Begunpora, fish jhols, chhana --- all yours
Zakia Badrudduja is excited by a work on cuisine
Chitrita Banerji makes us happy and makes us remember all the culinary traditions we are heir to in this gem of a book. Indeed, it is at the very beginning of Bengali Cooking that you get to remember that certain cultural aspect of your being. As a host, you will likely implore the one visiting you thus: "Do please grace my poor hovel with your presence and share our simple meal of dal and rice." Sounds familiar? You bet it does, for who has not heard of Bengali hospitality? It is as spontaneous as is the manner in which a Bengali loves to eat with his family. But this is not a mere book on the variety that comes into Bengali food or the preparation and consuming of it. Banerji projects an essential component of Bengali culture, on both sides of the political divide, as it has developed over the ages. Take, for instance, the way cooking is undertaken in West Bengal and Bangladesh. A Ghoti (and that is exactly how Banerji puts it) will forever have the feeling that the Bangals of Bangladesh have absolutely no idea of cooking: they ruin food by 'drowning it in oil and spices' and 'even the best of fish can be ruined by their peculiar habit of adding bitter vegetables to it.' At the other end, the Bangals will declare with gusto that the Ghotis 'are the greatest philistines on earth, who can cook nothing without making it cloyingly sweet' and in their hands 'the freshest and most succulent of fish will be reduced to leather by the way they fry it . . .' Methods of cooking apart, it is a commonality of heritage that matters in the preparation of Bengali food. And that commonality encompasses something that any inhabitant of Bengal will proudly refer to as culture. Way back in 1788, Sayyid Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai noted that Bengalis considered the people of Maharashtra to be an uncivilised lot because the latter did not add phoron to their dal! That says a whole lot about Bengali food, moving as it does from such items as bharta, begunpora and matarshak to fish jhols and all the way up to polao and biryani. There are, as you will have noted, even before getting your hands on Banerji's book, food lovers in all of Bengal. The tradition, despite the inroads made by western fast food concepts, has really not been broken. Even if it is true that quantity-wise the number of items on the Bengali's menu may have declined (Bharatchandra's eighteenth century narrative poem Annadamangalkabya speaks of 51 varieties of fish consumed by Bengalis of the time), his capacity to consume has not registered much of a change. Banerji's repertoire, for repertoire it is, of the varieties of food items the Bengali can prepare and serve to his guests remains as it has by and large been. Rice and fish continue to be staple items for both Hindu and Muslim Bengalis. Add to them vegetables like aubergines, the many kinds of gourds and the rather bitter leaves of the jute plant and you get a fairly good idea of the sheer innovation that comes into the making and eating of food in historical Bengal. Then comes the matter of the ingredients that go into the preparation of the food. Banerji informs us that since the fourteenth century Bengalis have relished eating rice drenched in ghee. Is it any wonder then that the little pot-belly on the average Bengali is perhaps a most natural occurrence? In these present times, rising prices and a change in social circumstances may have caused a fall in the use of ghee, but watch out for all those religious occasions, Hindu as well as Muslim, and what you have before you is splendour that comes in the richness which only food dipped in ghee can provide. In nineteenth-century Calcutta, the writer notes for good measure, many 'great feudal families would rather die than serve food cooked in mustard oil, which was considered fit only for the poor.' A hint of elitism here? Perhaps. But, again, such elitism is what most Bengalis have historically aspired to. The trend has continued to this day. Ever heard the rude comments made by guests (and this after they have already partaken of the food at a wedding or some such occasion) on the absence of spices or an adequate amount of ghee in the preparation of the polao? The medieval period of Bengali poetry was the time when, as the writer points out, elaborate meals began to be prepared at home even when there was no festivity involved. As a Bengali phrase notes, during that period a proper banquet comprised 66 dishes. And then, through the passage of the times, as politics took newer shapes, food began to be a rather all-inclusive affair. The arrival of the Muslims in the subcontinent was a point when certain new touches, which in certain instances meant new embellishments, were given to food. In time, a Bengali Muslim cuisine developed. Onion and garlic entered the Muslim Bengali kitchen, a development that the Hindu Bengali did not exactly look upon with favour. And yet there was common ground elsewhere. It was in the preparation of sweets that both Hindus and Muslims excelled, and continue to excel. Think here of the many varieties of pithas, together with such delicacies as the sandesh, the rosogolla, the pantua, the chamcham, the rosomalai, all of which are prepared, wholly or partly, with chhana. Such chhana sweets, or sweets made from the solid part of curdled milk, are 'Bengal's contribution to the Indian universe of sweets.' But let us speak no more. Go into the book. And then into the kitchen. All in the interest of historical tradition.
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