The Delhi Rd Kitchen: A Culinary Legacy
Our Roots & Journey
Welcome to a heartfelt tribute to our parents and grandparents, Grace (née Lobo/Da Cruz), and Narciso (Pinto/Lima). Born in Kenya and Uganda in the mid 20's, they studied and worked in Bombay before returning to Africa in the early 50's to marry and raise a family, eventually settling on London's Delhi Road in the mid 60's. Bound together by their shared love of Goan cooking, this collection celebrates their memorable Sunday night dinners, capturing the unforgettable food, love, and laughter that filled our childhood home.
The Archives:
The Delhi Rd Kitchen Cookbook is a compilation of the de Lima family recipes written in letters, exercise books, scraps of paper, and the backs of envelopes - alongside some of our grandmother Sofia Pinto Lima's recipes, originally written in Portuguese and translated by our dad, who yearned to replicate the delicious memories of his childhood food — ‘just like Mama made’!
It has taken a long time to plan and even longer to write, and is for everyone who sat around the table at Delhi Rd, wine glass in hand, enjoying the food and raucous conversation on a Sunday evening.
East African Beginnings (1960-1967)
My earliest memory of our Dad's cooking was in Dar es Salaam, East Africa, where we lived from 1960 to 1967. Our African cook, Kondo — by now an expert in Goan food — cooked six days a week. On Sundays, his day off, Mum and Dad would cook instead, trying out one of their favourite Western dishes. Dad's ‘famous’ dish was a spicy sausage pasta: little chipolatas cooked in a tomato and recheado masala sauce, mixed with spaghetti and lots of cheese.
An Expat food festival took place every year in Dar, showcasing food from all over the world. The entry ticket entitled you not only to sample the dishes but to take home a copy of the recipes — which we still have today, and some of which Dad adapted to become his ‘own’.
Settling in London
In the mid-60s, when we moved to the UK as new immigrants, Kondo the cook and our Dad were left behind in Africa. Our Mum struggled to work, shop, cook and feed four constantly hungry children. When Dad eventually joined her in late 1968, they decided to share the cooking: Dad would cook five days' worth of meat dishes at the weekend and store them in the chest freezer, and Mum would cook the vegetable dishes and rice, chips or mashed potatoes when she came home from work. The weekend was when they had time to experiment with Goan recipes — rice, prawn curries and fish often on the menu.
Keeping Grace's Memory Alive
This ritual carried on until our Mum's untimely death in 1992, long after their children had left Delhi Rd to have families of their own and just the two of them were left at home. After Nannie passed away at 67, Grandad faced a sad reality: their eight grandchildren, all under five with another on the way, might lose their precious memories of Grace. His answer was to hold an annual Memorial Mass and party for her every year on 15th November, Nannie's birthday.
What started as a simple remembrance blossomed into a lively celebration of family and Goan hospitality. After Mass, Delhi Road would come alive: plates of crispy beef patties fresh from the oven, golden fish croquettes, fragrant chutney sandwiches and lacy forminhas. The main meal followed — the now-famous Portuguese Fish Dish, pulao rice, fruity East Indian chicken curry and the legendary Xacuti — with the traditional Goan roast taking pride of place, and a rainbow of desserts lovingly prepared by friends and family to crown the feast.
Christmas & The Goan Tradition of Kuswar
Christmas was a lavish celebration too. When Nannie was alive, she and Dad shared the ritual of making and distributing Goan sweets, or ‘Kuswar’. After she passed, Dad took it upon himself to make the Kuswar. Come December the kitchen filled with bags of flour, mounds of sugar, grated coconut and fine semolina, and he would craft each sweet by hand: delicate Neureos filled with coconut, deftly curled Kulkuls, golden angel wings dusted with sugar, home-made toffee that melted in your mouth, and diamond-shaped gram Doce. These treasures were stored in large empty tubs of ghee for Lorraine to parcel out among family and friends.
A Lasting Legacy
Dad's greatest passion was always cooking. Most Sundays he would make something special, then call around his children, grandchildren and close friends, waxing lyrical about the menu and asking who was coming to dinner. These lively dinners are fondly engraved in his grandchildren's memories.
Our final memory of Dad's food was ‘The Roast’, which he had lovingly prepared and put in the freezer for Easter, when all the family were to come together — excited to see everyone, even though he was ill and could barely leave his bed. The following weekend, Dad was gone, and the family gathered in Delhi Rd for that final roast dinner, toasting our parents in the garden in the warm May sunshine.
