should be eaten in a day or two. In other words, buy just what you will eat. Check out the eight varieties of caviar at IHOC at caviar.bc.ca.

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