Duck Moile
Duck Moile is a particularly good example of what happened when centuries of Portuguese presence on the Konkan coast collided with the cooking of Mumbai’s East Indian Catholic community. Duck, vinegar, wine and a sweet-sour balance sit alongside ginger, garlic, chillies and that most East Indian of institutions, bottle masala. It remains a festive dish too, particularly associated with Christmas and Easter tables.
Even the name appears to carry a little Portuguese baggage. Moile or moilee is often linked to the Portuguese molho, meaning sauce, although the etymology is repeated more confidently than it is documented, so I’d treat that as a likely linguistic connection rather than courtroom evidence. The Portuguese influence on the dish itself, however, is much easier to see.
My version gets a cup of red wine, coconut vinegar and bottle masala, then reduces until there is barely a gravy left, just a dark, sticky, sharply tart sauce clinging to duck and fried potatoes.
Five hundred years of cultural exchange, and somewhere along the way the duck got wine.
Lonvas
Lonvas begins with a rather excellent proposition: what if the radish got to cook in beef stock?
The East Indian answer involves beef, chunks of radish, coconut milk, tamarind and a generous spoonful of bottle masala. As everything simmers together, the radish goes from sharp and crunchy to soft, juicy little sponges full of beefy, spiced gravy. Frankly, it may be getting the better end of the arrangement.
Bottle masala is responsible for most of the personality here. That famously crowded East Indian spice blend brings heat, warmth and complexity, while tamarind sharpens things up and coconut milk rounds out the gravy at the end.
The beef is excellent, obviously. But don't be surprised if you find yourself fishing around the pot for another piece of radish.
East Indian Chicken Khuddi
Long before spice blends came with barcodes and ingredient lists, Mumbai’s East Indian families had bottle masala. A fiercely personal blend of spices, traditionally made in large batches, stored in beer bottles and passed down through families, with every household convinced theirs is obviously the best one.
Khuddi is one of the great places to put it to work. A proper East Indian Sunday lunch curry of chicken, potatoes and roasted coconut, deeply spiced with bottle masala and sharpened here with coconut vinegar.
Rich, tangy, comforting and ideally accompanied by fugiya, pao or rice. And if someone offers you their family’s bottle masala recipe, write it down immediately. You may not be asked twice.