Hey there. I’m back! Hope you haven’t forgotten me! After all, it’s been a few days since I last posted ‘From The Corner Table’. I know pulling a Houdini is breaking one among the few rules of blogging and I’ve already been at the receiving end of the “you have to be regular” lecture from my parents. My sincere apologies to all of you…
I ‘celebrated’ a nine-year friendship anniversary with my first cousin a few days ago. Considering she’s been a part of my life as far as my memory stretches, this friend-anniversary reminder by Facebook was rather amusing. As someone who was smack in the middle of the Bhaumick sisters – three years younger to my elder sister and three and a…
Brutal honesty will more often than not set you on a path that is opposing to one taken by others. On this road, you will battle anonymous adversaries, and trolls that will fight you until their last breath, ready to martyr themselves for a notion they think to be right. It could be for a subject as complex as the…
I adore chilli chicken – give me chilli chicken for breakfast, lunch, dinner and I would be a happy soul. Methinks, that can be said for chilli potato too now. Chilli chicken is an Indo-Chinese dish popular among the masses. Found at street-side food joints being served on flimsy plastic plates or at a fine dining restaurant, looking too pretty to be eaten, the chilli chicken is everyone’s heartthrob. Much to my surprise, and the delight of vegetarian friends, I found out chilli chicken has…
As a child growing up on classical English literature, I was fascinated by terms like chimneys, fireplaces, scones, etc, and phrases like ‘lush greenery’, ‘rolling hills’, ‘winding roads’, ‘sparkling water’ and ‘gushing streams’. All of these seemed fantastical until, in a clichéd but true manner, travelling broadened my horizon and gave meaning to these fantastical terms. However, it was only last year…
Did you know Bengalis are pretty much obsessed with food, especially dishes that include fish? I remember my maternal grandfather going to the market every morning to buy fresh vegetables and fish. There is a distinct memory of my parents enthusiastically joining him, or other family members, for this morning ritual. “There are so many fruits, vegetables and types of…
Ever get that feeling of wanting to kick yourself because you’ve been lazy and missed doing something important, like clicking the picture of a place that you really liked? And realising the goof-up only when you are digging through files for a photograph to show off or post on social media!
It tends to happen to me a lot. Mostly because I invariably lose myself in the surroundings, get busy absorbing everything and forget that I have a phone camera and a digital camera that should be put to good use.
The most recent, in this case, being the missing photo of the Kanyakumari railway station – the last station in the southern part of peninsular India with the cool station code ‘CAPE’ and the pinkest station building I’ve seen. It’s not like I don’t have a photograph of this pink station. I do. But I wish I had a better one, along with photographs of the board announcing the station and some photos of the green interiors.
Kanyakumari is a postage-stamp-sized town in comparison to other towns that you may have travelled to. You can easily cover the touristy and non-touristy bits of the city in a day as I did.
It’s that time of the year! I’ve been waiting for Poila Boishakh, the first day of the Bengali calendar, for some time now. Celebrations aside, the best part of this day is the aroma of traditional food that wafts out of the kitchen. This year, Poila Boishakh is on Sunday, April 15.
The food and rituals, I feel, are a testimony to the synergy that Bengalis have towards their traditions. Not just Bengalis. Peep into the homes in your neighbourhood (not literally!) and you will see the Assamese, Malayali, Sikh, Tamil households busy cleaning house, prepping to greet guests and cooking up a storm. A sign of the earnest desire to cherish traditions. These are among the several communities in India that will be celebrating the beginning of their New Year on April 14-15.
Over the years, celebration patterns at the Bhaumick household have changed – new and old friends, thought processes, cultural programmes, the manner of rejoicing.
Never the food though. There is comfortable excitement in the known – starting the day with a breakfast of luchi, aloo’r dum and begun bhaaja (fried bread, Bengali style potato curry with fried brinjal), followed by a lavish lunch of two appetisers, a dal, vegetable curries, fish curry, mutton or chicken curry, a few sweets and a must on New Year day, the payesh. Our New Year days don’t involve so much food anymore but we don’t miss out on the maangsho jhol (recipe for Bengali style mutton curry) and the payesh.
I am not a payesh fan, being lactose intolerant. But I do make an exception for Khejur Gur Payesh. Made with date palm jaggery that is available in the winter months only, it is a Bengali speciality. So this year, I decided to learn how to make my favourite. And because New Years are about going overboard, I also learned to make Chhana Payesh – a milk pudding made with chhana or paneer. Chhana is a type of cheese curd; process it further and you get paneer. No Indian store nearby? Make chhana at home, the process is pretty simple as is evident in ‘Churning out homemade chhana/paneer’.
Several people, when asked about a mutton curry, have described it as “a gravy of meat, potatoes and/or vegetables” depending on their location on the world map. For a Bengali, however, there is nothing ‘simple’ about the maangsho jhol (Bengali style mutton curry). This is a curry that is usually reserved for the Sunday lunch or made to add that extra oomph to a meal made to impress.
A Bengali can regale you with tales of incidents and heated discussions that have taken place during the Sunday lunch of maangsho jhol and bhaat (rice). There is an emotional connect with this curry.
Such is the robust personality of the maangsho jhol that accompaniments are limited to some fresh green chillies for that extra zing, sliced onions and some chaatni (chutney). The adventurous ones – read those with strong digestion systems – end the meal with a serving of creamy homemade doi (yogurt). I say adventurous because mutton curry is heavy on the stomach. As is any milk product like yogurt.
My memories of maangsho jhol are tied up with winter picnics and Sunday afternoons. These picnics were organised by the Bengalis who had banded together in a foreign land, in this case Rajkot, a city in Gujarat. Following traditions they had grown up with, they would organise picnics during winter. At these outings, men would take up cooking duties and amid a lot of laughter and some tiffs over the amount of red chilli powder, these daddies would cook maangsho jhol and rice. The mothers were given the tedious job of prepping the onions, ginger and garlic. Our job, as kids, was to play! Best job in the world, wasn’t it?
At the Bhaumick – yup that’s my surname – household, maangsho jhol and rice was a Sunday ritual made special by the fact that my father would be cooking it. His maanghso jhol is world-famous, I kid you not! It was (and still is) a labour of love. Labour because it does take at least 2 hours to make unless you want to be done in a jiffy and dump it all in a pressure cooker.
Don’t let the ‘2 hours’ scare you off! It made me shudder in dread too. But whilst learning to cook this dish, I realised that you don’t have to do much after the first 30 minutes. Honestly!
What’s the weather like in your part of the world? Down here, the temperature has touched 42°C in what is just the beginning of summer. Local newspapers have reported this to be a heatwave that will likely continue until next week.
I can vouch for the heat – I was felled by a heat stroke on Friday (or was it Saturday?) that saw me moaning and groaning through the weekend. Baking a birthday cake for my father – he completed a glorious 73 years on March 25 – was nothing short of a challenge. It took two botched attempts before I could produce a Lemon Cake with Chocolate Filling & Frosting. Other than that, I was a complete failure at assisting Maa as she whipped up a light vegetarian meal for friends and family who dropped in to help us celebrate.
That was Sunday. Then Monday and Tuesday happened. And being housebound, the days were spent working and organising external hard disks. This led to the rediscovery of photographs from the college years. Days when I had better hair, was chirpier, thinner, had more energy and less acne. Oh yes! I am the poster girl for ‘acne in the 30s’.
But skin woes apart, what struck me was that several of these photographs had been clicked on festive days when I should have been home but was in the hostel.
Exam time was the worst.
The finals would always be in April and I would miss out on celebrating Poila Boishakh, the first day of the lunisolar Bengali calendar – the first day is Poila and the first month is Boishakh.
How I would wish a good soul would invite me home for some yummylicious Bengali food and let me be a part of family time on a festive day. Sigh… that did not happen to me but it did prompt me to ensure wherever I am, a party to celebrate the Poila Boishakh on April 14/15th is a must.
Would you be a Good Samaritan and invite a lone friend home for dinner on April 15 and celebrate their New Year. On that weekend, several communities from India celebrate their New Year so you don’t need to go hunting for your Bengali friend.