Showing posts with label Bengali Chicken Curry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bengali Chicken Curry. Show all posts

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Robibar er Murgir Jhol -- Sunday Chicken Curry

Bengali Chicken Curry, Murgi r Jhol

Bengali Chicken Curry | Murgir Jhol

The Bengali Chicken Curry is the most simplest of Chicken Curries popular in Bengali homes. While the Goalondo Steamer Curry or Railway Chicken Curry has now gained popularity, those were not how chicken was cooked in most Bengali homes. This chicken curry recipe is the curry that millions of Bengalis in the 70's and 80's grew up with, their Mothers cooking this dish for lunch on lazy Sunday afternoons



A few months back I got an email.

This is exactly what it said

Didi,

Apnake Jodi Bengali Sunday dupurer chicken curry ranna Korte hoy , family r jonno . Apni ki bhabe ranna korben ?

What is the best recipe apnar kache ? Kindly ektu information dile khub Khushi hobo .
(Didi, If you have to cook the Bengali Chicken Curry for Sunday lunch, how would you do it?)

At first I was a bit irked by this email. Not by the reader as I guessed he was a much younger guy and yet had not called me "Didi" and not Mashima !!. But you know how this "Robibar er Mangsho" has been done to death and restaurants now have it on the menu and folks who have no idea what "Robibar er Mangsho" means order it on a Wednesday night and eat it with naan and a bottle of chilled beer while watching "Didi No.1" on the telly.

It totally sucks the joy out of the whole thing. Honestly it doesn't really make much sense if you are cooking it on a non-Sunday or eating it at a restaurant or using your "food delivery" app like Swiggy to order "ek plate Robibar er Murgi dena".


As chicken slowly started replacing goat meat/mutton in the Bengali household's shopping list, due to affordability or being a leaner choice of meat, the Sunday Mutton Curry was replaced with a rustic Chicken Curry instead.


MurgirJhol, Bengali Chicken Curry, Indian Chicken Curry

Murgir Jhol | Bengali Chicken Curry

Tell me, what is a Robibar er Mangsho aka Sunday mutton Curry if not followed by hours of bhaat ghoom (siesta), bangla natok on Kolkata "Ka", and lingering turmeric colored aroma of a jhol on the tip of your fingers until Monday morning ? And most importantly, what is a Robibar er Manghso if not Goat meat!!!!

So this is what I replied

Bhai
Eita trick question kina bujhlam na !!! Sunday to Sunday to exactly same hobe na. Eikhane ekta mutton er dilam. Chicken diye mostly ei rokom i kori, konodin moshla beshi, konodin jhaal beshi, konodin duto gajor instead of aloo, je rokom Sunday sei rokom jhol :-D
(I don't know if you are asking me a trick question. Whichever way you cook your chicken on a Sunday that will be your Sunday Chicken Curry!)


Bengali Chicken Curry, Murgi r Jhol


But then I cooled down. I realized the world has changed a whole lot since the times when we used to have meat only on Sundays. In the late 70's,  in most middle class Bengali families like ours, everyday lunch and dinner would be dominated by fish. And when I say fish, I don't mean Malaikari or Kaalia for dinner everyday. Simple fish curries with mustard paste or vegetables in season were the usual norm.

Now Sunday was a red-letter day as that was the only day that offices and schools were closed and so lunch would be a family affair. That was also the day when goat meat was cooked for lunch in most Bengali homes. Meat, in particular Goat meat, was not something we ate every day. It was both expensive and also considered a food rich for daily consumption. Chicken or Murgi was not cooked in most Bengali homes that had matriarch like my Grandmother's. She allowed goat meat but considered "murgi" foreign and so it was banned from her kitchen.

So mutton curry aka "pa(n)thar mangsho" on some Sundays(usually the Sundays earlier in the month soon after payday) was something we lived in anticipation for. By the sheer magic of being a rare and thus much awaited occasion, the Sunday Lunch of Meat Curry and rice took a special position in our heart.

Things changed a fair bit after "chicken" started being used widely in Bengali kitchens. Chicken was cheaper than goat meat, cooked faster, and so it could be cooked on any other day too instead of fish. Often on Sundays, goat meat was getting swapped with "murgi", making it a "Robibar er Murgi'r Jhol". It was not a recipe with unique ingredients, nor was it a heirloom one. It was just a chicken curry, cooked fresh with freshly ground spices, that was had with rice for lunch and led to long hours of siesta afterwards. Yes, the siesta part stayed the same.



As we became global and more connected, that humble chicken or mutton curry was pushed aside for what seemed more fancy names like "karahi gosht" or "chicken rezala" or "coq au voin". Meat wasn't special enough to be cooked only on Sundays any more. You could have it any time. If not at home then outside. And since we all know that familiarity breeds contempt, we didn't really bother about "Sunday Dupur er Mutton Curry" any more. Until that is we grew older and nostalgia struck big time. We didn't want to eat mutton curry whenever we could, we wanted to wait, to build up that excitement for we finally understood that
Happiness is not in getting something but in the waiting.

In my home here, we eat chicken a couple times a week. Strangely we eat mutton maybe once in a couple of months. On a Saturday or a Sunday, when I cook chicken or mutton I usually stick to that same age old recipe my Mother followed on her Sundays.Nothing extraordinary, no special ingredients. I also cook with a lot of jhol. My daughters call this "Weekend er mangsho'r jhol". For them, it is a curry that has potatoes and enough gravy to be mixed with rice.

Here's the recipe of Sunday Dupur er Chicken Curry for the next gen. After wading many waters and making onion paste, grating onion, blah, blah, I have realized the easiest and simplest recipe works best. After all, who wants to waste all of Sunday making Chicken Curry for lunch ?



I also use a Radhuni Meat masala, which my friend had got for me from a Bangladeshi store. It is really good. In its absence use any other Meat masala.

To read about the Sunday tradition and goat meat curry click here - Bengali Pa(n)thar Mangshor Jhol
Another simpler recipe from my Ma-in-law of a mutton curry -- Robibar er Mangsho'r Jhol


Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Goalondo Murgi -- Steamer Fowl Curry

Goalondo Chicken Curry

I have never had a Goalondo Murgi in all my childhood.

I do not know anyone in my family who has tasted this dish cooked by the boatmen on a Goalondo Steamer. That is kind of justified given that my family on the large is probashi bangali, meaning Bengalis settled outside of Bengal. Their ties to East Bengal might seem very very faint but quiet a few of my Baba's uncles spoke in a heavy "Bangal accent" and my Dad fondly remembers the single trip that he made to Dhaka as a young boy with his grandmother, who had her maternal family in that area. He did go on a steamer on his travel but he has never mentioned the Goalondo Steamer curry. I assume he did not taste it.

In the last couple of years the internet is however awash with the recipe of this rustic curry cooked by the Sylheti boatmen on the steamer that plied the Padma. A recipe with a story always intrigues me and this one had enough nostalgia and romanticism going for it. However I wasn't fully convinced  to cook it. Yet.



Goalondo Ghat is a small town on the southern banks of Padma, or rather the confluence of Padma and Brahmaputra, in Bangladesh. Way back in 1871, the Eastern railways established a train line from Kolkata to Goalondo. To go from Kolkata to Dhaka, one would take a train from Sealdah Station which would reach Goalondo ghaat after an overnight journey. There you would then change to a steamer which chugged on the waters of river Padma and traveled down to Naraynganj or Chandpur. Once at Narayanganj, you would then again take the train to Dhaka.

As we see, Goalondo was a major transport hub with daily service steamers connecting it to railway service in Narayanganj, Chandpur as well as to steamer services to the regions of Sylhet from where you could then proceed to the tea plantations in Assam.

A vivid picture of the journey is descirbed in this Handbook from 1913, "From the Hooghly to the Himalayas"
"From Goalundo to Narayanganj by steamer on the Padma, as the Ganges is called on its lower reaches, takes about seven hours, and as the boats are comfortable and the prospect always pleases, the journey is well worth making and serves as a introduction to the great system of waterways that is the main characteristic of this province. The amazing width of the river, the fights and shades reflected on its muddy waters, the vivid green of the fields of rice and jute that fringe the banks and recede into the mists of the far horizon across the flat alluvial plains, the thatched huts with hog's-back roofs - or huts modernized and ugly with the more water-proof iron tops—and the little clusters of palms and other trees - all this makes up a moving panorama that one may watch for hours untired."



I haven't been to Goalondo or on that steamer, but the stories and songs of these boatmen have been retold in many Bengali tales. Aided by literature and imagination, I can imagine the deckhands(also known as Khalasis) preparing their mid-day meal while singing Bhatiyali songs as the steamer plowed down the river. These were men probably from Sylhet or Chittagong, regions famous for their cooks. With sparse ingredients in hand they cooked a chicken and potato curry on the days they could buy dishi murgi or fowls at a bargain price. While they cooked with onion, garlic, mustard oil and lots of red chili ,the fragrance of steaming hot rice and the bubbling curry wafted around the boat, the flavors intensified by the boatmen's songs, songs of the joys and pains of the mighty river.

The life and curry that we romanticize now must have been a routine and mundane thing for those boatmen. As the curry gained popularity, the pise hotels around the ghaat started offering them to travelers. In those days murgi/chicken was taboo in most Hindu homes. For a long time, we weren't allowed to cook and eat murgi in my grandmother's home, though goat meat was allowed. So naturally the lure of the gorgore laal murgir jhol at these hotels and steamer was hard to resist.



Now I have tried two recipes of Goalondo Steamer Fowl Curry. One was guided by Pritha Sen's description of the curry as a "fiery, thin red curry with a layer of oil on top". She had done extensive research on the recipe and had deduced dry shrimp paste as the magic ingredient which the boatmen used.

Very logical, as dried fish(shukti) or dried shrimp paste was very popular among the Sylheti cooks and it was an inexpensive ingredient that could be carried on their boat journeys. I got a bottle of shrimp-chilli paste from the Asian Market but I am not sure if it is the right kind. I worked around what Pritha Di said but I am sure my Goalondo Fowl Curry was nowhere as good as hers.

The rest of the ingredients etc. was based on a recipe that Ahona Gupta gave me. She had found it on a cooking forum in FB and made it few years back. Her recipe asked for same ingredients but the shrimp paste. Other than that her recipe called for a more simpler method of cooking and also she advised against adding any water. However I did add water because you know what, the curry has to be a "thin red curry".


My curry was thin and tasted pretty good but didn't have the fiery red color, probably due to my skimping on the red chillies. Mine also tasted more or less like the Murgir Jhol my Mother or Mother-in-law cooks with the faint note of the shrimp paste adding a new layer. It has to be more about my cooking though as the recipes is perfect and I hope with more trials my murgir jhol gets the "gorgore laal" (fiery red) rustic flavor like that of the steamer fowl curry.


Method I


Start off with 1lb of bone-in chicken, skinned and cut in pieces

Make a paste of
5 fat cloves of garlic
1" of ginger
4-5 Dry red chilli that has been soaked for 15-20 mins(Note: My curry was medium hot, you need to use double the chilli to have a more spicy curry )

I made the paste using my mortar and pestle given that this was supposed to be a rustic curry. I am sure if the boatmen had an electric grinder they would have used that, so please take liberties and do your best.

Now grate 3/4th of a red onion and keep aside. I was lazy to grate and so boiled and then made a paste of the Onion. Also the onions I get here are really big in size, so 3/4th of my big onion would amount to 2 small onion.

Chop 1 potato in 4 quarters

Now wash and clean the chicken pieces. Marinate the chicken and potatoes with
half of the garlic-chilli paste
2 tbsp of Mustard oil
half of the onion paste
generous sprinkle of turmeric
little salt
Keep aside for 30 minutes to an hour.
Note: If I am not wrong, Pritha Di had asked for a little fish sauce in the chicken marinade which I skipped.

Heat Mustard Oil in a Kadhai/Wok. Be generous with your mustard oil

When the oil is hot, add
the rest of the onion paste
rest of the chilli-garlic paste
about 1/2 tsp of this dry Shrimp paste/dry Shrimp powder.
Saute the onion and spices until starts turning brown.

Add the potatoes and the chicken and saute for about 5-6 minutes.When the potatoes start getting a touch of color and the chicken has lost its raw coloring, add about 1 cup of water. Add salt to taste.

Let the curry come to a simmer. Now reduce the heat, cover the wok/kadhai and let the chicken cook in low heat. After 20-25 mins or so, lift the lid and there is a fair chance that you will see a slick layer of oil floating on the top.

Now open the lid and cook for 4-5 minutes more until the chicken and potatoes are cooked.


Method II


I marinated 1lb chicken and the potatoes with all the ingredients as above(i.e. grated onion, garlic-chili-ginger paste, mustard oil,, salt, turmeric powder)

Now heat mustard oil in a wok/kadhai.

Add the marinated chicken and potatoes. Saute for 8-10 minutes. Now cover, add a little water, salt to taste and let it cook until a layer of oil floats on top and everything is cooked.

Serve this thin curry with steaming hot rice, red onions slices and a twist of lime.




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