Last week my maître d’home, Rekhadi, landed with a huge bunch of sojne shaak that was given to her by her neighbour, to be passed on to us. In the passing, Rekhadi mentioned that her neighbour, Habila, a Bengali Muslim from Malda in West Bengal makes a sojne shaak chhana.

A lot of us urban breds, who have grown up reading upper-class, upper-caste Bengali food writers and believe those to be the only authoritative journals of Bengali food are blind towards what most of Bengal eats. We are nonconversant with terms like chhana, which is widely prevalent the moment you step out of Kolkata. Truth is the terminology of bhaate, sheddho, makha doesn’t exist in lot of places outside of Kolkata. The day to day term that clubs many of these together is – chhana – to mix. Equivalent to the Hindi – ‘sana hua’ – mixed.