Assado de carne or Beef Roast is a very popular everyday dish in Goa. In Portuguese assado is roast, carne is beef and vaca is cow. As kids we often took roast beef sandwiches to school. It was thin slices of beef with bread and butter. In Goa butter is a more popular spread, as mayo goes bad since the weather is very hot and proper food safety are not very well practised. Each family in Goa has their own variations in making assado/roast but mostly will included vinegar, ginger, garlic, cloves, cinnamon, green chilli and black-pepper.

My mum usually marinates the meat for a couple of days with the ground paste and then slowly braises the meat in a pot even though it is called a roast (not every household in Goa has an oven). The meat would be cooked for an hour or more depending…