Every now and then my partner puts in a dinner request. The latest was the most unusual. He wanted a curry with which we could eat the fugias he got us back from Mumbai. We had unpacked them as if they were gold biscuits, carefully placing them into Tupperware so they could sit in the fridge until I had time to cater to them. My parents had ordered a kilo from Cecilia, who lives in the Kurla village and, by our family’s estimation, makes the very best—light and fluffy, not overly sweet, and tastes phenomenal when resurrected after a long flight with a sprinkling of water and a little oven time. My sister had asked me if I had wanted vindaloo. I had refused because of the logistical challenge of transporting something liquid like that through the complex journey involved in reaching our apartment from the airport in Milan. I asked her for masalas instead. She sent me two East Indian bottle masalas, one for fish, the other for mutton. They were among a vast constellation of gifts that composed my partner’s luggage. The fish masala was pitch perfect. I had marinated some largish prawns with it the evening before, adding a light dollop of ginger garlic paste, salt, and coating it with corn grit from Tramin before frying it with a bit of oil. We had eaten them with a pumpkin rice pulao I had made, my attempt at repurposing the leftover roasted pumpkin soup from the night before.

My partner made us soup for lunch, a traditional South Tyrolean preparation with select vegetables and a chunk of meat, stewed over at least 1.5 hours, served with a tiny shell-shaped pasta. I’d thought of making something with the cooked meat along the lines of what I generally do, inspired by a bell pepper stir fry my father used to make, using Worcestershire sauce and other secret ingredients. But my partner asked if we could have the fugias instead. It had been more than two years since we had both eaten them alongside a gravy. I would have liked to have made a chicken curry with coriander and coconut, but, to our dismay, we had neither of these ingredients and ordering them would need at least a day. So I decided to attempt an unusual, possibly never before done fusion—an East Indian goulash.