Bangla-fied Kashmiri Fish Curry -- that is how we roll

Bengalis eat a lot of fish. Growing up, I think we ate fish almost every day of the week. Not Fridays, because that is my Mother's Puja Day and not Sunday because that was the National Bengali Mutton Curry Day. But all other days there was fish for lunch and dinner. And not just one kind of fish. We could go a month without repeating the same fish actually -- mourala, magur, shingi, chara pona, tyangra, pabda, parshe, rui, katla, bhetki, ilish, chingri, the variety was endless. With each kind of fish the fish curry too varied. Crispy fried mourala, a dry dish of tyangra with eggplants, a soupy curry of shingi, pabda in a mustard sauce, fried fish with bhetki, malaikari with chingri --- ahh just the names make my mouth water.

In my home here, we eat a lot of fish too. Not always the fish that I would actually love to eat but mostly the fish that my girls love. I had never thought being a mother would involve so much of "Mother India" martyrdom but that is what has happened. I cook what the girls will eat rather than I want to eat, just because it is difficult to cook 3 different dishes. This means though we eat a lot of fish, it always hovers between -- salmon, bassa, tilapia or prawns. To add variety I try to cook these fish in different ways, grabbing recipes from far east, unknown west and anything in between.

When I saw a fish curry posted by Anita @ A Mad Tea Party on insta, a few months back, I knew I had to make it. Her photo was so alluring that I wanted that fish curry right then. I pinged her for the recipe and the true blue Kashmiri that she is, she shared her home recipe with details as to what to do when and what to substitute. The recipe was not on her blog yet and so there was no measurement.

When it comes to recipes, I trust a "home-cooked" recipe above everything else and so I took her recipe of Kashmiri Fish Curry as the guide and then "Bangala-fied" it. Which means, I added all those ingredients that a Kashmiri wouldn't but a Bengali would when she doesn't have Kashmiri suggested ingredients.

So instead of thinned tamarind water --I had lime juice, Ginger powder --was subbed with grated Ginger, and the Ver Masala -- was replaced with Garam Masala but Anita had suggested this. And then i added some fried boris or vadis as we do in a maacher jhol often.

The gravy had no onion, tomatoes and was a thin, runny gravy just like our Bengali jhol. But what made it taste different was the fennel. What a lovely flavor it added and the mild sour punch of the lemon juice was so very refreshing. We all loved this curry and I have been making it often.
I dare not call it Kashmiri as I respect an authentic recipe and I think I deviated quite a bit from the original. We will just call this Bangla-fied Kashmiri Fish Curry and rest our case.

Garlicky Tilapia with Milk and Lime

This is my friend K's recipe. I am not sure if he would like his whole name here so we will just leave it at K. This is a Tilapia with loads of garlic and bit of milk which he thinks he learned from a Italian Cooking show. When I saw the original video however I realized that this dish is more his creation than any Italian grandmother's. The addition of milk gives the dish a texture like my Mother's Dudh Maach, which the kids love, and then the garlic and green chilies take it to another level.

This dish can be served just by itself with some bread or with rice. We love it with rice like everything else.

Both K and I, have come a long way when it comes to honing culinary skills. There was a time 20 years back, when I had a reputation for frying cauliflowers by throwing them at the kadhai from a distance. Ahem, a considerable distance. Given that I was non-athletic and had hardly every netted a basket, the cauliflower throwing was a hit and miss affair. That I ever managed to make a "aloo-phulkopi" with cauliflowers in it, seems like a complex probability problem to me now.

K, has his own stories from the similar time period. His culinary experiments ranged from pressure cooking rice in milk to make "dooddh-bhaat" and making a dal-gosht that even the stray dog in their neighborhood refused to touch. None of that deterred him though and that is a good thing.

As you can well imagine, our friends still make fun of our amazing skills. But believe me, all that is a thing of the past. I have come a long way from those disasters. And same with K. Actually he is far a more adventurous cook than me and tries his hands at new technique and recipes all the time. He goes well beyond his comfort zone and every time we visit, there is a new dish waiting for us.

I pick up the ones, that my girls oooh and aah over. I know those are the ones I can pass off on weeknight dinners. I also make sure that I pick only the simple ones to try at home.

This Fish dish with loads of garlic, a touch of lime and then milk was what he made on our last visit. It was a simple dish, taking 30 mins max from start to finish.  The perfectly done fish in a pale daffodil gravy was as pretty to look at as it was to eat. You could have it with some bread or white rice. My girls loved it so much that I had to make it once we were back and since then it has become a fixed dish on the menu every week (until they tire of it).

Prep

Buy Tilapia Fillet. If You have got the bigger ones, I would suggest to cut it into two. I got the Tilapia Loins and they were slimmer than the filet.

This recipe serves 4 and I cooked with 4 Tilapia loins

Get a whole head of garlic, about say 12 pods. Either use a garlic press to press them or mince all that garlic. Garlic plays a important role in this dish so don't skimp.

We are going to make this Bengali hot, so grab a bunch(4-5) of green chili and chop them fine. If this scares you just use 2.

Start Cooking

1. Rinse and pat dry the fillet. Dust the filet with flour.

2. Season with salt and generous helping of fresh crushed black pepper on both sides

3. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Warm 2 tablespoon of olive oil and then add the tilapia fillets. Cook 3 minutes on each side or until pale golden and cooked through.

4. Stir in the minced or pressed garlic and the green chilies. I needed add little more Olive Oil. Move the garlic-chili around so that they cook in oil and become soft.

5. Add 1/2 Cup of water at this point. You are supposed to add white wine or broth, but we all just make do with water and it tastes fine.

6. Next goes in 1 tsp of lime juice, zest of a lemon and salt to taste. If you have added wine just check if you need the lime juice.

7. When the water bubbles and reduces to half, add 3/4 Cup of Milk.

8. Let it simmer for a few minutes. Add some parsley or dhonepata (I had neither). Taste for seasoning and adjust salt, pepper and lime juice to taste. Serve with the sauce but we love it as a jhol with rice.


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Mitan Ghosh's Gulab Jamun CheeseCake -- No Bake

Many of you already know 🌸Mitan Ghosh,  a successful fashion designer in her own rights. Her designer sarees and dresses are quite the rage in US. You can have a peek at her beautiful collection here and I promise you, you will be hooked forever. Just like her designs, her home is another work of art and I love, love how she designs each corner.

Her creativity runneth over and you can see her magic touch in everything from exquisite saris to scintillating wedding trousseau, from carefully curated paintings to the food she cooks.

I asked her a few rapid fire questions for fun and here is what she had to say:

🍁1. Designing or Cooking?

Designing

🍁2. What do you like cooking best?

I am not really fond of cooking but when I do cook anything, I do so passionately!

🍁3. Favorite Food?

Dal, Bhaat, Begun Bhaaja

🍁4. Favorite Designer?

None. Oh wait, Gaurang Shah.

🍁5. Mishti na Nonta ?

Mishti

🍁6. Favorite Restaurant?

NJ/NY: Minado for Sushi
Kolkata: 6 Ballygunge Place
Mumbai: Mahesh Lunch Home
Chennai: Ponnusamy

I love Mitan, not only for her multiple talents, or because she is a wonderful person inside out, but because we share the same day of birth and it only gives me hope :-p, for myself that is!

Last week she baked a Gulab Jamun Cheese Cake as a test run for our Thanksgiving meal. Now this Thanksgiving I will not be sharing this meal as I will be traveling miles to celebrate it with another set of my friends.

So when I saw the photos of her test run, I pleaded and cajoled and she sent me a generous portion to taste. That very morning we were discussing this cheesecake recipe. Mitan had taken the idea of a Gulab Jamun cheesecake but played around with the ingredients to make it a far more simpler version than anything you would get on the internet. I told her if it works well, I am going to give it a try :-) And boy the outcome was gorgeous.

I followed her instructions and made the cheesecake over this weekend. It was so so good. I shared it with neighbors and colleagues and everyone raved about it.

It is
no bake
easy to make
freezes very well
and Delicious
Those are all my criteria for a good dessert!

Make it this week. Perfect dessert for your Thanksgiving table straddling the East and the West.

Pritha Sen -- and her Bhoger Khichuri

Anyone who reads my blog would have come across recipes like Goalondo Murgi or Railway Mutton Curry and by now know who Pritha Sen is. And if you don't read my blog but you are a Bengali food enthusiast, there is not an iota of doubt that you would know her!

For the uninitiated, she is a journalist, a food consultant, a development consultant and last but not the least  -- the person who unearths lost recipes, ingredients, cuisine from undivided Bengal and  traces their history.

The reason I respect PrithaDi so much is not only because of  her repertoire of knowledge on food but because she is one of those rare breed of food writers who are also very generous with that knowledge and experience. She is always there to share her recipes, suggesting changes, answering questions, guiding you along the way. I have learned a lot from her and hope to continue that in the future.

This Durga Pujo, I bring to you Pritha Sen, woman power in food from Undivided Bengal (as she puts it)! My humble ode to thank her for all she does.

Come join me as she talks about everything food -- from her foray into food history to the Bhog she cooks at her community Pujo, from her childhood pujos to her  special pujo memories.

Mumu'r Phulkopir Malaikari -- Cauliflower in Coconut Curry

This recipe is our friend Mumu's. She is one half of that couple who makes roshogollas and dal gosht and tolerates us when we land up at their home on any random weekends. That is saying a lot. No good stuff that I say about her and K, can top the fact that they welcome us and feed us on "random" weekend. I mean anyone who does that must be close to a saint or something

So anyway this Phulkopir Malaikari is Mumu's signature dish. We have had it at her home many times and loved it every time. I don't know why I never made it at home though until recently. A few weeks back, I made it at home, roughly following her recipe. It turned out so good that I had to share it with you all.

Now if you are a Bengali, Chingri Malaikari is your anthem and needs no explaining. If however you are new to Bengali cuisine, let me tell you that Chingri Malaikari, is a Bong's national anthem. I mean, it is a dish where succulent prawns are cooked in a gravy of coconut milk and is so delicious that you need to eat it to believe it. There are many theories about roots of this curry. I don't know which one is true but once you taste the dish, it clearly shows the effect of  the cuisine of SouthEast asia, the Malay world,which now comprises of the modern nations of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, and southern Thailand.

If you are a vegetarian and have never tasted the Chingri Malaikari, this Cauliflower Malaikari, is just the thing you need.It is pretty simple where fried cauliflower florets are cooked in a coconut gravy with almost the same spicing as a Malaikari. Since there is no prawn which adds the full bodied flavor to the chingri malaikari, here we add a bit more spices to compensate. But I must say, the result is phenomenal! Try it.

Nandini's Fish Curry with Lime Leaves -- Lebu Pata diye Maacher Jhol

I often hear people say that you don't make good friends after your childhood. That the best friends you make are the one you had since school or college. I understand the logic in there, that the friends you made in the age of innocence, unencumbered with worldly burdens or egos, are the true ones.

However, I have been extremely lucky to have found some good friends in all phases of my life. I found a very good friend when I was working in Mumbai and I am always indebted to her for sharing her love for reading with me. We would go second-book shopping outside Churchgate on Saturdays and she was the one who gave me a copy of "My Family and other Animals", thus introducing me to the magical writings of Gerald Durell.

N, is the aunt who dresses up my daughter for her Bharatnatyam performance as I am clueless

When I came to the US, and was desperately seeking a Bengali fiend, I found Nandini at K-Mart. Nope, she was not on sale. How I met her and what led to our friendship, is a saga on its own and I have even written about it in my book. If you are very interested, you can look it up in there. Slowly, I made more friends but had I not met N that day and braved myself to express my desperate need for friendship with a stranger like her, my life in US would probably be very different. Probably mundane and glitter free.
From her undying love for Shahrukh Khan to her obsessing about exercise, she keeps me informed about a wide range of things from Bollywood to weight-loss trainings, from the best sushi place in town to lebu-paata diye maacher jhol. Honestly, she is like the sister I never had !

Sanhita's Nonta Bhapa Pithe | steamed rice flour dumplings

Nonta Bhapa Pithe  | Jhaal Pithe | Steamed Savory rice flour Dumplings

Pithe is reminiscent of the times when paddy was harvested in the months of December-January and the new crop was celebrated by making dishes that used rice, date palm jaggery(khejur gur also collected in the winter months) and coconut. There are a variety of pithe and puli made from these ingredients - patishapta, doodh puli, gokul pithe, bhapa pithe, chitoi pithe etc. While most of these have a sweet coconut-jaggery stuffing, the Nonta Bhapa Pithe is a steamed rice flour dumpling which has a nonta aka savory stuffing. It is also called jhaal aka spicy pithe because of the stuffing.

When the world around us is in a tumultuous state, among the few things that bring sanity, is food that has ties with our roots. Those ties might be frayed and not often remembered but it is there, a gentle reminder of who we are and how our journey has been. How in this global world, we have all immigrated, far from our roots, whether it is within the country or outside. There is comfort in knowing recipes that are old and yet have stood the test of time and movement. Knowing that this was the food prepared and consumed by my kin, in a different era, different world, in times of different beliefs, gives us strength in its perpetual persona.

Pithe,is reminiscent of the times when paddy was harvested in the months of December-January and the new crop was celebrated by making dishes that used rice, date palm jaggery(khejur gur also collected in the winter months) and coconut. Poush Parbon or Nabanno was a celebration of the new crop of rice, which was the mainstay for the then agrarian society. We have moved many years forward from those times where rice is now GMO and harvested multiple times and grated coconut can be found in the frozen aisles of grocery stores. Yet, we still take the effort to celebrate poush-parbon, in our home to honor those simpler times when we revered soil and its bounty, instead of taking it for granted like we do now.

Usually during Poush Sankranti, I hover between my fail safe recipes of paati-sapta and gokul pithe. I have never tried to make pithe with rice flour which is quintessential part of poush parbon for Bengalis. My Ma makes puli pithe which are rice flour dumplings shaped like a small rugby ball and stuffed with nice things like kheer or coconut. These "pulis" are then steamed and dunked in a milk based paayesh. I have never been fond of them or tried to make them. There was a nonta pithe or bhaja pithe that my Ma used to make with sweet pea stuffing. Those I loved butI have never worked with rice flour so didn't try making those either.

That doesn't mean, I miss those though. I know an amazing bunch of folks who are all very talented when it comes to cooking. One of our friends Sanhita, is an expert when it comes to whipping up traditional Bengali delicacies. Every year during Sankranti, she takes it upon herself to make all kinds of pithes and pulis, and then invites all of us over to her home for a pithe party. Didn't I say, I had amazing friends?

Happy New Year with Deepshikha's Pound Cake

There are pound cakes and then there are pound cakes. Well, if I am absolutely honest, all pound cakes are amazing. I love their no-nonsense fluffy taste. But I am not sure if they are all as easy to make as Deepshikha's Pound cake.

It all started when our friend Deepshikha brought over individual cake loafs for us back in November. She has this charming habit of carrying home made goodies every time she visits. And when I say visits, I mean the long 10 hour drives from Ohio. I still remember her oatmeal raisin cookies way back in 2004, when I had no clue that such stuff could be made at home.

This time it was pound cakes. These quaint little loaves of pound cakes were so good that I had to stave off our other friends from finishing them. Actually, I will tell you a little secret. I hid one of the loaves that she gave me and did not take it out even when the other friends we had visiting were asking for more!Yes,I am evil like that.

And guess what the best part was ? These cakes needed only oil, no butter. If you know my baking disasters, you would know my woes about creaming butter and sugar. So any baking recipe that does not warrant that step is very very close to my heart. Also,Deepshikha had baked hers with Olive Oil and it tasted as good.

Here is the recipe she shared with me. I used regular Vegetable Oil. Also I used zest of half an Orange as I love citrus flavor in my cakes. They were so so good. The beauty of the recipe is that it doubles and triples very nicely. So to make 3 loaves of these cakes, just multiple every ingredient amount by 3.
Next time, I will make 6 of these and hide them from the family too.

Easy Pound Cake with Oil and Orange flavor

What You Need

AP Flour -- 1 Cup
Sugar -- 1 Cup

Oil -- 1/2 Cup
Eggs (at room temperature) -- 3

Baking Powder -- 1/2 tsp
Salt -- 1/2 tsp
Vanilla 1/2 tsp

Orange zest -- 1 tsp (optional)

How I Did It

Prep the wet mixture

In a bowl, beat the eggs. For about 3 minutes.

Next add the sugar to the eggs and beat again for 4-5 minutes at medium speed.

Now goes in the oil. Beat again at medium for 3 minutes.

Add the vanilla extract

Dry Mixture

In a separate bowl sift the flour, salt and baking powder. Add the orange zest to the flour and lightly rub it in with your fingers.

Combine

Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture, mixing briefly at a very low speed, until everything is combined.

Bake

Pre-heat oven to 350F.

Grease a 9"x5" loaf pan generously with oil and pour the cake batter in it

Bake at 350F for 45 minutes to an hour. Do the toothpick test. Take a clean toothpick. Insert it in the center of the cake. If the toothpick comes out clean, the cake is done. If it has batter stuck to it, you need to give few more minutes.
Note: If you see the top of the cake is browning fast but the inside is not cooked, loosely cover the surface of the cake with an aluminum foil and continue baking. Towards the end of the bake time, remove the cover and finish the baking.

When cake is done, take out from the oven and let it cool. Be patient.

Eat.




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Tel Sheem -- Hyacinth Beans from Soma

I was seriously waiting for something to get my blogging mojo back.

August had been surreal with a vacation to beautiful Banff and Jasper National parks(more on that later), short trips around the home state, a water park vacation to Great Wolf Lodge specifically for the kids, and lots of tea time with my parents while watching "Mahanayak" -- the Bengali serial people love to hate (yeah, yeah, I know!). I was getting used to vacations and summer.

Since my parents are visiting, the kitchen had also morphed largely into my Ma's domain and I rarely bothered to see how and why things were getting done. I even managed to watch a movie at the theaters with the husband-man, an event worth remembering simply because it is so rare in its occurrence.

You must understand that it is very easy to slip into a life of leisure, if you are already lazy like me. I could totally fit into the society of Roman Nobles in ancient Rome. It is very natural that I drifted.

But there was some magic that happened over the weekend, which triggered me back into the kitchen and back to the blog again. The magic would have never happened, if I did not have a blog in the first place. So the magic had a dependency on the blog and on you. Ok, so without going into the chicken and egg scenario, let me tell you what happened.

A blogger friend Soma, who blogs at Spices and Pisces and does a trillion other things, sent me a box of sheem and ucche, that is Hyacinth beans and bitter gourd for you, grown in her own garden. Soma has a very bright shade of green thumb and grows gorgeous vegetables. Her community garden pictures on Facebook, boasting of curvaceous laus(bottlegourd) and glistening sheem(flat beans) would make you love vegetables to the point of making you a vegetarian. She pours tons of love into her garden and the beautiful person that she is, she shared the love by sending me a box of her home-grown vegetables, by priority mail.

Once we got over the surprise part of seeing fresh vegetables from a box delivered by the USPS lady, the family spent next several minutes ogling at the vegetables. Little Sis was thrilled by the uniqueness of the whole act. "Mommy's friend sent her vegetables from Maryland," she told my Ma.

Then a discussion ensued as to what to cook with the sheem. Here, I must tell you, tender aka kochi sheem is not a given where I live. I don't even get sheem at the Indian grocery store and substitute all sheem dishes with sugar snap peas. My Ma, who is used to an abundance of sheem where she lives, proposed sheem bhaate or shorshe diye sheem or sheem er jhol. I didn't want to add shorshe(mustard) to this tender sheem as I feel the mustard sauce tends to overpower the natural taste of the vegetable.

The husband-man then proposed Tel-Sheem, without the mustard and with almost zero spices. Something that would be just fitting for a vegetable so fresh, tender, and grown with love.

So that is what I did

Tel Sheem

Lope off the tip of each Hyacinth bean(sheem) and then pull off the stringy part from the edges

Heat Mustard oil in a kadhai.

Now temper the oil with 1/4th tsp of Nigella seeds and 3 slit green chili.

Add the sheem to the kadhai and saute for a few minutes until each sheem glistens with oil.

Make a wet paste with
1/4 tsp of turmeric Powder
1 tsp of fresh ginger paste
1/2 tsp of red chili powder
1 tbsp of yogurt

Lower the heat and add add this to the veggies in the kadhai. Saute at low heat for few minutes.

Add a 1/2 cup of water, 3 more green chili slit through, salt to taste and let the gravy simmer to a boil. Cover the kadhai with a lid and check occasionally if sheem is cooked.

Once the vegetable is cooked and the oil has surfaced, the dish is done. Now for you to enjoy it with some steaming white rice.

This tasted so so good that I cannot thank Soma enough

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Deepshikha's Bengali Goat Meat Curry in Oven -- at Smokies

This Spring Break we went to the Smoky Mountains -- the Great Smoky Mountains. One of the few national parks in the east coast. I am a sucker for National Parks and after our Yellowstone trip last year, my secret desire is to visit all of them. Does not seem like that will happen in this lifetime with the money and time I have at my disposal but that does not mean I won't try.

But the Great Smoky Mountains did not happen out of my love of National Parks. It happened because that was the place decided for a mini reunion of our college friends from twenty years back. It happened millions of whatsapp chats, several hangout sessions late in the night and couple of Google spreadsheets later.

Each hangout was peppered with more serious issues than the last. Luchi or eggs and bacon at breakfast? Pathar manghso on Saturday or bbq? Cookies with tea or muri-chanachur? Pasta for kids or Maggi? Yes we are very focused like that.

Finally a beautiful 8 bedroom chalet in the mountains was booked, food items from goat meat to mustard oil, maggi to maacher chop were packed, and we were all ready for the 12 hour long drive to Tennessee.

If I am honest my first impression of the Smokies as we entered Pigeon Forge was that of deep disappointment. I had Yellowstone and Grand Canyon on my mind and had not expected traffic jams and departmental stores from Wal-Mart to Macy's at the throes of a national park. The fact that we reached on a Friday which was a holiday could have contributed to the throng of crowd.

The deck with the beautiful view

Once we managed to cross all the traffic lights and crawl onto the mountain roads, the traffic peeled off and feel of the forest came back. The path up the mountains had several switchbacks and took scary sharp turns. The trees grew closer and the air turned crisp. My faith in national parks was restored.

It was early spring and the trees were mostly bare except for the light green haze of budding new leaves and splashes of spring flowers here and there. After going through a couple of wrong turns and several phone calls to friends who were already at the chalet, we finally reached the house with a truly "breathtaking view". The Mountains rose right across from the house, its peaks swirled in the typical bluish haze that is quintessential to Smokies.

The kids had lot of fun on zip lines and horse back rides. We went to Jayell's Ranch where even the little ones could zip line on a shorter trail

It was much fun meeting friends after so many years, getting to know their kids, the better halves and generally indulging in what we call in Bengali as "bhaat" -- meaningless banter. Food and adda were the focal points in the backdrop of the mountains. It was fun to see the kids bond with their new friends and have  a great time of their own.

While we were discussing the menu in the days leading to the trip, and trust me it would always end up without a consensus, there was the question of how to cook the goat meat. Should we carry a Pressure cooker ? Will the kitchen have a large enough heavy bottomed pan to cook goat meat for twenty people ? Will Donald Trump be the president ? Should we move to Canada ? You know that kind of questions on which no consensus can be ever reached.

Smokies has lots of pretty waterfalls. We did the Laurel Fall and Grotto Fall hike. Each were approx. 3 mile round trip and easy hike with kids

At this point when everyone was arguing over chat and not really listening to anyone else, our friend from Ohio, Deepshikha said, "We will do the Panthar Mangsho(Goat Meat curry) in the oven. You don'y need anything else except for a largei-ish aluminum tray".

This was so profound that we all just stayed quiet until I mustered to courage to ask "if it tasted good". I shouldn't have. Asked that is. Deepshikha and Biplab are trailblazers in Ohio, investing a lot of time and effort in their local community, doing Durga Pujo and throwing lavish parties with tons of food. They KNOW how to cook mutton in oven and make it taste as good as kosha mangsho.

Maach Shaaker Bhorta -- from Hasina Ahmed and Hena

The best thing I love about  blogging on food for all these years is the people I meet via my blog and new recipes I learn from them. I could have probably learned them from other websites, some youtube video or even a cookbook. All of them excellent sources.

But when I hear it from a real person it is very different. It makes it more tangible, more real for me. I feel humbled that they share their precious recipe with me. Something probably handed down through generations or something they invented or something shared by their friends. That the recipe found a way to my kitchen from theirs, touched with all their love and turmeric makes it more precious.

I have been honored to have Rituporna's Chitol Maacher Muithya, Somnath's Raastar Ghugni, Indrani Bhattacharya's Kumro Begun Chingri, Ahona's Methi Maachh, Sunetra's Piyaajkoli Macch, Piya and Chandrani's Dhonepata Bata Sheem on my blog.

Today it is Hasina Ahmed di. I have never met her or known her and yet I would trust her recipes over any youtube recipe video.. Hasinadi had once introduced me to the different greens that we get at the Asian stores here in US. I was clueless about most of them and only after her gentle nudging did I start buying those strange-named greens and cooking them. A few weeks back, Hasinadi told me about a Maacch Shaak er bhorta that her friend Hena taught her. Over to her for more...


1. Tell us a little about yourself and your friend Hena

I grew up mostly in Dhaka and Chittagong in Bangladesh. My family is originally from Noakhali. I moved to the USA twenty six years ago after I got married. Currently I live in a very small university town in western South Dakota and work full time (8-5). My husband and I love to try new food (especially ethnic food). Food is actually a very important part of your life. What you put in your mouth remains with you. Having a satisfactory (&healthy) meal is good for you both physically and mentally (my physician says so)

Hena and her husband owned a motel in a VERY small town called Hot Springs (2 hour drive from our town). She is a home maker and mother of two boys (11 and 6). They moved to SD from LA 8 years ago. They have sold their motels (to a Gujrati family) a couple of months ago and are getting ready to leave SD.


2. You are from Bangladesh. Do you still hold on to the food culture you had grown up with ? Assuming you are in the US, how do you do that?

Yes, I still hold on to the food culture I had grown up with and I have no plan to change it. Nowadays, you get all most all the ingredients (including khejurer gur) for your cooking in the South Asian Grocery Stores in the big cities. I usually buy my spices from Denver (400 miles from where I live). Actually it is easier to cling to your ethnic food culture if you live in a big city or close to a big city but it is a challenge for the remote and small town dweller like me. I try to be as much creative as possible

3.Bengalis have huge respect for the cuisine from East Bengal. What do you think makes such an impression?

I know our friends from Poshchim Bongo love our meat preparation (kabab, kosha mangsho, korma etc.) But do you think our fish preparation is better than yours? My observation is the Bengalis from Poshcim Bongo cook the best Niramish in the sub-continent. We, the bangals, eat meat regularly and that gives us a wider comfort zone as far as the meat preparation is concerned.

4. Give some examples of how you recreate the food of your childhood with American ingredients

Cooking meat here is not difficult at all. According to my mother, desi spices which are available here are much better (she probably meant less bhejaal) than their counterparts back home. Here is how I make my chicken tikka kabab (see the photo below).

I must confess that cooking vegetables in desi style in an area where I live needs a lot of creativity. During the ninety’s and last decade Broccoli was the magic vegetable. We tried to eat Broccoli at least once a week and I got tired of boiled broc (sometimes raw brocs).

I experimented for sometimes and now cook broccoli in the following ways. 1. Stir fry it with kalo jeerey and dry red chili phoron. 2. Peel the fat stems, cut them into match sticks and cook with shrimp and tomato. 3. Steam sliced broccoli florets on a pan and make bhorta.

I have a family recipe of ‘mishti kumro cooked with moong daal and narkel doodh’. Mishti Kumro is not available here. I replace it with acorn squash (I buy fresh and tender acorn from the farmer’s market in summer).
I use the bideshi vegetables but use desi spices and style to cook my vegetables. Here is another photo. Mushroom, zuchini, potato, snow peas and chayote squash cooked with shorshey and kancha lonka phoron. I also used home-made poriyal masala.

5. You introduced me to a lot of greens. Given that you have a love for gardening, do you also grow them ? Which ones are the easiest to grow ?

Gardening is my passion. I essentially grow flowers (roses outdoor and orchids indoor). But I also have a vegetable patch where I grow our desi vegetables (lau, pui shaak, lonka, long and small round begun, etc.) I grow korola and sometimes methi shaak in pots. Desi veges don’t grow very well here as it is very dry but I still try. If you are in the East Coast, or in Florida or in California, you can grow any desi vegetable that you want to. I use the methi shaak (that I grow in the pot) for cooking my daal. Lau in my vege patch (photo below).

6. So how do you make this Maacher Bhorta ?

My friend H gave me this recipe. Hena is originally from Sylhet. They call this dish Lye Bhorta and originally it is done with shorshe shaak or mustard greens

1. Telapia fillet -  2 (depends on the # of people).

2. Smear the fish fillet with pinch of turmeric , dry red chili flakes, salt and garlic powder (optional), and lemon juice, Leave it aside for 20/30 minutes.

3. 2 cups of very finely chop spring salad mix (original recipe says special 'shorshey shaak' available in Sylhet area). Note:I tried it with arugula and I also stir fried it with garlic, instead of keeping it raw.

4. In a bowl put
very finely chopped red onion (I used quarter of a large red onion),
green chili(4 hot Indian green chili)
one tablespoon of finely chopped dhoney pata/coriander leaves.
Mix well with hand, lightly pressing the coriander leaves and green chillies

5. Fry fish with very little oil. It should be on the crunchier side,

6. When done with frying, break the fish with your hand. Mix all ingredients and add salt to taste.. Sprinkle mustard oil and mix well. Try to mix with your hand. The Sylhetis call it 'lye pata bhorta'. You may skip onion if you don't like it raw. Hasina Di substitutes the mustard greens with organic salad mix. She says, " It became very popular in our home and we are having it almost every week. Though it is called bhorta it is more like salad."

We too loved this Maachh Shaak er Bhorta. I want to try it with different greens next. Thank you Hasina Di and Hena.


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Baishali'r Enchor Kofta -- Green Jackfruit Kofta Curry

Enchor Kofta or Jackfruit Kofta
There was a time when if you talked about food it would always be closely linked to family.

Ma's chhanar dalna with its soft pillowy cottage cheese squares plumped with the sweet jhol, Dida'r chingri cutlet where the red-orange tail of succulent prawn peeked just so from one end of the cutlet , Boro Mashi'r jhol with gondhoraj lebu. Food was closely associated with family and recipes were mostly handed down from one generation to other, the secrets guarded zealously within boundaries defined by blood.

There were winter afternoons when that guard was let down and recipes were exchanged over fences and terraces, but those moments were rare and in between. Crochet patterns and knits and purls were more frequently exchanged than recipes. I think it was something to do with those times when the kitchen was a woman's domain and a recipe her closely-guarded personal asset.

My Mother did learn to make a variety of papad from our neighbor Jain auntie and once in a while something different like a Bandhakopir kheer from another neighbor but mostly what she cooked was what she had learned from her family. She also would try out recipes from newspapers which were sketchy and relied a lot on the cook's knowledge. Those were made with her own adaptations and so we always tagged them as ma'r recipe.

But now boundaries have expanded and we venture out to cook from books, television, internet and above all friends. Barring a few people most folks are generous with their recipes. My repertoire of recipes teems with N's jhaaler jhol, R's chicken korma, J's eggless date cake, A's broccoli pasta, S's zucchini chingri and so on. My kids often request for this mashi's chicken or that mashi's shrimp scampi.

Sometimes these recipes are more helpful than the original as they have more precise measures and adapt with the ingredients easily available now. Though not linked by blood these recipes have a tie of their own.

Today's Enchor er Kofta recipe is my friend Baishali's.

I have known Baishali from a time when we were unencumbered with social media and thus related obligations. We happened to meet through a common friend and the lovely, warm person that B is, she immediately invited us to their home.

At that time when cooking was not something that came easy to me, Baishali and her husband were cooking up a gourmet storm. I still remember the whole red snapper that her husband cooked and the baked egg she made on our first visit to their home. The food was beyond delicious and those baked eggs have been since made several times by the husband-man to rave reviews.

We still call it "Baishali'r baked dim, as in "Achha party te ki Baishali'r dim ta hobe?"

Tomato Khejur Chutney

Bengali Tomato and Date Chutney

This recipe is in the book and being reposted. Original date: Nov,2009.

*Chaatni is the Bengali for Chutney

Tomato Chaatni was my staple diet as a kid. That and Chanar Dalna. I don't remember eating anything else much as a 5 year old. My memory has gone bad so I don't remember too much but the red tomato chutney still glistens on the steel tiffin carrier that the help along with my Mom would bring for school lunch every day until Grade 2. Tomato chaatni to me means a safe haven of home amidst strict nuns, new friends and a foreign language that I didn't understand.

Later the aamer ambol pushed tomato chaatni to second place but a childhood sweetheart always has its own special corner.

So one of these weekends we were at this lunch at a friend's house. When I had first met her a couple of years back, she had thrown me off by saying that she makes experimental dishes like chicken with cauliflower. She didn't even say that it tasted great or anything re-assuring about it. So the first time she invited us for dinner we went with a lot of trepidation. She is wonderful company and we thought that the evening would be great even if the chicken had cauliflowers.

It turned out she is a wonderful wonderful cook, all her dishes are fabulous and none of them were radical.The last time we were invited for lunch, she had made 70 vegetable chops, all perfectly shaped and fried. Ok, just to get things clear there were more people and we didn't eat the chops just by ourselves.

Her Tomato chutney or tomato chaatni was really good, studded with raisins, dates and aam shotto, it tasted heavenly. But there was a tang in that chutney that is missing in mine which I just attributed to her good cooking.

Later when I asked, she told me she had added some tamarind chutney to the tomato chaatni and that was the secret to its tangy taste. And then I remembered my Mom adding a little tamarind pulp to her tomato chutney too. How did I forget ? In fact my Mom sometimes would add whole tamarind, pits and all to the tomato chaatni and now that I remember I can hear the clatter of the deep brown tamarind pits on the steel plate as I sucked them out clean.

More than just the tamarind pulp the sweet-sour-spicy tamarind chutney really lends a nice dimension to the tomato chutney and makes it delicious, so do try it next time. Khejur or dates is the perfect company for the tomatoes in the chutney and that is how it is almost always made in a Bengali home. The aam shotto or aam papad/dried sweet mango slices is another delicious addition to the traditional Bengali Tomato chutney. Sadly I had none and so couldn't add any.

I have also made tomato chutney with cranberries when they are in season, the cranberries also add a nice tartness to the chutney but I must say I like this one better.

Read more...

Tomato Khejur Chaatni/Chutney

Prep

Wash and chop 5/6 nice juicy plump red tomatoes in large-ish chunks, like say each tomato should be chopped in 8-10 pieces

Chop 20-30 pitted dates in halves or in thin slices

Start Cooking

Heat Oil in a deep bottomed sauce pan

Temper the hot oil with 2 tsp of black mustard seeds and 2 dry Red Chili. Cover with a lid to avoid mustard dancing around your kitchen. Note: You can avoid the Chili if you don't want spicy

When the mustard sputters, add the chopped tomatoes, a pinch of turmeric, little salt and saute them. Then cover and cook the tomatoes at low heat. The juicy tomatoes will release a lot of liquid and will cook in their own juice. Every minute or so, remove the lid and give a good stir

Once the tomatoes are almost done, add the chopped dates, about 1/3 cup of golden raisins and stir well. If you have amswatta, add some chopped now. Add about 1 tsp of ginger juice, grate ginger and squeeze to get the juice. Add about 1/4-1/2 cup of water and cook for a few more minutes till the tomatoes have totally disintegrated and thoroughly cooked to a soft pulp.

Add 1/2 cup of sugar, mix well, adjust for salt & sugar and then let the chutney simmer and reduce to a thick consistency

Now is a small tip. To make the chutney tangy add 1-2 tbsp full of a tamarind chutney to the tomato chutney. You can use a store bought one or make one of your own using tamarind pulp. This really gives the chutney a sweet-tangy taste instead of just sweet.

Before serving, sprinkle with dry roasted cumin powder or dry roasted and ground paanch-phoron powder.

Updated on 11/10/2009: As I said in an earlier post a traditional Bengali meal usually consists of five to six courses, starting off with something bitter and ending with a sweet dessert. The fifth course served just prior to the dessert is the sweet & sour ambol or chutney.

The chutney (pronounced cha-a-tni in Bengali) in Bengal is not the chutney, sold in jars in the Asian/Indian Aisle of your SuperMarket and hugely popular in the Western World . The Chutney as we have it in a Bengali household is almost always prepared fresh and is eaten as a course of a lunch or a dinner to accent the meal and not as a relish or as a dip. It is the pickle which is preserved for later day use.

Updated on 12/01: A simpler recipe of Bengali Tomato Chutney from Eves Lungs as said in the comments
Dice 250 gm tomatoes . Temper a tsp pf paanch phoron in a little oil, add the tomatoes - add 1 cup of sugar . Cover and cook. Don't add water . You can also add some raisins . This tastes yummy. The tomatoes cook in the juice released from the vegetable as well as the sugar .

Similar Recipes:

Tomato Khejur Cranberry Chutney -- a similar chutney with cranberries for added tartness

Aam Pudina Chaatni -- Mint and Green Mango Chutney

Aam Pudina Chutney | Bengali Mint Chutney

My Mom made this raw aam-pudina chutney with mint and green mangoes in the months of summer. In her home the house help would make the paste in sil-nora, the flat pock marked piece of stone ubiquitous in all Indian homes to grind spices, and the green coarse chutney would be a favorite accompaniment with Musurir dal and Rice for lunch. Minty, tangy and sweet  -- that is how our summer would be! 

Jump To Recipe

The school is wrapping up for the year and there are too many things going on. The middle schooler had her auditions for the school choir and band, and for two whole weeks the house reverberated with sounds of clarinet, piano and singing. Looked like the entire year of practice to be done at home, was crammed into the last two weeks of school. After several nail biting days of audition, first callbacks and waiting, finally the list was up. Big Sis was too happy to be selected for the school show choir and also got a chance in her school jazz band. She decided to go with the choir though and is already looking forward to the inter school competition at Hershey Park next year.

There is also music(vocal) and piano recitals as the year ends and honestly all this is too much of "kaalchar" for me.

The one recital that has me the most stressed though is Little Sis's dance recital next week.  This is LS's first year of BharataNatyam lessons and the dance school has a full fledged show to mark the year end. All these months LS has been dancing to glory in her shorts and tees and doing her aramandis and mudras with perfect comfort. Unlike BigSis, who never wanted to take dance lessons, LS took to classical Indian dance very naturally. However she treated the dance class just like her gymnastics class and wore what she was comfortable in, which again turns out to be shorts in summers and leggings in winter. I was perfectly fine with it.

The dance recital however demands full BharatNatyam regalia with costume, makeup, hair and what not. The costume had to be bought from the school and cost me E-I-G-H-T-Y dollars. A total rip off. And the size is 2 sizes big which means I am begging crafty friends to alter it for me. Then there is makeup. Yeah makeup! I  don't wear eye shadows and have two lipsticks in shades like burberry brown that last me for 2 years. So the word "makeup" sends a chill down my spine.

"They should wear gold eye shadow", says the dance school, "and red lipstick. Also eyes should be lined with kohl. Don't forget a red bindi for the forehead."

The more I hear all these the more I want to grab LS and walk away from this whole dance business. But I have to stay put. Which apparently is not a good idea, as there is hair to be done! LS has short hair and the teacher wants every kid to have their hair tied with garlands wound around it.
I mean seriously? What about free spirit and flying hair? Is their no such thing in classical Indian dance?

I have a really tough next week what with the dress rehearsal and then the actual recital and all that glittery eye shadow. Keep your fingers crossed so that I live to tell the tale.

On a brighter note, I have lots of mint aka pudina growing in my garden this year. Mint has a tendency to spread and grow and the few saplings that I had put down in the ground last year has morphed into a flourishing bush this year.

Somnath's Raasta'r Ghugni -- Ghugni from the street

Bengali Ghugni

Ghugni or Ghoognee is a very very popular snack in Bengal and in parts of Bihar and Orissa. It is made with dried white peas and cooked with myriad spices including Bhaja Masla.While the Northern India has its Chhole, Bengal has its Ghugni.

But as a child growing up in a Bengali home, I never liked Ghugni much. Our neighbor Jain Auntie's deep brown Chhole is what I salivated over. Though Ghugni was not made very often in our home it was a staple item in our neighborhood, served without fail by the para'r kakimas on Bijoya, at the culmination of Durga Pujo. My heart would go into a nosedive the moment I saw the steel bowl of ghugni accompanying two brown narus and one spongy roshogolla on a plate after the customary Bijoya'r pronaam. There was not a single homemade Ghugni that could woo me in its spicy deliciousness. Of course there were the myriad ghugniwala's outside school gates and at the street corner selling lip-smacking ghoogni in dubious steel plates which I never got to taste because of the mater.

As I grew older I realized I could not ignore the fact that Ghugni is an integral part of being a Bengali. If I was going to be a Bangali, not that I had a choice, I better know how to make Ghugni.

Before I write anything further let me make a honest confession. I suck at boiling the Ghugni motor. I know it is kind of silly but either I over boil it until the paper thin like skin floats around or under boil it. If I under boil it, then to cook it to softness, I again over boil it. Cooking Ghugni Motor to perfection is a chore I dread. So I mostly made my Ghugni with chickpeas!

However an authentic Ghugni is made only with Motor or White Peas(sold as White or Yellow Vatana in Indian grocery stores). So this time around I ditched the Pressure Cooker and cooked it in a open pot and watched with hawk eyes. After all I was making Somanth Roychoudhury's Father's Ghugni. I couldn't falter. I am not the kind of person who easily makes friends on social media but I must say that I have met loads of people whom I admire via facebook. Somnath, is one of them. His zest for food enthralls me and his ability to dig out local food stalls and sample street food has me in the throes of jealousy. You can follow him on his Facebook page The Street Gobbler. Or on Instagram

Ghugni at the roadside -- pic courtesy Somnath

When I was looking for a soul-punching "Rasta'r Ghugni" recipe, the spicy kind served at the street corner, I knew I had to ask Somnath. He not only shared his Father's recipe but also answered my questions and shared his pics of street-side Ghugniu wala. This is what I call a Food Connoisseur.

1. You are a street food connoisseur. List Kolkata street food in order of 1 to 5

I am not a connoisseur at all. Street food is a vastly spread out subject. I am just learning about them every day. It is really tough to make a list of best street food of kolkata. Everyone has different choice and their own favorites.

I always categorize street food in several groups of which the two major ones are Snacks and Meals, depending the time of the day when it is mostly consumed.

Afternoon Snack

1) Fuchka or Phuchka
2) Alur chop/ Beguni/ Fuluri
3) Egg Roll /Chicken Roll /Mutton rolls
4) Kochuri with assorted sabjees -- kochuris with different fillings among which the most popular is motordaal-sattu combination , Hing-chholardaal , Koraishuti (mostly in winter) and some more which are served with daal/alu torkari/alukumro torkari.
5)Jhaalmuri / Moshla Muri / Alukabli / Ghughnee

Meals or Street Foods available all day

1)Ruti Shobji - Ruti/Roti with a side dish of curried vegetables. Yes this combo is slowly winning over our maach bhaat / shobjee bhaat / pore bhaat which at one time used to be popular in the small bhaater hotel or paise hotels. It is sad to see Bengalis eating ruti for lunch but I guess it makes more practical sense in today's faster lifestyle.
Kolkata makes over a 100 thousand rutis every day and those are consumed by pedestrians throughout the day.You will always find garam ruti with various options of shobji be it day or night.
2) Poori Shobji/Luchi torkari/ with mini bhatura
3) Dosa / Idli / Vadas
4) Deem Toast / Butter Toast / Jelly toast
5) Chow-chili chicken
6) Litti -- chokha

2. In your search of street food, I see you sample many kinds at different locales. Any interesting experience?

There are so many of interesting experiences in my trail on Kolkata roads for street food... most of them are amazing. Telling about you one in recent days. Few weeks back myself and Soma Chowdhury (from blog Spices and Pisces) were craving for this very elementary beef haleem at Esplanade (in front of Nizaam).As there were some official program around there, police wasn't allowing the thela owner to put up his shop on time.We were getting restless.So both of us literally pushed the cart to its right place and helped the person in setting it up. He got irritated at us at first but then he smiled, seeing us crazy for Haleem, and served the food with a smile. It was awesome in taste and the experience is also memorable.

3. Where do you get best Ghugni on Kolkata streets?

The toughest question in this row. There are many kind of ghughnees available all over, on railway platform, on running train, on tea stalls and yes of course the stand alone ghughnee sellers. I prefer the stand alone ghughnee sellers the most. Two places I must mention.

Ghugni at the station -- pic courtesy Somnath

1. The sealdah south section platform no 12. there are few vendors who comes with a handi with cooked ghughni in it. They serve with chopped onions green chilli and few drops of tamarind pulp water aka Tetul jol.

2. One (not so)old man in behala, near behala tram depot.. I am having ghughnee from him for last 2 and half decades. The best part is the unchanged taste...serve with just sliced cucumber and tetul jol.

This recipe of ghugni is from Somnath's father. Somnath says his Father picked up cooking from his grandmother and though he cooks only a few items, he does them well. I took the recipe Somnath gave and matched it with what my Mother does(she cooks Ghugni on rare occasions) and voila the result was fantastic. The husband-man who has always turned up his nose at my Ghugnis said "Ekdom rasta'r taste esheche"(tastes just like the Ghugni from street side). Hope he meant well.

And oh yeah, inspired by one of Somnath's pictures, I added boiled eggs to my Ghugni. I am not going back.