Passport & Plate - Goan Egg Coudu
India | Friday, March 14, 2014 | 5 photos
Ingredients
3 eggs
2 medium onions sliced
1 tsp salt
4-5 garlic cloves
2 dried chillies
1 ball of tamarind soaked in 2 cups of water
2 tbsp coconut oil
½ tsp sugar
How to prepare this recipeRub a little salt into the sliced onions and set aside.
Briefly grind the garlic with the cumin and mix into the onion mixture.
Heat the coconut oil and add the onion mixture. Add the tamarind water and slit dried chillies and bring to the boil.
Break each egg into a cup and tip gently into the curry one at a time. Do not stir to prevent breaking the eggs.
Boil for a further 15 minutes or until the eggs are set. Add a pinch of sugar to taste and turn off the heat.
Serve hot with rice.
The story behind this recipeWhen I was a kid and found an egg curry on the menu at a restaurant, it always caused a great deal of excitement, very quickly followed by a deep sense of disappointment when the dish finally reached my table.
The reason? Boiled eggs floating where poached eggs should have been. Little white orbs with gravy coating their glistening skins in the place of sunny yellow clouds, a bit ragged around the edges, soaked through with the spicy goodness of the curry that carried them.– because that’s what the egg curry I was used to eating always looked like.
The sweet and sour creation known as egg coudu was my grandmother’s specialty and, being fairly light and easy to make, featured quite regularly on our dining table.
It still smells and tastes of summer back in Goa, India – of searing mornings spent playing outdoors, papery pink bougainvillea crisped by the midday sun and the sweet scent of wet earth released by the ground each evening when the garden hose was switched on.
To me it tastes of home.
Even today, living in the United Arab Emirates, if I ever get really homesick all I need to do is whip up this quick curry, boil a pot of white rice, dig out some pickled prawns from the pantry, toast some poppadum – or papad as we call them – and sit down to a home-made meal in every sense of the word.
It has definitely saved me the price of a few airplane tickets!
The recipe is built on a fragrant base of garlic crushed with cumin that forms the foundation of many Goan dishes. And in a manner that is fairly unique to Goa, it uses tamarind juice rather than tomato paste or coconut cream as the base for the curry.
The reason I picked this recipe is because it is not one you find very often in Goan restaurants, and one you will probably never come across on the menu of popular Indian restaurants. But it is a recipe you would find in any Goan home.
