Faith

The persecutor now proclaims; Paul’s vocation story – Tuesday, 27th Week in ordinary time – Galatians 1:13-24

This pericope could be read either as a testimony or as a defense; it depends on how you read it. Read in a purely spiritual way, as just a text in the scriptures, it reads as a very moving testimony of a persecutor who now proclaims the Gospel. This text could well be a dramatic vocation call. However, read in the context of the letter to the Galatians, this text is a robust defense of Paul’s apostleship and a mandate to preach that came from Christ Jesus through a personal revelation.

Written to the Churches in Galatia, Paul’s letter cuts to the chase and gets to the point. There were these Judaizers, those who were formerly Jews and who now followed Christ, who had arrived in the Churches in Galatia with what Paul calls, a ‘perverse gospel.’ It was their stated position that in order to follow Christ, the Gentiles needed to first become Jews and practice the Jewish law; in particular circumcision. Since Paul did not fall in line with their way of thinking, they did what all opposing systems do, wage a campaign of disinformation, fear and half-truths.

If you want to wage a silent war that will not demand a drop of your blood but bleed your adversary to death, then wage a war of disinformation and fear. Political powers have perfected this art. But tragically the strategy has well been employed from time in memorial even when it comes to religion; today’s text is a case in point. Paul is faced with a deadly combination of all three; the war of disinformation, fear of what and who he is and a robust campaign of half-truths. So, mad was Paul with these Judaizers that this is the only letter he ever wrote that did not begin with a word of thanksgiving but by verse six took on the campaign of lies and falsehood leaving him declare ‘cursed,’ not once but twice, these perverters of the Gospel.

Paul has to defend himself and the Gospel he proclaims and the only way to do that is to bare his soul, not just in an emotional way, but by listing facts and laying down his credentials. Almost everyone hears the gospel from someone else. Not so for Paul! The Gospel that Paul preached was revealed directly to him by Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-9) and not one that was homegrown in dubious traditions. Even when he reached Damascus, it was not as if Ananias was sent to give him a crash course in ‘Christianity’; that Paul had already received from Christ in a single line, ‘why do you persecute me.’ Paul’s message was not man’s attempt to reach up and understand God; it was God’s effort to bow down and communicate with man.

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Food

Sorpotel – a dish that runs in (your) blood

Kill a pig in Goa and from nose to tail, not a piece gets wasted. While prime cuts of meat go to make vindaloo, sorpotel was a result of left overs, turning blood and offal into a delicacy that graces every table and every occasion in Goa.

The word ‘sarapatel’ literally means confusion, referring to the mish-mash of ingredients which include pork meat and offal which includes heart, liver, tongue and in original recipes, even pork blood. The vinegar is vital to sorpotel, not just for its taste but also for prolonging its life, improving it each day it marinates.

Made by African slaves in the Bahian province of Brazil, it was made from offal that the slaves masters discarded. The dish had tail, intestine, tongue, ears and blood. To this the Bahian’s added onions, tomatoes, and chilli peppers. Sorpotel was especially popular with Portuguese sailors travelling between Lisbon and Goa because the wine actually made the dish better with age. Some also claim that what came to India was the version popular from Alentejo region of Portugal to which spices and toddy vinegar were added in Goa, transforming sarapatel to the sorpotel of today.

If someone tells you that they did not really like your version of sorpotel, don’t be offended. No two households make the same version of the dish and every Goan, Mangalorean or East Indian has their own claim to fame in making the best sorpotel in the world.

Recently I was invited to my dear friend Nirmala D’Mello’s home in Mahim, Mumbai. Her son Aaron, who was all of two feet when I was in the parish was now read to embark on a new chapter in his life in the United Kingdom. This was a farewell lunch. The star of the table at lunch that day was the late Marie Antoinette’s sorpotel. True to her name she was a queen but to those who had the privilege of meeting her, she was just every welcoming Antoinette. On this occasion her son Sheldon was present too and I pressed Nirmala and Sheldon to share the recipe with me. This article is a tribute to a ‘queen’ who made you feel like a king.

As I have said before, while hell may provide you with fire, heaven has no kitchen. So leave your trade secrets and recipes here on earth before you go. I will be happy to publish them in memory of someone you love.

Marie Antoinette’s version of a killer Sorpotel ( this recipe has only pork and no offal)

Take 1 kg pork. Add 1 level table spoon salt, and 1 tsp haldi (turmeric)powder. Boil for 4 minutes in a pressure cooker and after the first whistle turn off the gas. Let it rest and cool completely.

Grind in 1 ½ cup vinegar, 20-25 red Kashmiri chillies, 14 cloves, 1 cinnamon, 1 tea spoon pepper corns. 1 tsp jeera (cumin seeds), ½ tsp haldi (turmeric), ½ pod garlic and 1/4” ginger. Set this aside.

Cut the port into small dices. Cutting the pork is an art form and half the size of the nail of your little finger would be a good measure. In a vessel fry the cut pork in batches and set each batch aside. In the same vessel, using the fat of the fried pork, add 3 onions chopped finely and cook till translucent. Add 5 slit green chillies, 1/2″ finely chopped ginger and 1 whole pod of finely cut garlic. Stir and cook this well. Now add ground masala and the cut pork pieces. Stir this all well for a about three minutes on medium head. Cook till done. Add ( or keep adding) a little water at a time to the sorpotel while cooking. You need a gravy with a very thick consistency. When done, cool and then store in the fridge. If you are in no hurry to eat it you could undercook the meat a bit, cool and store it in the refrigerator, take it out every day for a week and heat it checking for vinegar and salt. Remember to cool it down completely before you refrigerate it again. Because the meat was fried it wont disintegrate or over cook even if you reheat it several times.

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Food

Rechado is a red chilli based paste that is used in fried fish preparations. The Portuguese word ‘rechado’ simply means ‘stuffed’. Rechado is best stuffed in round oily fish like mackerels or even flat fish like the local pomfret or simply used to coat fish steaks before coating them in semolina or simply frying it as it. Recently I added deep fried curry leaves to the rechado while stuffing the mackerels; it was like eating a Goan ‘bangda fry’ with distinct Kerala flavour. 

Central to this dish is the red Kashmiri chilli and the goa vinegar. When the Portuguese cooks arrived in India, they realised that the Indians did not make vinegar.  Some ingenious Franciscan priests are said to have solved the problem by manufacturing vinegar from coconut toddy, an alcoholic drink fermented from the sap of the palm tree.

Thanks to the many Portuguese ports and trading routes, locals in Portuguese India were introduced to ingredients from across the globe that are now synonymous with Indian cooking such as chillies which arrived in the 1500’s along with  potatoes, maize and tomatoes. Prior to this long pepper which grew abundantly in the forests of the Western Ghats and Malabar had been the hottest spice known to Indians. 

I received a bottle of rechado, which when i sampled raw almost tasted like a great pickle. I had to arm twist the precise recipe as I was first given rough estimates of the ingredients. This recipe has much more tamarind and less vinegar and the sugar adds a wonderful sweetness to balance the hot chillies. 

The original recipe belonged to Elizabeth Fernandes who passed less than a year ago; she was an amazing cook even in her late 70’s. Her daughter Effie Menezes made this masala and gifted it to me while on a recent trip to Goa. I had to wrangle the recipe from her brother Gordon Fernandes who is my parishioner and a dear friend and who I must quote said, ” I did not break my head for my board exams the way I broke it for this recipe. 

Finally, Do not take great food recipes to your grave. We need to keep our culture alive and selfishness does not promote food culture. Please SHARE YOUR recipes with me on +91  9820242151Let me know what you think of this. 

INGREDIENTS

20 red dry chillies
I cup vinegar
a ball of tamarind (laddoo size)
2 pod garlic
1/2 inch ginger
1/4 teaspoon peppercorns
3 cloves
a pinch of jeera (cumin)1 tsp salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1 big onion

Grind all the above ingredients in vinegar Including the onion. Cool and refrigerate. 

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Food

Maharashtrian style mutton curry

Though this recipe has several ingredients, I recommend you follow it strictly for the end result is worth it. The dish is for one kilo of mutton.

For the Garam masala (if you wish to make this at home or else use a packet)
Ingredients:

Coriander seeds ¾ tablespoon
Cumin seeds ¾ tablespoon
Black Pepper corns – 1 teaspoon
Cloves – 1 teaspoon
Green cardamom – 10
Black cardamom – 5.
Fennel seeds – ½ tablespoon
Mace – one
Stone flower – one gram
Fox nuts – six
Whole red chillies – 4
Poppy seeds – 1 tablespoon
Kasuri methi – 1 tablespoon
Nutmeg – ¼ grated
Salt – one large pinch

Ingredients for marination

Fresh coriander – half a cup
Garlic – 15 cloves
Green chillies – 3
Ginger – one inch piece
Dry coconut – ¼
Water as required
Mutton – 1 kilo
Salt ½ table spoon
Turmeric powder – ¼ teaspoon
Grind all of the above for marination and use only half of this for marination.
Whisked curd – 150 grams

To make the curry

Ingredients:
Oil – 4 tablespoons

WHOLE SPICES (as below)
Cumin seeds – ¾ teaspoon
Green cardamom – 2
Black Cardamom – one
Cinnamon – one inch piece
Bay leaf – one
Onions – 500 grams minced
For the gravy you will require the remaining ½ of the ground marinade masala

To make the curry you will also need the following powdered spices

Turmeric powder – ¼ teaspoon
Kashmiri red chilli powder – 1 tablespoon
Coriander powder – 1 tablespoon
Garam Masala – 1 tablespoon
Cumin powder – one tablespoon
Hot Water – 100 ml
Kasuri Methi – ½ teaspoon
Chopped fresh coriander
Lemon juice – ½ teaspoon

Method:
Make the garam masala by roasting all the ingredients one at a time on low heat set aside to cool and grind to a fine powder. You can store this when cool in the fridge to retain its flavour and freshness.

Marinate the meat overnight with the curd and the ground spices. Refrigerate but when you want to begin cooking, keep the marinated meat standing outside the fridge for an hour till it comes to room temperature.

Set a handi  or heavy bottom vessel on high flame & let it heat well, then add the oil into it and let the oil heat well. Add all the whole spices & the chopped onions, stir well and cook over medium flame until the onions turn golden brown. Keep stirring constantly for even browning. Once the onions turn golden brown add the remaining half quantity of the ground marinated masala, stir well and cook the mixture for a few minutes on low head. Lower the flame and add all the powdered spices, stir and immediately add hot water and cook until the oil separates. The water prevents the powdered spices from burning.

Once the oil separates, add the marinated mutton and stir it well. You will need to cook the mutton over high flame for 10-15 minutes, stirring at regular intervals. Now cover the dish with a flat steel covering and pour water on the cover. Lower the flame and continue to cook the mutton for an hour or until the mutton is completely cooked. If the meat is not cooked add more water on the steel cover and continue to cook till the mutton is fully cooked.

I do not prefer cooking the meat in a pressure cooker but allowing it to slow cook for an hour and a half or till done. Meat releases a lot of its own liquid so go easy with the addition of the water. You want to let the mutton cook and also get a semi thick gravy.

Finally, heat a pan and add ghee to it. Once hot add the garam masala  and  kasuri methi to the ghee and stir it well. Pour the ghee over the mutton and add fresh coriander and lemon juice, stir it really well & finally add a small handful of fresh coriander. Your mutton curry is ready

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Faith

When Paul was hopping mad – Monday, 27th Week in ordinary time – Galatians 1:6-12

For the next nine weekdays, the liturgy of the Church will take for its first reading, texts from St Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The epistle spans six chapters. This is an important epistle that requires our attention not only for what it says but for what others claimed that it said. Its use or misuse during the Protestant reformation led to many of the divisions within Christianity.

Martin Luther cherry picked this book as his ‘great charter.’ He failed to properly reconstruct the conversation based on its original context and instead read Galatians and Romans through the lens of his own personal experience and the controversies of his era. He saw in this book the doctrine of salvation through the grace of Christ alone and assumed that what Paul was denouncing was role of good works. What Martin Luther did was a classic case of eisegesis. Biblical exegesis can be best understood as ‘drawing out’ what the text is saying while eisegesis means to draw in; in the sense of “importing” or “drawing in” one’s own subjective interpretations into the text, unsupported by the text itself .

Paul is writing to the Galatians, perhaps about 55 AD. Among other things, Galatians gives many autobiographical details of the apostle’s earlier life and evangelistic activity. At the time of Paul, Galatia was a province of the Roman Empire. Galatia is situated in what is today, modern day Turkey. The earliest inhabitants of that area were of Celtic origin. They migrated from central Europe across Italy and Macedonia to Asia Minor where they were hired by the local king as mercenaries around the year 280 B.C.

When Paul wrote to the Galatians, he did not write to a single church in a single city. For example, 1 Thessalonians is addressed to the church of the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:1). This epistle was addressed to the churches of Galatia, because Galatia was a region, not a city and there were several churches among the cities of Galatia.

Even though I mentioned that this book was written in 55 AD, there are several time periods and several locations given for the location of the audience and the date of this epistle. We know that Paul was in southern Galatia on his first missionary journey (Acts 13:13-14:23). However some scholars have also suggested that he went through northern Galatia on his second and third missionary journeys. They back this with texts such as (Acts 16:6).

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