Hoi Pulao

There is a neem tree outside my home in Delhi. Many a time I have watched people break off whole twigs and branches from it and take them away. The tree doesn’t mind. In a matter of days it throws up fresh shoots. Its masses of slim, elegant leaves remain as dense as ever. Neem or margosa is quite a wonder plant. It’s got anti-bacterial properties and is said to be good for you in dozens of ways. It’s good for your skin, eye, teeth and hair. It’s supposed to offset diabetes too. Indeed, Ayurvedic medicine has been using neem for millennia. Every part of the tree — leaf, flower, seed, stem, bark — is supposed to be beneficial.  Neem has an exceptionally bitter taste — which is kind of fitting since its use is chiefly medicinal! Cooking with neem seems like a culinary stretch, but in Bengal stir-fried neem leaves with brinjals, or Neem Begun as it is called in the local lingo, is quite a delicacy. The neem flower is also a prime ingredient of veppam poo rasa...

Is ghee a superfood? That’s what the wise folks who issue food diktats from time to time say. (Too much salt’s bad for you! No dammit, it could be good for you!) They say that far from being a lethal, artery-clogging, adipose-adding substance, ghee is actually great for your health. In fact, ghee’s place is now up there amongst such allegedly miraculous superfoods as quinoa, açai berries, chia seeds, kale and so on. Now, I don’t know if ghee is a superfood. What I do know is that I have always considered it to be a SUPER food. Super as in yummy. Super as in oh-please-I-want-some-more! So I like to have a little ghee with my steamed rice once or twice a week. Indeed, one of my all-time favourite comfort foods is plain ghee-bhaat — piping hot steamed basmati rice with a bit of good quality ghee and a pinch of salt. I’ve always felt guilty about this little indulgence of mine. But thanks to ghee’s recent elevation as a nutritional rockstar, I feel much better abo...

An eternal delight of Indian summers is the raw mango. Its piquant, sweet-sour taste makes it the perfect addition to an array of dishes, turning them mouthwateringly delicious. Foods with an astringent, sour flavour are particularly appetising in hot weather. Our forebears — the nameless generations of women (and a few men) who experimented with food and matched this foodstuff to that — understood this. So they have left us with a rich culinary tradition of dishes made with raw mango. In Bengal the raw mango chutney is a summer staple. It’s one of my great favourites too. I like it the way my mother makes it — a light, cooling concoction, a perfect blend of sweet and sour with just that hint of sharpness of ginger and mustard seeds. It’s a simple dish and cooks in a jiffy. The devil is in the details, or as we say in Bengali — andaaj ( the best translation of that word is “judgement” ). Each raw mango has a different level of sourness so you have to keep tasting th...

Let me say one thing straight off: I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur of chocolates. I don’t know a “single estate” from a “grand cru” (yes, yes, that’s how they talk about chocolates these days). The only gourmet chocolates I know about, and invariably gravitate towards at airport duty free counters, are Godiva and Valrhona. Or maybe, the odd Sprüngli. Yet I shall take my courage in both hands and declare that most Indian chocolatiers don’t get the stuff right. They. Just. Don’t. But you know what’s truly astounding? Most Indian joints don’t even get a cup of hot chocolate right!  Now hot chocolate is a fairly simple concoction. It’s a mix of chocolate, hot milk and cream. It has one simple requirement — that the chocolate hit be strong enough for a mood-lifting and heartwarming experience. It can be a heavenly drink, especially on a winter day.  Being fond of the brew, I have tried it in many places. The big bucks coffee shops, the not so big bucks coffe...

Sugar Rush: Rosh bora An elderly family friend used to quip: “Drinking without smoking is like juvenile without delinquency.” Me, I like to extend that conceit to Makar Sankranti without pithé — the one is unthinkable without the other.  Last January I scarcely knew when this annual rite of passage of Bengalis came to pass. I was still a bit of a newbie in Delhi, still finding my feet in the city. I was not up to making pithé to celebrate the occasion. So a much-loved festival that is redolent of my childhood and my mother and grandmother became one more day that came and went. But not so this year. Happily, I was invited to a pithé -making lec-dem at Big Bongg Theory, Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar’s restaurant in Shahpur Jat that serves some seriously authentic Bengali cuisine. Sanhita Dasgupta Sensarma, a lawyer by training and a passionate food lover, was the other organiser of the event. I hoped to pick up some nifty pithé -making tips, and needless to say, tuck ...

I am not a great one for celebrating every Bengali festival under the sun. In fact, I find the Bengali baro mashe tero parbone (13 festivals in 12 months) tradition downright tiresome. However, if you're staying away from home, you tend to experience the typical expat’s zeal for observing every date on his or her native culture calendar. And so it was that I decided to celebrate Poila Baishakh, the first day of the Bengali New Year, by cooking a few special dishes. And, needless to say, eating them. Pabda Maachher Jhaal is an eternal favourite in Bengal. The fish has a distinctive taste, no bones (barring the central one), and tastes absolutely smashing when cooked in a simple mustard sauce. However, this is one fish I don't cook too often. Mainly because frying it is fraught with danger — it sputters and sets off minor explosions when placed in hot oil. Frying Pabda and escaping unscathed is basically a function of superhuman agility and dumb luck. You ...

The other day we went to this restaurant called Pot Belly. The name was endearing enough. But what intrigued me was that its USP was Bihari cuisine. Now, I would not have described myself as insular, but the fact is that though I am from Bengal, and Bihar is a neighbouring state, I was completely unaware that Biharis have a distinctive culinary repertoire. Anyway, so off we went to the newly opened Pot Belly outlet at Bihar Niwas in Delhi’s Chanakyapuri area. Browsing the menu itself was a delight. There was the commonly known Bihari staple of Litti chokha (whole wheat balls stuffed with sattu and served with aubergine mash and potato mash), of course, but also a whole lot of other gorgeous sounding dishes such as Fish Chokha on Marua Roti (Fish paste served on crispy buckwheat pooris), Pothia Machhli Fry (Small deep fried fish serve with hot banana chips), Dana Jhamarua Thali (Aubergine and potato in a mustard gravy served with rice flour rotis stuffed with spiced poppy seeds), ...