Warm breads, strawberry sloffen hearts at a Dutch bakery in Kochi
The bakery Zera Noya in Kochi, run by Dutch expat baker Sarah Lisa, serves meringue cookies, cinnamon rolls and lattice-top appeltaart
Across the street from Fort Kochi’s historic parade ground is a whitewashed gate engraved with a monogram—a large V carrying a smaller O and C on its two arms. It stands for Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or the Dutch East India Trading Company. Between the Portuguese, who arrived in Kochi (then Cochin), in 1500, to trade in spices, and eventually occupied it, and the British, who took control of Fort Kochi in 1795, it was the Dutch that ruled the Queen of the Arabian Sea for 132 years. Fort Kochi, a palimpsest of colonial memories, is strewn with remnants of its Dutch past—Dutch-era buildings with clay-tiled gable roof, street names like Burgher Street and Rose Street (Rozenstraat) and Peter Celli Street and the now elusive breudher, a ceremonial, nutmeg-scented sweet bread-meets-cake that traces its lineage to the Dutch. Once, a culinary highlight of Fort Kochi the breudher, also called Dutch cake, is hard to come by. A couple of old bakeries still bake it but locals will tell you that they are only a shadow of the original.
But Kochi now has a quaint little bakery rolling out Dutch treats - an array of brood and banket (Dutch for bread and pastries). There’s everything from slof which is an open-faced cookie-cake filled with almond paste, and layered with homemade pastry cream, fresh strawberries and a vanilla glaze made with vanilla bean, to lattice-top appeltaart.
Christened Zera Noya, which means new beginnings, the quaint cafe and bakery occupies a ground-floor spot at the Croft, a lifestyle destination in Kochi’s Ernakulam area. The cafe wraps around the glass-walled show kitchen, where the owner, 31-year-old Dutch expat baker Sarah Lisa, drums up her array of goodies along with her team.
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Born and brought up in the Netherlands, Sarah started baking early. For her eighth birthday party she baked cookies with all her friends. Her parents, both chefs who worked in restaurants in the Netherlands, only encouraged her. At 16 she enrolled into a bread and pastry baking school. Later she went on to work as the head baker aboard the cruise ship Logos Hope for several years before moving on to volunteer at Himalayan Cafe in China, which worked with local communities near the Tibetan border financially empowering them by training them in various skills, like coffee making, baking and management, among others.
It was during her stint on the cruise that Sarah met Vibin Varghese, a Malayali boy who travelled the world as a marine engineer. Eventually they fell in love and got married. The couple was at Vibin’s family’s home in Kochi, planning their next move when Covid-19 struck putting a spanner in their plans. It was during this time that Sarah started baking for friends and family. Soon, her Dutch-style baked goods—a far cry from what was locally available—became a rage in her circle. This prompted the couple to start a cloud-bakery from their home. “While I took care of the baking, Vibin spent his time on logistics, building a network of vendors," says Sarah.
Encouraged by the success of their home-based enterprise the couple contemplated opening a physical bakery and café in 2021. “But I got pregnant so we had to postpone our plans. However, last year on Valentine’s day they soft launched their bakery—a labour of love. A grand opening followed in October. But months later, tragedy struck. Vibin was diagnosed with cancer, and he succumbed to it in December. “I had lost the love of my life, I had a little daughter and a new bakery, our life’s investment, to run alone," says Sarah. She exudes strength as she speaks even though her voice falters once in a while. She tells us more about her bakery.
Dutch confections are usually quite simple. “They often have quirky names," says Sarah. Her menu features a few of these curiously christened sweet treats. There is, for instance, the bokkenpootjes that translate to goat’s feet cookies. These are almond meringue cookies made with chocolate-sheathed ends. Or, there’s the mergpijp , marzipan-coated cake layered with raspberry jam and filled with vanilla butter, that literally means marrow bones. When you cut a mergpijp the layers inside resemble those of a bone filled with marrow. Another typical Dutch pastry on offer is the rondo, little roundels of cookie-cake filled with luscious caramel sauce and topped with caramel cream.
In addition to sweet bakes, the menu has savoury items including puffs and stuffed croissants. There are buttery puffs or pastry parcels filled with minced beef subtly flavoured with a Dutch-style mix of spices and herbs and chicken laced with satésaus or satay sauce that entered the Dutch kitchen during Netherland's colonial occupation of Indonesia. “Puffs, or rather the local variant, are big in Kerala and people are used to a version with spicy stuffing. The local ones also come cheap. I face a lot of questions and some criticism for my puffs that are a far cry from the ones people are used to," says Sarah. She is not quite ready to Indianise her offerings. But sometimes she has had to make a few compromises. Take for instance, the cinnamon braids (or rolls) here. The Dutch version of the cinnamon rolls or Zeeuwse Bolussen—made by rolling rich yeast dough in cinnamon-sugar and drizzled with citron and syrup—are believed to have been born in the Jewish kitchens of Dutch Zeeland. “But most people found the original recipe too doughy and chewy. So said it was too sticky, or even raw," she says. So Sarah replaced the original recipe for the Zeeuwse Bolussen dough with a brioche dough.
Zera Noya also offers an array of artisanal breads. These are baked by Tsarina Abrao Vacha, an architect and a fifth-generation baker whose great great grandfather started what was perhaps the oldest bakery in Kochi in 1852, called Rozario’s, in Ernakulam, under the patronage of the Cochin Maharaja. Her sourdoughs are particularly popular.
Sarah is still reeling from her loss. But she is determined to keep the bakery running. She even has a few exciting plans for her cafe. She wants to expand the seating area by adding a section at the back and expand her menu, starting off with a few deep-fried snacks like cheese and meat bitterballen (crumb-fried cheeseballs and meatballs) and old-fashioned Dutch doughnuts, oliebollen. “But right now, my child is my priority. So, I am taking things slow," she signs off.
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