The good meal and the right method of being require a little bit of bitterness, a fragile steadiness between simplicity and extra, a person who cooks, and a touch of liberal values. I received all this from watching a YouTube video by a social media influencer. Now, I’m not a fan of influencers and their channels and posts, however I’ve to go with the yeoman service {that a} latest episode of Curly Tales has carried out for Bengali delicacies. Dispelling myths and introducing unsuspecting viewers who’re used to seeing celebrities fake to cook dinner a dish or two, or have their cooks achieve this, to what Bengali delicacies actually includes.
In a latest episode, host Kamiya Jani featured the actor par excellence, Dibyendu Bhattacharya. What adopted was a crash course not simply in Bengali delicacies but additionally within the Bengali method of being.
Our love for mustard oil and all issues mashed
So let’s begin with some basics of Bengali cuisine, which now over 4 lakh viewers have learnt about. We eat our meals course by course, and we by no means cook dinner or serve only one dish at dwelling. This shocked me the primary time I visited a reasonably well-to-do Punjabi buddy’s home after I was at school. I used to be served chapatis, one geeli sabzi (a vegetable in gravy), and a bowl of yoghurt.
I used to be most involved about whether or not they had fallen on laborious instances, however then realised that is normal fare in North Indian houses. Now, in Bengali houses, even the poorest would have rice, dal, a fried vegetable – possibly only a boiled potato mashed with some salt and mustard oil – and a small piece of fish, fried or made into a light-weight curry flavoured with simply turmeric.
We cook dinner with and love mustard oil. Whenever you cook dinner with mustard oil, particularly vegetable dishes, it provides a pungency and kick with out overpowering them. In actual fact, when you weren’t informed that the meals was cooked in mustard oil, you wouldn’t realize it. Many individuals are unaware that even Kashmiri meals could be very usually cooked in mustard oil. What most don’t know is that Bengalis additionally eat uncooked mustard oil drizzled over mashed potatoes or boiled eggs. Don’t flip your nostril up at that piece of data when you’re tremendous with drizzling olive oil over your pasta or bread.
What most don’t know is that Bengalis additionally eat uncooked mustard oil drizzled over mashed potatoes or boiled eggs. (Picture: Freepik)
Talking of mashed potatoes and boiled eggs, Bhattacharya launched viewers to what many Bengalis take into account consolation meals disguised as a delicacy.
The idea of bhaatey is actually boiled and mashed potatoes, generally combined with a boiled and mashed egg, a little bit onion and inexperienced chilli mashed into the combination, drizzled with mustard oil and seasoned with salt. There aren’t any different components added. Sounds bland? It isn’t. It’s the only of flavours, which, when eaten with sizzling steamed rice, will please your style buds no finish.
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We even have an idea of teto or bitters, the place we mash boiled karela or ucchey with potato and season with salt, to be eaten with rice.
Garlic and onion hardly ever seem in our delicacies, besides in rooster or mutton dishes, and onion is used sparingly in some vegetable preparations.
A real-blue Bengali unfold
The meal Bhattacharya cooked was the best unfold you’d serve at dwelling. It started with alu-ucchey bhaatey (potato and karela mashed) and alu-deem bhaatey (potato and egg mashed with onion and inexperienced chilis), adopted by sauteed Kolmi saag, a water spinach that Bengalis eat, begoon bhaja (fried brinjal), tawk dal (dal with inexperienced mango), and mochar ghonto, which I’ve written about earlier than (a dry banana flower preparation).
Then got here shorshe maacher jhaal (fish cooked with freshly floor mustard, poppyseed, and coconut milk) and mutton rezala (a divine preparation of mutton cooked with yoghurt and spices, distinctive to Bengal). This was accompanied by rice, tomato chutney, and papad, and Gondhoraj Lebu, probably the most aromatic of limes, and completed with mishti doi and rosogolla.
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And in case you assume Bengalis will need to have a non-vegetarian element to each meal, the idea of pujor bhog was described. Normally cooked throughout Lakshmi Puja, Saraswati Puja, and Durga Puja, bhog is the title for the frilly khichudi, accompanied by a number of varieties of bhaja (fried greens) and labra, a mixed-vegetable dish, served to devotees.
The meal ended the best way my grandfather appreciated, with freshly folded Benarasi paan, betel leaves torn from the plant, a filling of betel nut, and different accompaniments.
What warmed my coronary heart was seeing how the important elements of rising up in a barely privileged Bengali dwelling have been on show. The kid who performs the piano superbly, the discussions on training, working girls, emancipated males who cook dinner and don’t assume it emasculates them, relations who is perhaps vegetarian however don’t collapse on the sight of their partner consuming meat. It was like the entire, very best Bengali meal, with all probably the most interesting elements included.
If it takes an influencer to introduce unsuspecting audiences to the surprise and nuances of Bengali delicacies, I’m all for it. I hope many extra folks attempt to put together bhaatey in consequence. However proper now, all I can consider is methods to get my fingers on an excellent rezala.
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Subsequent week, I’ll be channelling Popeye and writing on certainly one of my favorite greens – spinach and its huge varieties.
