Sweet, sour, bitter and itchy: Inside Goa's delicious monsoon kitchen

Mint

19-07-2025

It's a gloomy monsoon morning. Rows of women are sitting outside the Panaji municipal market, selling all kinds of leafy greens. 'Bai, taikilo zai ge (do you want taikilo?)," they call. Taikilo or Cassia tora is one of the leafy greens sitting alongside bundles of small cucumbers, local bitter gourd, pumpkin leaves, tendrils of valachi bhaji (long bean leaves), rolled leaves of alu and bouquets of terem (both colocasia) and thick stumps of killah (bamboo shoot). In separate baskets are bikna or jackfruit seeds. Standing on its own is aakur, thin and long with tender stalks and buds, looking like asparagus.
This is Goa's highly nutritious monsoon bounty, foraged from gardens, fields and forests.
One of the stereotypes associated with Goan cuisine is that it is predominantly meat and fish based. Yet, vegetables are a beloved kitchen staple. Goa's monsoon vegetable platter is rich with ghodka (sprouted cashewnuts), luthchi bhaji (wild dragon stalk yam), phagla (spiny gourd), maskachi bhaji/kisra (drumstick leaves, stems), pipri (small tender cucumbers), and kuddukechi/pidduki bhaji (silver cockscomb leaves).
Most of the leaves and shoots germinate at the beginning of the monsoon. It is believed that the tender shoots and buds taste the best at this time, before they grow into thicker leaves or flowers or get worms. The leaves and stem of pidduki, for instance, have to be consumed before the growth of the flower. Aakur shows up in fields just after the first rains, growing in brackish water, especially on khazan (land reclaimed from mangroves). Only the buds of aakur are eaten, usually paired with another ingredient—dried or fresh prawns, beans, pulses, and legumes.
My guide in the market is Shubhra Shankhwalker, the founder of home dining venture Aai's, where she documents, cooks and feeds people dishes from her Goan Saraswat community. At her home, I've eaten a pidduki bhaji and taikilo stir-fry with toor dal and bikna; a coconut-rich ambade karamm (a salad with hog plum), and patoleo (a sweet made with coconut, jaggery and rice flour steamed in turmeric leaves).
Turmeric leaves are a beloved monsoon treat. These fragrant leaves are available for a short window and make their way into dishes like patoleo, or to add fragrance and flavour to tavsali (a cucumber cake) and sukhem (a dry dish with coconut).
'Turmeric leaves are ideally used only as a flavouring, like elaichi, in dishes like atol/godshem (a sweet dish of rice, chana dal, jaggery and coconut milk), and duddoli. The latter is made of parboiled rice, quite like the dodol, and eaten in August as a coolant and to soothe upset stomachs," says Crescy Baptista, co-founder of The Goan Kitchen (TGK).
Another beloved ingredient is ghodka. These cashewnut cotyledons are a first-rain treat and revered for their tender creaminess. Baptista has made a xacuti with it, and added other seasonal veggies, to her daily menu at TGK. At publisher-turned-restaurateur Sapna Sardessai's Kokum Curry outlets in Panaji and Candolim, ghodka are cooked into a delicious coconut-based curry with prawns. 'I consciously endeavour to keep alive these traditional recipes—ghodkache tonak, luthchi bhaaji, maskachi bhaaji, aakur, kuddukechi bhaaji—serving them as specials for the day, so they don't vanish from our palates altogether. You can find them on our thaalis too, in this season," she says.
Sardessai is another repository of knowledge on Goan ingredients and their usage. 'Luthchi bhaaji sprouts immediately with the first rain, and is found in meadows and forest areas. You can tell alu from terem going by their stems and colour of the leaves—terem has a green stem and light green leaves, whereas alu has a brown to purplish stem and darker coloured leaves." The pumpkin creeper shoots make for a nice seasonal vegetable with the onset of the monsoon. 'The tender leaves are cooked with cubed pumpkin and bilimbis (tree sorrel) and coconut. Then there's killah (bamboo shoot), which is cooked as daangar (cutlets), pickled or as a vegetable with jackfruit seeds and peas." she adds.
Generally, the preparations are with ground coconut or dry coconut, and souring agents like ambade (hog plum), kokum, bilimbi, mango seed, bindi soll, and otamb (monkey jackfruit).
Beyond the leafy greens, other monsoon specials include ambade, which makes its way into dishes like karamm, hooman, uddamethi (a curry with urad dal and fenugreek), and sasav (with coconut and mustard seeds). Then there is the local cucumber called pipri. 'We make it into a salad, or karamm with fresh coconut and mustard. My mother-in-law used to cook it as a tonak (coconut curry). People also add it to sungtache hooman (curry) after removing the seeds," says Shankhwalker.
There is an art to cooking with these greens. One surefire way is to pick these up from local markets and ask the women selling them for advice. They will tell you that luth, like alu, can cause itchiness in the throat so they are usually teamed with something sour like tamarind, solam, or ambade. Some will advise oiling the hands before handling the leaves. 'I treat luthchi bhaji the same way as alu, as they both cause itchiness. I use a lot of tamarind, add some dal, coconut masala, a tadka of hing and sasav (mustard seeds), and wadi (ash gourd)," says Shankhwalker.
In many villages, the older folk still eat these greens for the medicinal benefits. 'I call them inoculants," says Maryanne Lobo, an Ayurvedic doctor, who conducts medicinal plants and wild food walks under her company Plant Walk Goa. 'They help with gut health, controlling blood sugar, are anti-biotic, anti-fungal, and blood purifiers."
This traditional knowledge—how, when and where to harvest these vegetables—is slowly getting lost. There are many reasons for this, says Lobo. 'Many are not easily available. The markets where you can find these are fast dwindling. These are wild foods, available in small quantities, and need to be harvested sustainably," she says.
It is why Lobo has been conducting monsoon wild food walks once a week since December 2020. 'Knowledge helps understand why we need to conserve these plants and our habitats," she says. She is a big advocate for growing these greens in homes too.
The best way to explore Goa's monsoon bounty is through such walks across hillsides and plateaus, exploring markets and speaking to her, farmers and growers, and through the various seasonal dishes.
Joanna Lobo is a Goa-based journalist.