Hoi Pulao

I bought some mutton yesterday. This morning I was all set to cook a nice, spicy, archetypal Sunday-lunch-mutton-curry. But the weather made me indolent. The day was cool and rainy and I longed to finish the business of cooking quickly and curl up with a book. I simply didn’t relish the idea of spending a long time in the kitchen frying masalas. And putting in the hard labour of frying the mutton in it.   So I settled for a mutton stew. Serendipitously, some rajma was soaking overnight. I also jettisoned last evening's plan to cook a rajma dish and instead, bunged the stuff into the mutton. This one’s dead simple to do and absolutely delicious to taste – a lovely, fragrant mutton broth that comes out tops on wholesomeness too. Mutton Stew with Rajma Ingredients 750g mutton pieces 200g rajma beans soaked overnight 2 onions roughly chopped 1 tomato chopped 3 cups mutton or chicken stock 1 inch piece of ginger cut in juliennes A few cloves o...

I always look upon the passing of peas with sadness. I mean, when winter ends, spring is also on the wane and peas -- so sweet and tender in season – take on that hard, grassy, rather woeful, taste. Fresh green peas do lend an extra dimension to the winter table. I tend to put them in virtually everything – have them with other veggies like cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes… Make a pea soup, put them in a veg au gratin… Then there are the staples like matar paneer and keema matar – wonderfully familiar and superbly tasty when made with fresh seasonal peas. But the most glamorous dish made with peas has got to be karaishutir kochuri – Bengal’s brand of puris stuffed with peas. It takes me back to my childhood in a trice. The yummy high points of winter were always my Mom’s karaishutir kochuri and gajorer halua (that’s gajar ka halwa  to all you non-Bongs). I loved the colours – the green of the kochuri and the red of the halwa – the one savoury, the othe...

If you ask me what’s my most favourite food in the world, I shall reply: fish. Really, there’s no fish that I don’t like. Fish and seafood. Happily, Bengal’s culinary tradition is replete with a fantastic array of fish preparations. Not so happily, seafood, with the exception of prawns, tends to get short shrift in our cuisine. There’s the kankra jhal (spicy crab curry), yes, but look for dishes that feature clams or mussels or squid, and you’ll draw a complete blank. What’s worse is that you won’t find these things in the supermarkets or even the big markets here. So when I want to cook a seafood chowder – a dish I love because it’s so tasty and wholesome and is in fact a complete meal – I am forced to leave out the clams and mussels and resort to good old prawn. I add some fresh white fish too – preferably, bekti. This is not the classic seafood chowder, no, but what the heck, it tastes great even without them clams and other bits of seafood. Indeed, it's on...

I love curd. I like it on its own, I like it as a dip, or a raita , I like it on chaat … And I love it when it’s used in cooking. It’s tangy, it’s creamy, and it can turn most anything into food that’s rich and delicious. Meat, fish, veggies, even pulses ( dahi vada, kadhi ) are rendered finger-lickin' good when they come laced with this magic ingredient. One of my favourite dishes with dahi (or doi , as we call it in Bengal) is Doi Maachh – fish cooked in curd. There are variations in the recipe and the more commonly used one calls for the addition of onion and ginger paste to the sauce. That can be quite divine too (I promise another post on that), but the one I make more often does away with such additives. Its USP lies in methi phoron (seasoning with fenugreek seeds). Somehow – I know not by what magic -- the methi and the dahi combine to produce a mellow pungency that makes this fish dish pretty hard to resist.   We call this one Chhotoner Doi Maachh at h...

I rarely get a craving for sweets. But this evening was an exception to the rule. I wanted something for dessert, which I almost never want if I am at home. Good for health, good for figure, don’t you know. Anyway, I decided to make myself some mishti , as we Bongs call it. Nothing elaborate, of course. Because a) I had virtually nothing in the house with which I could confect a fancy dessert, and b) it was way too hot for a protracted toiling in the kitchen. I did some fast thinking and hit upon the idea of making sweet crepes. Hadn’t made them in a while, and they seemed like the perfect way to finish off a sultry, listless day -- easy to prepare, light, and seriously delicious with some honey, maple syrup or just a dusting of caster sugar. So here’s the recipe. You do need some skill in flipping the crepes over and making sure that they come out thin and with lacy edges – the hallmark of crepes with cred. But that’ll come with practice. Or, if you’re a born co...

I missed cooking something special for Poila Baishakh, or the Bengali New Year, this year. That's because I was out of town. I mean, one does need to mark the first day of a “new year” in some form, right? A day that is supposed to usher in 12 months of good luck and prosperity? Of course, it rarely does, but that, as they say, is another story. Anyway, since one is not given to wild partying on the night before the Bengali New Year, one always wants to do something else to celebrate the occasion. Such as cooking a nice, festive dish. But this year I was stuck in a disappointing, has-been tourist place called Kathmandu, where the closest I could get to things festive was a “Jhakkas Tequilla Dance Bar” (spelling not mine) in Thamel -- the supposedly happening entertainment district of the city. Bollywood strains wafted from this jhakkas joint and I lost no time in beating a hasty retreat. Well, back in Calcutta, I finally got down to making the “special occasion” dish th...

The last couple of days have been unseasonably cool in Calcutta, with intermittent rain and lovely, squally weather. This afternoon too the skies darkened, and it rained cool and sharp and felt as though the monsoons were  here already. Now I tend to get rather hungry in rainy weather.  It’s when I long to eat salty, crispy, fried stuff – hot, and straight off the fire. Today was one of those days. I felt the craving to eat some crackling hot and spicy fried food. Maybe some batter-fried brinjal roundels? Or perhaps some potato or onion pakoras liberally peppered with chilli flakes? I scanned my larder to see what I had that was quick fry-worthy. Well, there were the onions and potatoes, of course, but they suddenly looked a bit boring. Then I remembered that I had some chicken drumsticks in the freezer. I immediately knew what would sustain me this rainy evening. I’d make some spicy fried chicken, I decided. It was easy as pie, quick (the only time consuming ...