Balchão is Goan cooking at its most uncompromising. Prawns preserved in a dark, fiery paste of red chilli, vinegar and spice, closer to a pickle than a curry.

It is intense and it is meant to be. A tablespoon serves several people.

Eat it with plain rice, with bread, or use a spoonful to lift a simple fish curry. Traditionally it was a way of keeping seafood without refrigeration, and it still tastes like something built to last.

Stocked at Curry Corner, North Melbourne.