The many ways Goa loves its cashews

It’s the sorpotel of a vegan’s dreams. Tender, juicy, with a tangy kick from vinegar and a lingering heat from red chillies. This preparation may even please purists who scoff at vegetarian versions of what is traditionally a pork dish, because it contains a beloved Goan staple: the cashew apple. People who have cooked and eaten cashew sorpotel will tell you that the cashew apple doesn’t just have the right texture, it also soaks up the masalas well.

In Goa, the cashew apple’s primary role is to provide juice, which is then distilled into urrak, and feni. But this cashew sorpotel could well be an introduction to the pleasures of eating the fruit. Though mistakenly called the fruit, the cashew apple—currently in season across Goa’s markets—is actually an accessory fruit. The true fruit is the drupe or the seed that is attached to it, or what is known as cashew nuts, common ingredients in the Goan kitchen. They’re used in sweets, cakes, and curries. Yet, the cashew apple rarely finds representation, even in Goan cookbooks. Usually, it is eaten plain and sprinkled with some salt, but otherwise, it is largely forgotten.

Conversations with the older generation reveal some hazy memories of eating cashew apple sorpotel, or a dhonos (a sweet typically made with jackfruit, coconut and jaggery) or using it in a tondak– a vegetable curry made with fresh coconut. “I would say people use it in tondak out of curiosity. There’s no strong history to back it up,” adds restaurateur Amey Naik, of Avo’s Kitchen and Peep Kitchen.

“In our childhood, we used to eat cashew apples but now the kids don’t even know it is edible,” says Crescy Baptista, co-founder of The Goan Kitchen, who remembers eating a traditional dish with the ingredient, mandos. This steamed cake has coconut, jaggery, rice and cashew and was eaten at teatime or for breakfast. She adds this to her menu every summer to showcase the fact that cashew can be a delicious ingredient. Shubhra Shankwalker does have a forgotten recipe, which she learned from her mother-in-law, using the cashew apple. The founder of Aai’s, a catering venture promoting Saraswat cuisine, makes a Kaazwachi Xaak in the season. It’s a cashew apple and coconut curry, with some jaggery and sea salt. As someone who finds the cashew apple chewy and a struggle to swallow, the xaak changed her mind. “I only eat the curry but, I tried the cashew piece recently and it just melted in my mouth. I didn’t expect it to be that good,” she says.

Cashew apple being cooked into a curry

Baptista felt a similar surprise on first tasting her cashew sorpotel. “It tastes better two days later as the cashew ages well.”

“While cashew nuts have been a common ingredient, it has taken some time for restaurants to start innovating with cashew apple and the juice,” says restaurateur Prahlad Sukhtankar of Goa’s Black Sheep Bistro and Black Market. The reasons he cites include the availability and affordability of cashew and niro, the last extract of cashew juice, its low shelf life and the harsh tannins of the cashew apple that leave a dry feeling in the mouth.

“As an ingredient, cashew is very tricky. Not everybody likes the taste and flavours and there’s only a small segment of people willing to experiment with it,” says chef Avinash Martins of Cavatina Cucina. Martins is an exception — in the last few years, he has made a cashew sorpotel, used the juice as a tenderising agent, and attempted a cashew beer. Just in time for the season, ice cream parlour The Ice Cream Man teamed up with Cazulo Premium Feni to create a niro sorbet this summer.

The cashew fruit

This weekend, a few other experiments will be on display at the two-day Cashew Fest in Goa. Organised by the Goa Forest Development Corporation Limited (GFDC ), the festival is a bid to popularise cashew’s heritage and its benefits. It will include discussions on increasing the production of fruit, workshops, lectures, displays of cashew and cashew products, and more.

Restaurants putting up food stalls at the festival have been given one mandate: use cashew in their dishes. Goa’s restaurants have taken this to heart, creating exciting dishes, particularly for the cashew apple: it is being pickled, fermented, and the juice is being used to marinate, poach and glaze meat or as a reduction. Juju has a cashew xacuti, Jamun is doing cashew and avocado sev puri, and nero gol gappas; Petisco has fried pork with a nero feni glaze, Avo’s Kitchen has a muttyache sansav and a muttyanche tondak. Craft brewery Great State Aleworks is working on a cashew juice infused beer too with Panjim-based Antonio@31.

At Black Sheep Bistro, the brief was “to find innovative and creative ways to utilize the cashew apple and nero in new and original recipes,” says Sukhtankar. To that end, they pickled the cashew apple and used it as a salsa with the spiced cashew and jackfruit tacos, used nero in the ice cream, and poached chicken and broccoli with it.

Martins’ Cavatina menu highlights the results of his experiments — using cashew juice to marinate chicken in the Cashew Marinated Sheesh Taouk, and making a miso with cashew paste for the cashew miso mushroom skewers. “What we have explored with cashew is quite less,” says Martins. “There is definitely more scope to use cashew.”

Until then, there’s always a delicious cashew sorpotel.

Cre: cntraveller

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