Veera Almeida runs her business from home, making and sharing her recipes online through social media. The ingredients and preparation style are passed down through generations in the family, from mother to daughter to granddaughter. The skill of mixing spices is learned through years of apprenticeship in the kitchen rather than by relying on a cookbook.
The proportion and variety of spices used in bottle masala are closely guarded secrets passed down within the family. The ingredients range from popular spices like lal mirch (red chilli), tejpatta (bay leaf), dalchini (cinnamon), elaichi (cardamom), and javitri (mace) to rare spices like mugwort, stoneflower, and Nagkesar (cobra saffron). On average, 25–30 spices are used in a masala, but it can range from as few as 20 to as many as 50.
Along with her daughter, Natasha, she runs the popular Instagram page @Jevayla_Ye (89k followers) and ‘The House of Jevayla Ye’ page on Facebook, where the mother-daughter duo shares the preparation processes of dishes from East Indian cuisine. In their own words, ‘The House of Jevayla Ye venture aims to introduce you to our humble authentic East Indian masalas. Sukhala!’ [1]
In the past, in East Indian neighbourhoods like Vasai (Bassein), it was common to find groups of women (called masalewalis) going from house to house to do the roasting and grounding. Manual pounding was a labour-intensive process spread over two or three days. Over the years, the pounding process has become entirely mechanised. Families now send the masala mix to mills, where it is pounded by machines.
Bottle masala gets its quirky name because it was traditionally stored in empty beer bottles. The airtight bottles preserved the original aroma and flavour of the masala and kept out moisture.
Stacks of containers and bags sent for milling are marked with family names for identification. Once the spices are fully powdered, they are kept at the mill to be collected in a day or two. Each family has a unique mix of spices, which must be pounded separately so that the flavours and aromas do not mix.
Wheat is the only ingredient that is not a spice. It helps thicken the curry that the masala is used to cook. Some households might choose to use chana dal instead of wheat. Similar to the preparation of the spices, the dal is also dried and roasted.
The East Indian community masala is prepared differently from the method used in the Goan community, wherein the spices are pounded fresh without having been roasted. Drying and roasting are time-consuming processes, and there is no shortcut to achieving the same flavours without them. In the old days, family members came together to prepare the masala, a process that took place over several days. This fostered a sense of collaboration, thereby reinforcing the bonds that tie the East Indian community together.