Feasts Mumbai’s East Indian community keeps Christmas alive through kitchens rich with bottle masala, timeless roasts, rustic breads and warm toddies—traditions that echo through old Bandra villages and generations of festive hospitality, reminisces RAUL DIAS I ’ve always believed that Christmas tastes different depending on whose home you’re in. Growing up Goan in Mumbai, my festive table was shaped by the familiar flavours of sorpotel, sannas, bebinca and roast meat. But my most vivid Christmas memories—the ones that still glow warm at the edges—came not from my own kitchen, but from the kitchens of my East Indian neighbours and friends. Their dishes, simmered in tradition and built on a heritage older than the city itself, were an invitation into a world I felt privileged to witness. Table Talk If you’ve ever been welcomed into an East Indian home at Christmas, you’ll know that their celebrations centre around food as much as faith. There’s joy in every simmering vessel, sentiment in every spice. And nothing embodies that spirit more than their version of pork sorpotel. At first glance it resembles its Goan counterpart (soft nuggets of pork and offal cooked to a deep, celebratory red) but one spoonful reveals the difference. The East Indian rendition leans on their famed bottle masala, that mystical blend of over twenty sun-dried spices ground into a velvet-fine powder, and it always includes chopped onions cooked down till they melt into the gravy, imparting a whisper of sweetness to the dish. Goan storpotel never uses onions, and that makes all the difference in the world: East Indian sorpotel is rounder, deeper, earthier, with a kind of gentle warmth that coats the tongue rather than assaults it. STEEPED IN SPICE (left to right) an East Indian Christmas spread, sorpotel and chitiaps.
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