Goa's cuisine is to-die-for, with several ingredients lending it that amazing flavour, one of them being toddy, a liquid which packs quite a punch.
The palmyra, or dollar palm, Borassus flabillifer, is locally known as the tadd madd and the fruity sap from its inflorescence was known, in most Indian languages, as taddi. The Bengalees rounded the word to toddy.
And the British, who started off as traders of the East India Company in Bengal, soon Anglicised the word to ‘toddy’. It remains so to this day.
The use of the word ‘toddy’ has now been extended to the sweet phloem sap of other palms, including the date palm, the coconut palm and the fishtail palm.
In Goa, the native palm is the fishtail palm, Caryota urens, that is locally known as billo madd, Its leaves are used as festive decoration and its unfermented sap, or neera, was used for making jaggery, locally known as godd.
The fermented sap, or sur, was the festive drink. These terms were extended to the fruit sap of the coconut tree and its products. The fishtail palm soon became history.
ENTER THE COCONUT PALM
The coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, provides us with tender coconut water, and grated coconut for our curries and sweet meats. It soon replaced the fishtail palm as the source of toddy.
Coconut palms produce one frond (leaf) and one spathe every month to month-and-half. The oldest of the three unopened spathes is used for toddy tapping.
The people of Goa traditionally brought in the cheer with toddy. Even to this day, the Konkani expression for intoxication is “Sur marllea re?” because toddy, or sur, was the earliest known intoxicant.
The Central Plantation Crops Research Institute (CPCRI of ICAR) at Kasargod in Kerala, has developed an ice-cooled chiller box for collection of neera. Keeping the neero, or neera, cool prevents fermentation of this sweet sap to sur, or toddy.
The cold water from the melting ice cubes can also be conveniently used to clean the spathe and wash away any yeast. This advancement in technology through years of research at CPCRI-Kasargod gives Goa hope for the revival of its pyramid shaped coconut jaggery.
MODERN SCENE
The lady toddy tapper, or renderina, Shweta Kushali Gaonkar, has boosted toddy tapping in Goa. She has trained others such as Derrick Dias (who now plucks coconuts professionally in Salcette) and Estella Pires, who has trained scores of youngsters and adults, alike, to climb coconut trees.
Shweta has trained scores of toddy tappers using the CPCRI chiller box. Neera can be used as a fresh drink along with slightly fermented sweet toddy or godd sur. It is a good probiotic and health drink.
It is great to see young graduates taking up the profession of climbing coconut trees and toddy tapping, thereby elevating its status from one traditionally associated with the uneducated. These youth have also broken the gender and caste barriers that almost led to the demise of the profession.
The Goa Excise rules may need to be tweaked along with this new trend.
The fermented neera is the toddy that can be made into vinegar or alcohol, which is then distilled into feni. Both, coconut vinegar and coconut feni, are an essential part of Goan cuisine, especially in meat preparations like choris (pork sausages), Sorpatel and recheiado masala (for fish or meat).
Sur is the original source of feni in Goa, and coconut feni is being revived currently. It is hoped that Goa gets a GI tag for it, too.
(The author is the former Chairman of the GCCI Agriculture Committee, CEO of Planter's Choice Pvt Ltd, Additional Director of OFAI and Garden Superintendent of Goa University, and has edited 18 books for Goa & Konkan).