Bengalis love their food. Though they are quite liberal and would not mind sampling various cuisines, particulary North Indian, Continental or Chinese, at the end of the day, it is 'Mach-Bhaat' (fish curry and cooked rice ) for them. Well, even though I said Mach-Bhaat, it is never as simple. The daily meal consists of in addition some daal ( pulses ) and vegetable preparations at least. And what a wide variety there can be in each of this item !
Bengalis take each item in the meal in a specific order. Daal, Tarkari ( veg preparation ), fish, mutton, and sweets ( if there are any ). Not the other way around. There are other specificities too. If there are two fish preparations, you have to take a particular one first, then the other. In sweets, you take sandesh or rasogolla after mishti dai, not before . It is possibly to prepare your taste buds with each intake for the next one.
Mutton is also a favourite item in the menu , though an occasional one . By mutton I mean of course goat meat and not the lamb variety. Chicken was a taboo in many households in our childhood, more so in the brahmin ones. It used to be mutton curry on a Sunday and we would look forward to it.
Why on a Sunday ? I do not really know, but can only surmise. Everyday was a fish day in any case in a middle class Bengali household, mutton was a change of taste, something special, on a day of holiday when every one in the family could sit down together to have a meal. Moreover , Bengalis considered mutton too heavy for daily consumption and of course a bit too expensive even in those days when mutton sold at Rs.4 or 5 a kg (in the '50s).
Today chicken is quite popular. The number of shops selling poultry in the bazaar testifies to that. But when I see the long queue in front of the mutton shops every Sunday , I realise that the same tradition - mangser jhol on a Sunday- continues.
Bengalis' love for sweets is also well known. There are three sweetmeat shops within a hundred metres of where I stay. This must be the case in any residential locality of Kolkata. It seems that the craze for sweets has not much abated despite the increasing incidence of diabetes in this part of the world.
I find many non-Bengalis associate Kolkata with 'mishti dai' (sweet or sweetened curd ) now a days. I like mishti dai too but I do not understand this preference when Kolkata has many other sweets to boast of. Rasogolla, for instance, which must have travelled far and wide thanks to K.C.Das's Rasogolla sold in sealed cans.
A celebrity visiting the city these days loves to say, ' I love Kolkata and its mishti dai '.Obviously the Kolkatans are charmed. They would have been overwhelmed if he or she had said 'I like Ilish macher jhol ( hilsha curry ). But that is most unlikely. The public relations man who tutors the celebrity knows pretty well that such an announcement will sound pretty hollow - and be taken with a pinch of salt, because no body but a Bengali can really manage the hilsha bones effectively enough to be able to enjoy its taste.
In my search for the identity of a Bengali, my identity that is, I find food habits a major component that constitute it. I can go on naming food items one after the other which are quintessentially Bengali though some of them are fast vanishing from our plate. Mainly because of the labour involved in their preparation and the lack of time (or initiative ) on the part of the housewife - who may also be a working mother. I can name, for example, Mochar Ghanta or Enchorer Tarkari which people flock to have these days in some of the restaurants which have come up to serve Bengali cuisine.Fortunately so ! Same goes for Pattishapta Pithe or Naru which Bengalis buy from some shops today rather than make it at home.
I am sure all these items are still being prepared in some households, but the general trend is, as in many other things modern, outsourcing. That may have taken the personal touch away .
Another essentially Bengali item is luchi which I think is still a favourite in every Bengali home. It is taken with any of a variety of items, begun bhaja (fried slices of brinjal or eggplant), aloor dum ( a potato preparation), kasha mangsho ( a meat preparation) or payesh ( another sweet Bengali delicacy).
A few days back I decided I would make some luchis for myself. The thought of having some hot luchis for breakfast which I had not had for a long time was quite tempting. Added to that was my recently awakened Bengali fervour and that launched me into the project.
After all, luchi making is no big deal. As child, I saw my mother making luchis so many times. She had to feed a large family. When she made luchis, it was in large numbers for an eagerly waiting assemblage. She would make these with an ease and deftness which I always admired - all the myriad jobs she had to do she did with the same ease and deftness, always fast and tireless. But I admired her even more after my recent experience.
You just have some maida (flour), mix it with some water and a pinch of salt in a flat bottomed bowl to make some dough, divide the dough into some balls, press each ball with your fingers on a chaki (flat round wooden board ) and then use the beluni ( the wooden cylindrical roller with grips on both sides) to roll each ball separately into a round circular piece four or five inches in diameter - voila, the preparation is complete ! Just heat some oil in the kadai ( round pan ) and put each round piece to soak into this hot oil for frying.There will be this sizzling sound and the luchi will just puff up. You turn both sides in the oil to make it perfect - the puffed fulko luchi.
Not that difficult, I thought. Since I had the chaki and beluni, I got some maida and got into the act straightaway. When I started making the dough, I realised something was wrong. It was sticking to my fingers and to the bowl. Have I put more water than necessary? I added some flour, and again some more and eventually managed to make the dough and the balls, though they remained sticky still. The problem actually accentuated when I tried to roll out the balls on the chaki and make the round pieces. I knew that my pieces would not be round or circular, that would require more practice, I was ready for that , but I was not ready for what was happening. The wet maida was sticking to the chaki and as I pressed the roller, there would be a tear here and a tear there. Some maida was sticking to the roller too. I had to manage by adding more dry maida on the balls and also by sprinkling some on the chaki itself before trying to roll each ball. This is, I suppose, what they do while making rotis ! Finally, the job was done- I had five pieces- they could not be called round by any stretch of imagination, their shapes defied geometry, but they were the products of my most sincere even if foolish efforts, so I lovingly put each individually into the heated oil.I would say they behaved, though not as well as well made luchis normally do, but they also sizzled in the oil and one or two even puffed up to an extent.
Finally I had my breakfast with some operationally challenged luchis and begunbhaja (which I got done in the same oil ).
Where did I go wrong ? I asked my daughter when she visited next.
It was the simple matter of adding some oil to the flour before making the dough with water. If I were Sherlock Holmes I would have no problem finding it out for myself, but I am not. I am just a true blue Bengali ! And I mess up too often.
But I could not leave it at that. I had to make my luchis next day and this time things worked, though the shape of the luchis left much to be desired.
There is always a tomorrow.
Fee more tricks to make your luchi fluffy :
ReplyDeleteYou should try to dab a bit of oil on the chaki so that it does not stick. One trick which Ma taught me is that to make sure that the height of the luchi is the least in the periphery, ie press your belan a bit hard on the edges. This helps to make the luchi blow up easily. Also when you fry try to pour some hot oil in the middle of the luchi from the sides and press the luchi down into the oil. This will make it all blow up :).
And lastly pls dont make your luchi with mustard oil, telling you since u r obsessed with mustard oil :)
Thanks for the tip.
ReplyDeleteYes, you got it right, it was m.oil after all ! But what diff. does it make?
I tried it again for breakfast today.It was better and fluffier, but the dough making will require little more practice.Well, this time I did use white oil !
I have perhaps never told you that in our childhood (again !), it was always badam tel i.e peanut oil for cooking at our home. I understand that during and after the 2nd World wars, there was a lot of blackmarketing in the country and m.oil used to be highly adulterated.Many people in Bengal suffered from a disease called beri beri as a result.My father,a doctor,banned m.oil at home. It was much later that m.oil was reintroduced.Luchi most of the time was made in ghee (people were not bothered about chloresterol those days ).
What a nice set of comments from Anindya! How right he is? I wonder how did he learn all these cooking ? I don't think I can add anything.
ReplyDeleteNot that I know how to make luchi because it was never my favourite dish and I knew how difficult it was to make the shape. Incidentally you can buy a gadget in Kolkata, a presser, which can easily make round luchi shape. We first saw it in Guru's place in Delhi many years ago and bought it from there. Although Bulu does not need it.
What I liked to make was singara(Somossa) and nimki. With nimki I wanted to make gaja which Ma used to make during the time of Vijoya Dasami every year. When did she find time I would never know.
Singara, which Bulu makes at home which is as good if not better than in Kolkata, is my most favourite. I have tried a couple of times but not been very successful.The important thing is to make a uniformly thin luchi shape. Perhaps that is a challenge for you. The filler is not a problem to make. Can't you buy fulko luchi locally?
Nimki is however easier to make. I have done a couple of times. You do preparations like luchi , add some kalo jeera and then fry it. If you like you can add a little baking powder. The beauty of it is that you can keep it for a long time and can eat as snacks with your drinks. Be careful with all these. The less frying you do it is better particurly if your favourite soap is going on at the time, fire can be a hazard.
Dadamoni
Dadamoni, Thanks for all the tips.I have to do a lot of multitasking in any case, with the soap on one side,cooking on another.Sometime the washing machine or the computer in between.There have been occasions when the water being boiled for a cup of tea has dried up and the saucepan has started getting red hot and blackened when I was absorbed in a newspaper article. Only once a kadai was naughty enough to catch fire. Such is life. One has to live with it.
ReplyDeleteAnindya is a good cook.Unlike his father who started learning the rudiments of cooking after he was fifty and became his own cook after he crossed sixty, Anindya started at a tender age.As a boy scout he learned to light a fire and in our Dibrugarh days, he would light a fire in a corner of the lawn and make tea for me and my colleague to sip sitting in my Bungalow verandah on a Sunday. In fact on one or two occasions, he made chicken roast or let us say, barbeque for all us, though the marination and the basic preparations were made by my bawarchi. Anindya would have been around ten or eleven at that time.Later of course he picked up a lot from his mother and had to fend for himself in his initial years in Bangalore.