15 September

Raw papayas are considered very good for the stomach. When ever you need a happy bowel, a Bengali mother would always recommend you to have boiled raw papaya or what we call as seddho pepe. Full raw or partially ripened, seddho pepe always tastes awesome to me. There are many yummy vegetarian preparations in the Begali cuisine with Raw papaya and most of the times its cooked a little sweet apart from the time it is added to the daal. Cooking daal with vegetables is a common culture in Bengal. Usually Moong Daal pairs well with all sorts of vegetables and most of the time sobji diye moong er daal  (Daal with vegetables) is prepared on special occasions with seasonal produce. But pepe diye Moong daal ( Moong daal with raw papaya) is prepared like a everyday daal in a Bengali household. 

It is a simple hearty daal recipe, especially preferred during the summer months at my home. My mom used to find innovative ways to feed me vegetables when I was small, putting all the unattractive vegetables in daal was an easy way out for her.  As a result right from childhood I grew up loving this  preparation. This daal preparation doesn't have any bells and whistles but this makes up for a hearty meal when you pair it with any vegetable and steamed rice. 

• Moong Daal - 200 gm
• Whole Jeera - 1 tsp
• Raw Papaya - 1 cup, cubed
• Ginger Paste - 1 tbsp
• Dry Red Chilli - 2
• Turmeric Powder - as needed
• Bay Leaf - 1
• Salt as per taste 
• Ghee - 1/2 tsp
• Refined Oil/ Cooking Oil

Equipment:

• Pressure Cooker
• Kadai

2. Now wash the daal under running water to clean off any impurities and dirt. Transfer the roasted daal to a bowl and add about two cups of warm water. Cover and let the Daal soak for about 30 minutes to 1 hours, the more the better

Tip: Soaking the daal, reduces the cooking time.

3. Cut the Papaya into cubes. 

4. There are two ways to cook the papaya - either you boil it with the daal or you can shallow fry the papaya cubes in a kadai for about 1 minute and then add 1 cup of water and boil them separately in a pressure cooker. 

Note: The papaya I used had started to ripen, so I followed 2nd option. If you have a completely raw papaya, you can follow the 1st option as well.

5. Pressure cook the daal for 2 whistles or as required. Note that the daal should be cooked but not a mush. With a ladle give a couple of stir to mix the daal in the cooker after opening the lid.

6. Now put the pressure cooker with the boiled daal on medium flame and add salt and turmeric. Let it come to a boil and switch off the flame.

Note: If you have boiled the papaya with the daal, before this step take out the papaya cubes and keep aside, else they might get over cooked and mushy.

7. In a kadai, heat refined oil and ghee. When hot temper it with bay leaves, dry red chili and whole Jeera. 

Note: This recipe is made with white oil (refined oil) an ghee and not mustard oil which is commonly used in Bengali recipes.

8.When the spices are fragrant, add the ginger paste and sauté it keeping the flame on medium till the raw smell is gone. 

9. Now add the boiled papaya and the boiled daal. Let it simmer for about 4-5 minutes with lid on. Top it off with a dollop of ghee.

Serve it with steamed rice and vegetable of your choice.

March 11

It is getting hot! Last year this day we were already under lockdown. It still makes me shiver at the thought of how overnight our world had changed. I remember on Holi last year which was on the 9th March, very few people had gone down to celebrate. We already heard the news of Covid spreading rapidly and some folks were already detected in Pune. I had skipped going down to play and just enjoyed from my balcony watching people play down. No one knew right form next day, it would be a different story.

A year has passed and not much has changed. In fact history is kind of repeating again. Maharashtra is again showing a spike and Holi is just round the corner.  Fingers crossed this time. Hopefully we will tide through with minimum impact.

Meanwhile due to the hot weather, now all my recipes are turning towards simple , easy to digest and soulful dishes. No heavy tadkas or oily food especially. The dish I am talking about today is a daal prepared with tender stems of bottle gourd. While adding bottle gourds to daal is a common practice, in Bengal we also like to add the stems and greens of Bottle gourd with the daal. The health benefits of bottle gourd is also present in its greens. It keeps your body cool and easy on the tummy. The taste and aroma is an added incentive. Bottle gourd pairs up fabulously with Motor daal. Yellow split pea lentil or motor is is a very common household daal in Bengal, but I have never seen it outside Bengal. It has a very typical aromatics which might not be pleasant to all, hence we usually pair it up with some vegetables to balance out the aroma. The daal that I used in here is sourced from Bengal. You can however check in your areas, at times there are some vendors who keep sourcing Bengali food items. During lockdown, many such vendors made there presence in Pune, which was one of the best things that could have happened in this phase. If you cant get your hands on motor daal, you can as well use masoor daal (red lentils) for this recipe. 

This daal goes best with steamed rice and some basic stir fried subzis, like potato fry or bitter gourd fry. But you can also enjoy it with any other vegetarian subzis.

Check Out the DIY Background I made for this shoot.

For 2nd Tempering :

• Dried Whole Red Chilli - 1
• Ghee - 1 tsp
• Red Chilli powder - 1/2 tsp

Procedure

1. Wash the daal and soak it in water for about half an hour.

Pro Tip: If you are in a hurry and don't have much time to soak daal before cooking, just soak the daal in hot water. It brings down the soaking time to half or less.

2. Meanwhile cut the tender bottle gourd stems into 2 inch pieces. 

Tip: Select the stems which are tender but fleshy, especially the nodes

3. Now in a pressure cooker, add the stems and some water to submerge the stems. Pressure cook for 1 whistle. Then immediately release the pressure by putting the cooker under running tap water. Separate the stems and preserve the water.

4. Now take the soaked daal in the cooker and add the preserved water from Step 3 and additional water to pressure cook the daal. Once the daal is cooked, give it a good stir with the spatula to break it down and make the consistency thick.

5. Add the boiled stems back into this daal.

6. Now in a pan add mustard oil. When the oil is hot, temper it with bay leaf, radhuni, dried red chillies till fragrant.

7. Add the boiled daal and stems into the pan. Add turmeric and salt and fold in. Cover and cook on medium till it gets a rolling boil.

8. For a second tempering, take some ghee in a pan. Once hot add one dried red chilli and 1/2 tsp of red chilli powder. Let it sizzle for about 40 seconds. Now pour it over the finished daal.

Serve it with rice and subzi of your choice.

Check Out the DIY Background I made for this shoot.

30 October

The Durga Pujos are just over and today it is Laxmi Pujo in Bengal. Sharad Purnima is observed as Kojagari Lokkhi Pujo or Kojagari Lakshmi Puja in eastern states such as Bengal, Assam, Odisha, eastern Bihar. Yes in the eastern states instead of Diwali, Laxmi Puja is celebrated a few days after Durga Puja. I did my usual puja today for Lakshmiji, nothing special for Lakshmi puja. Its difficult to arrange everything on a working day when you do not have a helping hand as such. However on Diwali I will be doing it.

Finally the rains have bade farewell and it feels like the winters are knocking on the door. The mornings are cold. yesterday it said the temperature was around 16.7 degrees in Pune. I don't know how many of you feel it, but the smell in the air changes with the onset of the Diwali week. It is much crisp now and under the sun it feels good. Finally it feels like the festive season.

I have been again reading a lot these days. Finished two mystery novels in 3 weeks. Currently devouring the Pujobarshiki Anandamela. I have also got my hands on a few culinary books of late. Mostly from the suggestions of the bloggers I follow. Most of the interest pivots around cook books with recipes from the past. Most of the times now due to lack of time and resource we tend to concoct things which are easy to make and hassle-free. Due to this many a time we end up tweaking the original recipe. It is no more a word of mouth legacy that's passed on through the generation , it is more like word of google mixed with personal improvisation. I am guilty of the same many a times too. i cannot say that is a bad thing. Because unless we try something new, how will we know whether a thing works or not. At the same time it feels good to know how was the same recipe made in older days when folks didn't tamper with traditional recipes usually.

One such books I got is - "Thakur Barir Ranna" by Purnima Thakur. Purnima Devi also known as Sudakshina Devi, was the youngest child of noted Brahmo Hemendranath Tagore, and niece of Rabindranath Tagore, thus part of the larger Tagore family.  The preface of the book talks about Indira Debi Choudhurani's ( Naw Ma) collection of recipes. She was the daughter of Rabindranath tagore's brother. Indira Debi herself didn't cook but was a food enthusiast and had a knack to collect recipes from around the world in her recipe book. That is the reason at times this book doesn't talk about the exact measurements of the ingredients. But still it is a Pandora's box of recipes from the bygone era. The most fascinating thing about this book I felt was that it has many recipes across Indian cuisines - like Puran Poli, Mysore pak etc in the recipe list. I never had an idea that during those days as well the ladies in home had exposure to such a  varied range of cuisines. But then the Thakur bari was known to have been much ahead of their times in everything. Also one more thing I noticed in particular was the usage of coconut in the recipes.  Usual Bengali recipes do not incorporate coconuts so frequently, but Thakur baris cuisine has them in most of the recipes. Which makes me think, it was probably influenced by many cultures to which the household was exposed to in those days. Later on Indira debi had gifted her recipe book to Purnima Thakur and she wrote this book to mainly preserve all those legacy recipes. Purnima Debi's mother Nalini Debi was also a great cook. Thus this book also has some of Nalini Debi's recipes and Purnima Debi's recipes as well. It feels kind of a time wrap when you read the book. I have bookmarked many of the recipes which sounded quite intriguing to me. One of those recipes is Mach diye shukto or shukto made with fish. This is one of the lost recipes of Bengal. Never had I heard before that Shukto (bitter medley of vegetables), can also be made with fish. I rechecked the recipe to see if I was reading right. Indeed I was. She had used Katla Fish to make the recipe. The recipe got me thinking, can I make it with just any fish?

If you have any Bengali friends you would know how crazy the Bengalis are about Ilish or Hilsa. Its different that they are anyway crazy about fish, but the craze for Hilsa tops everything. Monsoon delicacy means Ilish. They may sound illegally expensive to others but the Bengali is ready to shell out anything for a good Ilish on their plate. This year due to the covid situation it was impossible to go to supermarket in search of Hilsa. Usually I would get it from the nearby Big Bazar. It almost seemed like this would be a Ilishless year for me when it was already past September. But miraculously I found a fish vendor in facebook [thus you see social media is not always that bad] who delivered in my area and best thing - he had Ilish in stock! It was like a God gifted opportunity! I didnt waste time in ordering my stock of Hilsa. The prices were definitely much more than what we get in Kolkata but then a good Hilsa is worth the price you pay. As scheduled it was delivered by the owner himself. What I best liked was the packaging and the cuts. It was perfect Bengali ring pieces. He also made sure that he packed the fish head and oil in separate bags so that it was easy to use. And best thing yet, the fish tasted lovely and fresh. And I was raring to go ahead and make it into a lovely fish curry.

Now, the problem is whenever we Bengalis think of Ilish only a handful of recipes come to our mind - patui, jhal, bhapa and sorshebata mainly. I wanted to try something different for once. And then I remembered Purnima Debi's recipe of Mach diye shukto. That's it, I had the best fish at hand to try out the recipe because you can never go wrong with Ilish.

Note: This recipe can also be tried with other fishes like the Katla. 

Ingredients:

• Ilish / Hilsa - 6 - 7 pieces (ring cut)
• Bitter Gourd (Karela) - 1 big (cut into thick matchsticks/ batonnet cut)
• Potato (Aloo) - 2 medium (wedges)
• Pointed Gourd (Parwal) - 4 (wedges)
• Brinjal (Begun)- 2 medium (wedges)
• Red Pumpkin (Kumro) - 200 gm (cubed)
• Broad Beans (Shim) - 10 small (remove the tip and the tail)
• Raw Papaya (Pepe) - 200 gm (cubed)
• Raw Banana (Kacha Kola) - 1 (cubed) 
• Mustard Whole (Sorshe) - 1 tsbp (coarsely ground) + 1 tbsp (paste)
• Poppy Seeds (Poshto) - 3 tbsp (paste)
• Bay Leaf - 1
• Dried Red Chilli - 4
• Ginger - 2 inch grated
• Five Spices (5 Phoran) - 1 tsp
• Mustard Oil
• Ghee - 1 tbsp
• Milk - 1 cup
• Salt and Sugar as per taste

Procedure: 

1.  Wash all the vegetables and cut it as mentioned above.

2. Fry all the vegetables and keep aside. All the vegetables must be cooked till 3/4th done. The order I follow is hard veggies first - potato, parwal, banana, papaya. Followed by the softer ones - pumpkin, broad beans etc. Followed by karela and brinjals fried standalone. 

Tip: Frying them in batches is time consuming but it really helps in controlling the color and texture of the vegetables with different textures.

Fry The Karela

Fry The Brinjals

Fry the hard Vegetables - Potato, papaya, Parwal , Banana

Add the fried Karela and the Pumpkin

3. Clean and wash the Ilish pieces. Marinate it with salt and turmeric for about 30 minutes. Now fry them in mustard oil and keep aside. I usually shallow fry them.

Tip: Always prefer the ring cut portions of Hilsa for this.

4. Make a fine paste of poppy seeds and 1 tbsp mustard seeds with water.  

Tip: Soak the poppy seeds and mustard seeds in water for about 1 hour. The more the better it will soak up water and easy to make into a paste.

5. Grind 1 tbsp of mustard seeds with a mortar pestle to a fine powder. Keep it aside

6. Take mustard oil in a deep bottomed wok and when oil is smoking temper it with bay leaves, dry red chilli, panch foron and ground mustard seeds. Give it a good toss to fry everything. Make sure not to burn the spices.

Note : Pach foron is a mixture of five spices. Typically it consists of Methi dana (fenugreek seeds), Kalonji (nigella seeds), radhuni (celery seeds), sauf (fennel seeds) and jeera (cumin). Radhuni is many a times substituted with mustard seeds. It is a very versatile spice mix and in Bengal it is extensively used to add flavour to different Dals and Vegetarian preparations.

7. When the spices are fragrant toss in the fried vegetables apart from karela into the wok and fold in. Adjust the salt and sugar at this stage. 

Tip: Try not to cover and cook, then the color of the vegetables with remain as it is. Which in turn means you have to take care the vegetables do not burn, because water will evaporate fast when cooked uncovered.

Note: Turmeric is not added to shukto, that is one of the ground rule of this preparation. The preparation will have all the natural flavours of the vegetables in tact as turmeric is not added. PS: the picture looks yellowish though because of the mustard seed paste.

8. Add the grated ginger at this stage. Mix well and cook for 3-4 minutes.

9. Add the poppy seeds + mustard seeds paste now. Fold in. Let it cook for about 5 minutes on medium flame.

10. Add the fried karela and give it a good toss to mix everything. 

Note: karela is the last thing to be added before fish

11. Add the milk and water and stir in. The flame should be medium

Pro tip: I usually warm the milk for about 50 seconds in the microwave before adding to the the shukto.

12. When the shukto is almost done, lay the fish pieces carefully on top and put a cover. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes. Switch off the flame and let it sit covered. This will ensure the flavour of the fish gets incorporated into the shukto.

Note: Handle the fish with care and do not shove it inside the gravy, else it may break and the fish bones can get mixed with the gravy.

Serve it with steamed rice. Usually Shukto is had directly with rice without any other accompaniment like dal. So that each flavour of the seasonal vegetables can be relished fully.