Pork Vindaloo
About the Chef
Gresham Fernandes is the chef-partner at Bandra Born Mumbai. He has previously worked at renowned Mumbai establishments The Leela, Salt Water Grill, Aurus and the Salt Water Café. His repertoire of work highlights his commitment to fostering community connections through hyperlocal dining experiences.
Introduction
For Chef Gresham Fernandes, one of the perfect accompaniments to pav — a leavened bread regularly eaten in Mumbai — is pork vindaloo. Made using toddy vinegar and multiple spices, vindaloo is a rich, tangy and hearty stew-like dish popular in Mumbai’s East Indian households. The dish, though, did not originate in Mumbai. It derives from carne de vinha d’alhos, which is made using wine vinegar and garlic, and was brought by the Portuguese to their colonies in India.
While many versions of the dish exist — for example, the East Indian one uses the laboriously prepared bottle masala, while the Goan version might demand coconut vinegar — in this recipe, Chef Gresham shares his rendition. He admits that the preparation he loves most would not be deemed ‘authentic’ by his family members. They would, after all, insist that the 33 hand-roasted and ground spices comprising the bottle masala be a part of the ingredient list. However, in a quest to make the dish less labour-intensive, and given Mumbai’s cramped real estate — meaning shrinking terrace space inadequate for sun-drying spices — Chef Gresham’s version offers the perfectly piquant flavours typical of a , with techniques adjusted for the present-day kitchen. Plus, ‘authentic’ in the context of the migrating , anyway.
