It's almost the end of the year, and I've already switched to the delicious diet of a slice of plum cake and filter coffee for breakfast. The temperature in Kolkata is hovering in the comfortable lower teens and is forecast to drop below 10 degrees Celsius in the coming days. Do you know what this means?
It means Christmas is almost here, and you should bring out the fairy lights and jingle bells and look for your oversized stocking and oven mitts. Call it a colonial holdover, but I love Christmas. It's one of my favourite festivals in India. From shopping for Christmas cakes at Flury's in Park Street to seeing the Nativity scene outside St. Paul's Cathedral — first with family and now with friends — I love the lore and the traditions surrounding Christmas.
Like how plum cake has nothing to do with plums — more on that later — to how Syrian Christians have made a Portuguese confection their own, the food histories and traditions associated with Christmas in India have always fascinated me.
From the essential Christmas plum cake to the Portuguese Perad or Guava Cheese, here are some regional Indian sweets that make the Indian Christmas table truly special:
The sweet, decadent plum cake is synonymous with Christmas celebrations in India. The misnomer 'plum cake' refers to a wide range of cakes made with dried fruits such as currants, raisins, sultanas, or prunes, and also sometimes with fresh fruits, since 'plum' or 'plumb' originally referred to prunes, raisins, grapes, or any dried fruits in Medieval England. The kind of cake known as 'plum cake' in India is made with dried fruits, nuts — and optionally rum — and dates back to 18th-century England. It was brought to India by British colonists and missionaries during the colonial period.
Nevri (or Neureo) is a deep-fried sweet dumpling made predominantly in Goa and the Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of coastal Karnataka during Christmas. A variation of the Maharashtrian 'karanji' and the North Indian 'gujiya', the Goan Nevri is traditionally stuffed with freshly ground coconut and jaggery filling which gives it a higher moisture content and a creamier, more decadent mouthfeel.
Bolinhas are sweet, crumbly Goan cookies made with semolina flour and coconut. They are baked to have a hard but brittle and airy crumb, and a soft, dense centre. Although bolinhas are made year-round as tea-time snacks, the quintessential Goan Christmas table is incomplete without a serving of these sweet, crumbly semolina and coconut cookies.
Sticky rice cakes — locally known as 'hao khamui', 'tang-hou', and 'niekhruda' across North-East India — are a traditional sweet rice cake made during harvest festivals as well as Christmas in Manipur, Nagaland, and Assam. To make these rice cakes, short-grain, sticky rice locally cultivated in the region is pounded into a batter, wrapped in large, unblemished leaves of marini or Hedychium (Gulebakavali or ginger lily), and then steamed or boiled. Sticky rice cakes are usually consumed with rice beer or red tea.
Perad, also known as guava cheese in many regions across the world, is a gelatinous, red-brown Goan confectionery made from guava pulp, sugar, lime juice, and butter. It was brought to India by Portuguese settlers during the colonial period. Perad is made by simmering boiled guava pulp, sugar, lemon juice, salt, and butter until the blend reaches the desired consistency. It is then transferred to a greased container and cut into cubes, diamonds, or rectangles as required.
Rose cookies — also known as rosettes, buñuelos de viento, kembang, kokis, kuih rose, or achappam — are sweet, crispy, paper-thin sweet-and-savoury cookies made during Christmas in Kerala. Locally known as 'achappam', from the Malayalam word 'acch', meaning 'mold', and 'appam', meaning 'bread', these cookies are made by dipping an intricate, flower-shaped mould into a thin batter of rice flour, eggs, whole milk and sugar, and then deep-fried until it's perfectly cooked and crispy. The floral-shaped achappam or rose cookies are a traditional snack made during Easter and Christmas by the Syrian Christian community.
If you enjoyed reading this, here's more from Homegrown:
From Fogla To Shevla: 10 Traditional Foods That Are Disappearing From Indian Plates
Plum Cakes & Parties: Our Very Merry Guide To Christmas In Bandra