Shob Phaler Achaar -- Mixed Fresh Fruit Chutney

Shob Phaler Achaar -- Mixed Fresh Fruit Chutney

I have been away from the blog for a long while and believe me I missed it so much. I wanted to sit down and type something out every day and I had this kind of lurch in the pit of my stomach because I was procrastinating.And then again there was so much going on that it seemed sheer crazy to sit at the computer while life passed me by.

It has been a "happening August" here in the BongMom household with the girls' paternal grandparents visiting from India and then their aunt(pishi) and cousin joining in for a couple of weeks. The best part was that darling aunt had scheduled her holiday to coincide with LS's birthday which meant that birthday fun just doubled and tripled.

LittleSis turned 6 this year and I had not really planned for a birthday party beyond a small family affair. For one, she wanted to invite her school friends and I am a lazy Mom who thought it was too much work to track down and invite school classmates during summer vacation. I mean it was doable but too much work.So a small homely birthday was the call of this year.

Now over the summer both the girls have acquired young friends in the neighborhood. And that has turned summer afternoons into those similar to my childhood in India. Where there are kids playing on the driveway and sidewalk, spilling from one home to the other, late until dusk sets in and the street lights flicker to a warm orange glow. In this scenario it was only natural that the neighborhood friends were invited to a "birthday party" by LS, a birthday party which I, the ignorant Mother, had imagined to be a small family affair.

Eventually the birthday which was on a weekday turned into a fat, colorful party on the day itself. Those who could come, came. In throes of panic I got a bounce house which the kids enjoyed a lot. BigSis took over as the games organizer and made the group of kids, who were in a varying age range, play games. Her games were quite interesting and included a game called sardines(take on the age old hide n seek), treasure hunt and balloon popping.Food was outsourced and there was shingara, vegetable chop, chana chaat, pasta and Chettinad biriyani. Kids cried, laughed, fought and enough chaos happened. And like every year, I sweared swore to not throw any more birthday party until LS turns 12.

A quick recuperation from the birthday was followed with visits to the beach and park with cousin who is the same age as LS and therefore great pals. During the weekday I managed to sneak out with sis-in-law for sushi, a movie (The Hundred Foot Journey), dinner at a Portuguese place and of course Thai. And then a two day trip to a kids' amusement park was thrown into the medley.

I am very glad that BS and LS get time to spend with both sides of the family almost every year.  These childhood days are precious and the memories they make with family will go a long way.

School starts tomorrow and summer is over. A year worth of new stuff is waiting for both the girls. I should be excited but honestly, I am not.

To start off the blog after this long break, I will share a chutney, something we call a pickle in Bengali, a achaar. It is not really a pickle, but a Bengali ascribes a chaatni as something that cannot be preserved and needs to be served to finish off a meal, while pickle or achaar is something that has a long life. This particular chutney or achaar has vinegar which means it stays well for a month or two. It is made up of a mix of different kinds of fruits, sweet and sour and is a delicious accompaniment to crackers, paratha or roti.

This recipe was something my mother-in-law learned from mys sis-in-law's neighbor!!! It is sweet, spicy, sour and has a definite kick. If I think of it, it is like a family.

Shob Pholer Achaar -- Mixed Fresh Fruit Chutney

What you need for this Fresh Fruit Chutney is lots of different kind of fruits and vegetables to begin with. Fruits with a balance of sweet and tart.

I had 1 green mango, 2 plum, 1 apricot, 1 apple, 1 carrot, and about  6 sweet peppers. Chop all of these fruits in small pieces.

Now slice about 6-7 pods of garlic in thin slices. If you want it hot slit 4-5 green chillies.

Heat about 5 Mustard Oil in a wide Kadhai or saucepan, which will give you enough surface to cook.

Temper the oil with 3/4th tbsp of PaanchPhoron and 3-4 dried red chilli.

When the spices sizzle and sputter, add the garlic slices. Saute for a few seconds, do not let the garlic brown.Now add the fruits and green chilli. Stir the fruits around and let them soften a bit. With the kind of fruits I mentioned here, it did not take long for them to soften.

Now add about 1/2-3/4th  Cup Vinegar and 1/3rd cup of sugar. Add sugar according to your taste and the sweetness of the fruits. If you think that the fruits are sweet enough add little sugar. If they are tart, add more. Add salt to taste.

Now the fruits will release water. Let them simmer and thicken. Taste and adjust for the thickness of the chutney. Take a spoonful out and put on a plate to check that the consistency is thick and not runny. In this case, it was done in about 20 minutes or so.

Once the chutney cools, put in a jar and refrigerate. It stays well for a month or two.

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Vegetable Tikkis or Croquettes -- Kids Summer Snacks

One month of summer holidays is already over, and though I wonder how time flew so quickly, in reality quite a few things were done.

The most important was Big Sis getting her Black Belt in Taekwondo. They had tested just before the vacation and the rank ceremony was around end of June. While Big Sis is now a certified Black belt, Little Sis who was very reluctant in the beginning classes is now a proud Brown Belt. Big Sis is not and never was an aggressive child and I feel this taekwondo class has improved her strength and confidence a lot. She had started out at the age of about five and the five plus years of training has made her a stronger girl.

Then for the Fourth of July we went away to a dear friends' place for a lazy relaxed few days which involved lots of ice cream eating and lolling around under the tress in their backyard.

In between, the girls and their neighborhood friends did a lemonade stand. They also started on their swimming and Little Sis enrolled for a Bharatnatyam workshop where her friend goes too. She likes gymnastics better she says and the "mudras" are confusing her, so we will have to see how it goes in the future.

We also made regular trips to the library and Little Sis graduated to chapter books. She took a fancy for Nancy Clancy and read the two books that she got in the library.

Though a much awaited trip to the Water Park had to be canceled due to family reasons, we managed a short trip to a quaint shore town with lighthouse, beach and a lovely town square.

And then of course there was the World Cup taking over regular life.

There is almost one and half month of vacation still to go and I hope it only gets better.

While summer means whole two months of lazy, no-school, minimal routine days for the kids, it also means a time when every 30 minutes a question pops up --"I am hungry. What can I have?" This is a hard question to battle and a lot of the times I get by suggesting fruits, yogurt, cookies. If things get really bad, I keep a box of snacks, otherwise labeled as junk in the garage, which is then offered to quell hungry minds.

Dim er devil -- deviled eggs Bengali style

One good thing that has come out of my attempt to do A-Z of Bengali Cuisine is to cook Bengali dishes which I might have forgotten about or which I might not have cooked otherwise. So, thinking of the next letter "D", it struck me that I have never posted a Dim er devil (Deemer Devil) recipe. Actually I have not even made a Dimer devil in the last 8 years. And before that maybe once. Bad track record, but then I have said many times, I do not deep fry much.

The strangest thing is 4 years ago, I had made a Maacher Chop with Argentina playing Netherlands. 4 years later, I made Dim er Devil with Argentina playing Germany. Football stresses me to deep fry I guess.

Dim er devil is not deviled eggs, though it owes its name to a similar root. It is a very popular snack for most Bengalis and my Mother used to make it very often. When she made it, I had no clue that there existed a deviled egg. I also had no clue how a strapless dress holds itself up. Well, we are deviating but I did have that doubt. And still am not sure. Honest.

Now according to western recipe sources, deviled eggs are hard boiled eggs, shelled and cut in half, and then filled with the cooked egg yolk which had been taken out and mixed with mayo, seasonings etc. They are served cold and as you can understand pretty simple to make.Roots of this deviled eggs can be traced back to ancient Rome.
What I did not know was, the first known printed mention of ‘devil’ as a culinary term appeared in Great Britain in 1786, in reference to dishes including hot ingredients or those that were highly seasoned and broiled or fried. By 1800, deviling became a verb to describe the process of making food spicy. According to the dictionary, the cooking term devil means 'to chop food finely and mix with hot seasoning or sauce, usually after cooking'.

This gives us an idea of how the current day Bengali Dim er Devil got its name. It was based on the original recipe of the devilled egg introduced by the British rulers of  Kolkata in the era of the Raj. The Raj kitchens were manned by Khansamas, who were  from central and eastern India, Goa, Madras, Nepal and the Mog community of Bangladesh. Before working for the Raj, they worked in the kitchens of the princely states of India where they started off as kitchen boys helping the chief cook. With their culinary instinct and innovation they grew into such exceptional chefs that their talent is now legendary.

With the end of the princely states, life became hard in the royal kitchens and the khansamas found jobs in clubs, army mess and British Raj households. The British memsahibs taught them European cuisines and introduced them to western techniques and ingredients. The khansama made puddings in tandoors, soufflês in steamers and roast duck in dekchis. They are responsible for much of the amalgamation of British cuisine with Indian methods and thus introducing chicken jal frezi, caramel pudding and chicken cutlets to the  Indian society. You can now well imagine that when it came to deviled eggs, they were not merely satisfied by stuffing the egg with a spicy filling but went a step ahead to coat and fry it like a chop or croquette and thus giving birth to "Deem er Devil".

Edited to Add: After a few comments from readers on Facebook and here, I found that British Scotch Eggs are closer to our "Deem er Devil". Apparently the British department store Fortnum & Mason claims to have invented it in 1793. But again, they seem to have imitated the Moghul recipe of  "Nargisi Kofta", where hard boiled eggs are encased in a covering of spicy keema and fried after which they are put in a special gravy. These Koftas when served, were cut in half and the yellow center surrounded by the white resembled narcissus flowers blooming in spring(Source of name). That is apparently how they got their name. After all this research, it then looks like that "Deem er Devil" was the brainwave of a Bengali Khansama who was inspired by both these recipes.