A Bengali chutney made with seasonal fruits that is the perfect last course for any meal or can be used for chapati rolls and sourdough toppings. The chaatni, that lip-licking last course of a Bengali meal, is integral to Bengali cuisine. It cuts through the richness of the fish or mutton curry to prepare the taste buds for the dessert…
Flipping through the photographs of past travels – a favourite pastime in 2020 – I found myself grinning at the memories created with my BFF during our 2019 trip to Sri Lanka. As I flipped through the photographs, I could almost hear our chatter in the background, like an audio cassette on the loop. A particular photograph had me bursting…
Yes. I did it too. I jumped on board the Dalgona boat, pulling my parents along for a ride – Maa lured by the visuals I kept showing her, Baba convinced with the promise of ‘interesting hot’ coffee. Following the instructions, I measured out the requisite coffee-milk-sugar in a bowl and spent 15 minutes whisking the life out of the…
“To health drink or not” – this is the question that plagued my mother since the time a friend of hers raved about a nutrition drink, especially for senior citizens. While the friend claimed to have felt a difference after regular consumption of the drink, Maa was not convinced owing to the ‘chemicals’ and ‘sugar’ contents. Her concerns, when relayed to the…
Mention that you are a Bengali and conversations are bound to lead to Rabindra Sangeet, Kolkata and food. There are assumptions galore that with Bengali genes you are a walking encyclopedia of all things mentioned above. It’s rather amusing – for me at least – when I say I’m not very knowledgeable about either of these. Having been brought up…
Winter is here! Winter is here! Winter is here! Okay… almost here. Which means its time to start indulging in ‘winter foods’. We are yet to pull out the warm clothes, snuggle under the blankets or switch off the fans. But there’s no denying the nip in the early morning air. And the beautiful winter produces adding pops of colours…
I’m still staggering under the number of sweets I’ve gorged on in the past few days. Diwali season was literally a ‘mithai season’ (sweets season) for me with sweets made at home, others’ homes and store-bought making their merry way into my system. I won’t insult your intelligence by insisting ‘I couldn’t say no’. Nope, I could have but I am a greedy…
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.
Snippets of conversations tend to leave a mark on our thoughts, often popping up in our psyche at different stages of life. “As an individual, I have always wanted to create a legacy…,” a desire expressed by the founder of Readomania had struck a chord with me, leading to several moments of introspection about the notion of legacy and its…