Beyond 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…
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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…
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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…
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Continue Reading“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet”, argued Shakespeare’s Juliet with her Romeo. I invoke Juliet not in my bid to defend young love but to put into context what has been going in my mind since I came across this recipe. I…
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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…