Mr Santoosh of Turtle Beach

Alright, we did take one day trip, but it was hard work getting off that beach I tell you! 

It didn’t take long for My northerner radar to  locate the lingering vowels of new friends, Andy and Paula, both proper grown up travellers form Blackburn who’ve packed up their lives for a two and a half year trot around the globe. Compared to their hearty knapsack (Paula’s brought her slippers n’ all) I consider my packing to be rather minimalist, given they are going to all climates, everything for travel towels to tents is crammed into their entourage. They’re also writing a blog about their travels, if you’re getting bored of my wafflings.

I fretted a long while about what to wear in india and played the summer wear down for fear of being started at. But in goa, tourists and commonplace and stares are on the decline so bikinis are just fine, as are shorts and skirts. The only downfall of having your skin out, of course, is that an unpleasant side effects of malaria tablets (doxycycline in this case) is to increase the suns sensitivity to sunlight. So ill get a little burned, I ponder, cracking out the 50 suncream. But that’s not the worst of it.  Itchy blisters, all over my hands, feet, ankles. Not spring summer 2013… 

Anyway, back to the day trip. Our new friends took a trip around The Headland to turtle Beach, where turtles comets lay their eggs. It’s a 30 minute tuk tuk ride from patenem beach, or you can walk. But who wants to walk in 34 degrees?!

So off we go, and find a lovely, practically deserved beach, which at its furthest point, has rocks, encrusted with crustations for want of a better description (women were chipping and chiseling these away, foraging for what look like cockles, but I’m not sure if they were?) the tide was out, leaving pools of clear water around these spectacular rocks, which looked more like a futuristic parametric cityscape of Zaha Hadid than something from the natural world. The post beach tide revealed  a smattering of temporary fossils left by sand covered Starfish. all this wad surrounded by tropical green jungle and a sinking pink sun. Besides the scruffy dog (that gave mild chase, til I had to go knee deep in sea to loose him) this is a perfect scene. A few strong contenders for picture of the holiday were taken on this day. 

Practically famished form my canine escape routine, we retire to the plastic seats of mr. Santoosh and his family restaurant , which boasts recommendation by jamie oliver on his signage (perhaps its just a conicidence that garden ramsey recommends the place next door). Mr S brings us some kingfishers whist we select which of the enormous and currently live crabs we should dine on and contemplate chilli or sukha as a dressing. 

We watch mr santoosh’s daughter, a girl of no more than 12, carry plate of fish to the table next to us so they can select their lunch too, then off she trots to skilfully and rapidly gut, deadscale and clean their selected seabass. When I was 12, I don’t think I could even make a cheese toastie, and any labour on behalf of the parents would have resulted in a massive sulk and a fierce negotiations about pocket money. 

So crab sukha and polenta calamari it is, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.

Crab sukha, deceptively simple, is desiccated coconut, green and red peppers, chilli, salt and turmeric all fried up  with some of the crab meat and shell and stock. Oh it’s messy, our faces and fingers are tinged turmeric yellow. I think Jamie would call I a very pukka lunch. 

01 Feb This entry was published on February 1, 2013 at 2:37 pm. It’s filed under India and tagged crab, food, goa, India, patenem beach, seafood, travelling, turtle beach. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.