Food


Fish curry

The Margao wholes sale market is a great place to shop for fish. Having chosen your fish there are several stalls that will clean and cut the fish.

I usually leave the good fillets for frying and have them pack the spare parts of the fish for a curry. While you may not enjoy spare parts of a fish, they enhance the flavour of the curry and that is what you want.

I made this curry with spare parts of the fish but you can use prime cuts too

Fish about eight slices or pieces
1/2 coconut grated
10 big Kashmiri chillies with seeds
I small ball of tamarind
I heaped tablespoon of coriander seeds
I/2 teaspoons of cumin or jeera
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 an onion
8 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon turmeric

The above is to be ground together with 3/4  to a cup of water to make a smooth paste

You will also need
1/2 an onion sliced
3 green chillies sliced
2 to 3 flakes of cocum
Oil as per your diet
Salt as required

Wash the fish well. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt and set aside for ten minutes. Drain it and keep it aside.

Grind the masala to a fine paste. In an earthenware pot (recommend) add some oil and when hot drop in half a sliced onion. When translucent add the masala and fry it for two minutes stirring constantly. Now add a cup of water or enough water to make a smooth curry. Bring this to a boil. You know the curry is cooked when the oil begins to float on the surface of the curry. Now add the fish and cook on slow flame for ten minutes.

When the fish is cooked add the slit green chillies and the cocum. Turn the heat off. Cover the dish and serve hot after an hour.

Curries always taste better the next day

Leave your comments or share a thought from your family kitchen

Fr Warner D’Souza

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Food

Dal Ghos (meat cooked with dal)

This is a simple and quick recipie that you can make in a pressure cooker.

1/2 kg mutton or beef (with bones and meat)o
100 grams yellow moong dal
3 onions
1 tomato
1 large green chilli
1/2 inch ginger
8 cloves garlic
2 heaped tablespoons of any meat masala (Everest is good)
1 heaped tablespoon of garam masala
Salt to taste
Oil as required
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Chopped fresh coriander and mint to finish

Soak the dal for an hour and wash the meat and set aside. I prefer using meat with bone as it brings great flavour to the dish.

Slice the onions and fry them in oil with the sugar till it is golden brown. Now add the chopped tomato, ginger, garlic and green chilli. Stir this well into the onions for a minute. Now add the meat masala and about quarter cup water and fry the masala together for half a minute. You could do this with the gas off as powdered masalas tend to burn.

Cool down the onion and masala mixture and grind it to a fine paste in a blender. Return this to a pressure cooker and add the meat, dal, salt to taste and water.

How much water should you add? If you have soaked the dal for an hour then add an equal quantity of water that matches the soaked dal and also add an additional two cups of water for the meat. The meat releases its own water too.

Cover the pressure cooker and allow for one whistle. Turn the flame down to low and continue to cook on slow fire for the next forty minutes for beef and half an hour for mutton. You will end up with a thick brown gravy. If the gravy is runny, keep the lid open and continue the cooking process allowing the gravy to thicken.

When done add the garam masala and the fresh coriander and mint leaves. Check for seasoning and serve piping hot with plain boiled rice

If you like this recipe then leave your comments below and a picture of your dish

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Faith

Familiarity breeds condemnation -Memorial – St Pius X – Matthew 19:16-22

Do read https://www.pottypadre.com/rich-young-and-nameless/ which is a scriptural explanation of this text

While the Gospel of today tells us that ‘someone’ came to Jesus, the identity of that person is revealed in part when we are told in verse 20 that he is a young man who also had many possessions(verse 22). Because his name is never revealed or perhaps he never revealed it, he has come to be known as the ‘rich young man.’

They say that familiarity breeds contempt and in this case, familiarity breeds condemnation. This rich young man has been condemned by preachers as the one who walked away from Christ because he would not give up his riches. There is a tendency on the part of preachers and Bible readers to make this a one-point agenda; riches are evil.

While we may tom-tom our condemnation of this rich young man, few have truly walked away from the wealth and power that the world has to offer. While condemnation comes quickly to us, the implementation of the same command of Christ is hard to swallow when the same challenge is thrown our way. So, rather than settle down to our forgone conclusions of what this text teaches us, let us look at what we can learn afresh.

Here was a seeker. He comes to Jesus giving Our Lord due respect; he calls him “teacher.” He may not have had the grace to see that he was talking to the Messiah. But for now, he is both respectful and humble enough to seek the Lord’s advice.

The young man assumes that life eternal can be obtained if one does that ‘one good deed.’ Perhaps he was looking for that pass that could get him beyond the walls of the pearly gates. The young man is a man of faith. He believes in eternal life, yet his faith is based on a misconception; Heaven can be bought!

Christ is clear in his response; keep the commandments. Notice Christ does not say keep a commandment but rather keep the commandments; all of them. But then again, there were ten of them and the Lord seems to pick five for the young man and then seems to add one that is not in the table of ten; love your neighbour as yourself. Notice that Jesus highlights the commandments which deal with man’s relation to a fellow man. The Lord had pierced the heart of this young man and knew that he kept the first three commandments relating to his relationship with God; this it seems was a given. Yet it was the young man’s relationship with others that needed screening.

In response to the Lord’s teaching, the young man seems to assert that he has kept ‘all these.’ He is certain that he has not killed, not committed adultery, not born false witness, not stolen and has honoured his father and mother. This itself is a stellar record for most people. Yet it is by his admission that he ‘lacks something.’

Here was a good young man who had only done good. This is a given, for even the Lord does not contest the goodness of this young man. What happens next is not the condemnation that we have grown accustomed to assuming but rather a challenge that a young man failed to take. What happens next is not a condemnation of riches but the inability to move ourselves to perfection; a perfection that matches the calling of the Lord. Mark 10:21 tells us that in response to the man’s answer, Jesus loved him. Jesus had compassion for this man, who was misguided as to think that he really could justify himself before God.

Look carefully at the text. Jesus does not demand perfection but rather invites us to perfection. Like the call to discipleship, Jesus uses the word ‘IF.’ If you wish to be my disciple, If you wish to be perfect. There is an invitation to grow deeper in faith, there is no compulsion. You could be happy keeping the commandments and yet like the rich young man desire a deeper relationship with heaven.

In this case, Jesus says to the rich young man, “Go sell your possessions and give your money to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven; then come follow me.” Perhaps many of us reading this text may console ourselves and say that we do not have possessions. That may be true but what is also true is that there are other people, other things, other beliefs that we are attached to; things and people that we can not and will not let go of. These are the attachments that prevent us from that deeper relationship with heaven. The call to forsake everything and follow Jesus is a call to put God first in all things.  We are not bad people because we have not been able to let go, we are just people who struggle and grieve like the young man to take the further leap into a life of faith and fervour for God.

The young man greaves that he can’t give up his ‘many possessions.’ That does not make him a greedy man nor does that make him a bad man. He is simply a man who falls short of excellence and we know that faith calls us to excellence. Romans 16:19 says, “Be excellent in what is good, be innocent of evil.”

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Faith

Child like wonder – Saturday, 19th week in ordinary time – Matthew 19:13-15

There is an innocence about little children that you wish would never go away. As a pastor, I have had my fair share of these little ones who come with no filter. Their words are spontaneous, their actions from the heart and their gestures can melt a hardened criminal.

One wonders then, what was the bee that got into the disciple’s bonnet? Why would these twelve turn away children who were brought for a blessing and a prayer?  Why would the twelve speak sternly to those who brought children to be prayed over by Jesus?

There is no evidence in scripture that explains the reason for the disciple’s behaviour. What we do know is how Jesus responds. Jesus does not want those who come to him to be screened. All are welcome, from the insignificant to those who consider themselves to be important. But it is what Jesus says next that gets our attention, “to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus is telling us that children have a claim on the Kingdom of Heaven; it belongs to them, and it is theirs. But while adults too are citizens of heaven, we have to be worthy of that citizenship to claim it. Children on the other hand are guileless. Perhaps, that is what Jesus wants us all to be; pure in heart.

But Our Lord, in the Gospel of Luke, also says that unless we receive the kingdom of God like a little child does, with simplicity and awe, we will never enter it. Clearly, Christ wants us to be childlike in our approach to God’s kingdom. Sadly, many Christians have become childish in their approach to the faith.

A childish faith focuses on the peripheries of faith. Who gets to dress the statue of our blessed mother, who leads the procession, how often was someone else allowed to read at the Christmas mass and so on? Let me make this clear – In no way am I trivialising the need for a just way of pastoral governance. I believe that all should be given a fair opportunity to serve the Church. However, when this narrative becomes the be-all and end-all of pastoral growth, then we know that the approach to faith is childish.

Finally on a more pastoral note – We have a wonderful tradition here in India and I presume the same may be said of several parts of the world where parents bring little children after each Mass to be blessed by the priest. But this tradition is also extended to adults in the family. After evening prayers or the rosary, children seek the blessings of their parents. In the eyes of parents and elders, children, no matter how grown up they are, are still their little ones. There is no shame in seeking the blessings of God that come from our parents and elders. Such traditions teach us humility but also teach us to honour our father and mother.

Read also a beautiful meditation by clicking this link – https://www.pottypadre.com/when-jesus-carried-jonathan/ 

PLEASE DO SHARE THIS LINK WITH OTHERS AND LEAVE YOOUR LITTLE THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS

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Which pill are you swallowing?  – Friday, 19th week in ordinary time- Matthew 19: 3-12

With His teaching on community ethics now done and dusted, Jesus leaves His ‘headquarters’ in Galilee and heads south to Judea. Large crowds continue to follow him and he does what he came to do; cure them. The narrative in today’s Gospel takes place several months before His final trip to Jerusalem, where He will be crucified.

Having already set in motion the plan to kill Jesus, the Pharisees are now stacking up evidence to use against Him. They have come to ‘test’ Him. Make no mistake, they are not testing His ‘knowledge’ but trying to drive a wedge into the growing number of His disciples with the content of His answer.

So what’s so deadly about this contentious question? The question thrown at Jesus is about legality; can one legally divorce one’s wife for any cause? This was a catch twenty-two, a damned-if-you-do answer and damned-if-you-don’t, for this question already had the Jewish community divided down the middle.

At the heart of this issue were two rabbinic schools of thought. The school of Hillel held that divorce could be granted for some rather frivolous reasons. A man could divorce his wife over bad cooking or because the wife left her head uncovered, or to say nothing of the ‘must happen’, the inevitable; a fight with the in-laws. All these and more could be grounds for a divorce. On the other hand, the school of Shammai, held that divorce could be granted only in the case of moral impurity such as adultery.

We have no idea which school of thought was behind the question posed to Jesus but we can be sure of this: He understood the implications of even appearing to take any particular side. Jesus was not here to take sides but to go back to the truth. In answering the Pharisees, He passes a snide remark at His detractors to expose their hypocrisy. If this answer should be known to anyone, it should most certainly begin with these learned Pharisees who certainly have not read the scriptures carefully.

Jesus takes the discussion to where it all began; the Garden of Eden. He takes a step back in time, even before the matter found reference in Deuteronomy 24.  For Jesus, the bigger picture begins with what God ordained. Marriage is His idea, not ours and so we have no business to alter, delete, subtract or alienate.

Interestingly, Jesus is doing some serious course corrections. While the issue in question seems to be divorce, the real issue lies with the understanding of marriage. That is why Jesus re-visits the first human marriage.  

Marriage is not easy! Sadly, we have romanticised the idea of marriage. Families have pushed loved ones into marriage merely to fulfil a social expectation. We must come to accept that all are not called to married life. The Church, in the vows the couples are asked to make, acknowledges the challenges of married life when she insists that it is not for the couple to formulate some poetically written vows but rather take the vows that acknowledge the truth of marriage; that while there are good times, there will also be bad times and one must choose to love in good times and the worst.

Marriage is not a tool to fix ‘broken people.’ So often we hear people say, “Get him(her) married and the problem will be solved, he(she) will become responsible.” Marriage is a sacrament, not a psychological tool to fix people. As a sacrament, it must be treated with holiness and reverence. Parents who insist that their children marry in Church even when their child has professed himself or herself to be a non-believer or a lapsed catholic, do a great disservice to the sacrament. In our desire not to be embarrassed before our relatives and to ‘look good’ to the world we cause grievous harm to the sanctity of the sacrament.

The same must be said of mixed marriages in Church. While the Church, with conditions, permits the ‘nuptials’ to be held in Church, it should not be done primarily to please the parents or society. It is God we ought to please, for it is with Him as a witness, that we pledge love and fidelity. Sadly, most Catholics who enter into ‘disparity of cult’ marriages (Catholic with a Hindu/Muslim/Jew etc) are not even aware that such a marriage, even though held in Church, is not a sacrament but merely a ‘nuptial rite.’

As a pastor I have seen more than my share of Catholics who marry a person of another faith in the Church, merely to please mummy and daddy, with mummy and daddy insisting on the ‘mass’ being celebrated while there is a perfectly valid nuptial rite that can be held; reading, homily et al but without the eucharistic prayer. But sadly, mummy and daddy want to be made happy or want catholic society to be happy – not God.

Finally, to married couples – Marriage needs to be approached with the purpose that God had in mind; mutual love and procreation. When couples speak of not having children or ‘postponing’ conception, they violate the very reason for marriage. This is not some personal choice that you make. If you choose to freely be married in the presence of almighty God and his Church, then you do it keeping his idea of marriage in mind and not change the goalpost along the way to suit your comforts and personal beliefs. Contraception is a grave moral sin and that can not be changed because you find it a hard pill to swallow while conveniently swallowing other pills.

It would be better not to be married in Church if one has already intended to disregard the purpose of marriage as ordained by God.

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