‘In a small village next to a deep forest stayed a poor mother and her little son of four. Their small thatched hut was right at the edge of the village, just before the forest began. The mother was a househelp and could barely make ends meet but she wanted to educate her son, just…
-
Continue ReadingWhat do i know about Dhaka and its food beyond the bookish and webish (if there was ever a word like this!!!) information? Well, may be a little more than that through my discussions with Didubhai and her knowledge of it. She wasn’t born there and as far as I know, went there just once…
-
Continue ReadingI wonder how many reading this post would be able to recognise the flower in the photograph! Very few, is what I will wager my bet on. Neither could my friend Debarati Dutta-Cherukuri when she joined us one afternoon in December for lunch. I had served the stir fry over lunch, which had her guessing for quite a…
-
Continue ReadingChoshir Payesh (Chosi Kheer) Have you heard of the orzo or the rizoni? These are Italian pasta! Or the ptitim? It is Isreali wheat based pasta invented during the austerity period in Israel, which later became couscous! Or the kritharáki, arpa şehriye and the arpa şehriye? These are Greek, Turkish and Arabic! What is common…
-
Continue Reading“Shesh paate chete-pute chaatni” is what my mother would say to us. It means “finger licking chutney at the end of the meal”! In Bengali households, chutneys are a must when special meals are served. The chutney is usually not had with the meal but it is a separate course towards the end, after the rice…
-
Continue ReadingBeyond all religious and cultural significance, festivals and food are personal diaries for most of us. We script our memories, likes and dislikes in them and revisit the well-thumbed pages year after year, while adding new pages to them. While growing up in Assam, we had no clue about any religious ritual that might…
-
Continue ReadingI bought this seasons’ first radishes with their tender greens, with mulo shak pithali in mind. Mulo shak pithali is an heirloom recipe of tender radish greens cooked with ground red lentils (musoor/masoor dal). It is a very seasonal dish and tastes best when made with the season’s first radish greens. It is a Dhakaiya…
-
Continue ReadingOne of the many ironies of life is that the best, the most complex is often born out of tough constraints and frugality. This is also true for Bengali vegetarian food, most of which came from the highly restricted and frugal kitchens of the widows. Left with so little to do personally and socially, it…
-
Continue ReadingI choose to start with a disclaimer that this is not a commentary on the appropriateness of animal sacrifice. This debate scares me, because of the tendency of forming arguments based on half baked understanding of genesis of religious beliefs. Animal sacrifice (‘Bali’) is made in a lot of Hindu shrines, specially dedicated to Shakti…
-
Continue ReadingGhee is sacred : Ghee is unhealthy. Ghee is celebrated : Ghee is fattening. There are too many sides to the arguments on ghee. Let me here put in my bit on ghee – it is fragrant. It is delicious (may be not as delicious as butter but this is a personal choice). It makes…