I like cooking, but it isn't my hobby. I like the idea of creating something from scratch, I like the challenge of creating something that I haven't done before, but in general, I look at cooking as a means of surviving (because you have to eat).
I like simple foods. Western food in general is way more simple to cook than Eastern food, one reason is that there are very few spices involved. Also, the process is much simpler. You can bake, or grill food which are not possible for Eastern/Indian food. Salads or simply steamed veggies are looked down upon by eastern connoisseurs. Striking the right balance between flavor and seasonings is difficult. And that is where Bengali cuisine enters into the picture.
It is true that I will be biased towards Bengali cuisine, but now after actually sampling food from (almost) all over the world I can say for certain that if I were to give a choice, I would still choose Bengali food as the best. I am not a big fan of spicy Indian food though. Also, if you make every gravy taste the same with onion, ginger-garlic paste and tomato I think that would be very unpalatable. There was a capsicum (bell pepper) recipe I looked up that had onion, garlic, ginger, tomato, coconut and crushed nuts. I could not understand what would the final thing come out as. Nowadays I see Bengali recipes like that too in newspapers. Putting ilish in a yogurt sauce itself if pretty devastating. And then if you add your own stupid concoctions to that, it just becomes a sacrilege. Before you cook something, you need to think what your end goal is. Putting every spice on hand in your food reminds me of my dorm-days, when I sprinkled garam-masala in my daal.
The best foods are the simplest ones. The ones where you actually get the taste of the main thing being cooked (unlike paneer. I still don't understand what is there to like in paneer. That blob of thing always tastes like soggy paper. It's just the gravy that you get to taste.) along with a flavor of the different spices. Adding spices to food is like adding colors to a painting. The colors need to be different enough to stand apart, but they also have to complement each other. Yesterday I made a shrimp dish called "chingri machher paturi". All it needed was mashed up shrimp mixed with shredded coconut, a little mustard oil, sliced green chillies, turmeric and salt. The process of "cooking" was to flatten out that mixture on a fry pan and heat over fire for 10 mins. That kind of food is what I like most and in order to really find those, we need to go back to our roots.
In the villages, they would try to save fuel as much as they could. So many dishes can be cooked in parallel with others. There is one where you smear pieces of fish with spices, wrap them up in banana leaves and immerse the small packages of fish in already cooking rice. By the time your rice is ready, your fish pieces are steamed as well. There is another similar one where you basically bake eggs in the heat generated while cooking khichuri.
It is true that we can't get banana leaves these days as easily as they could in the villages. But, if you think about what purpose that is to serve, you can easily come up with your own substitutions. I use Reynolds Aluminum Wrap in place of banana leaves and though I don't get the smoky smell of the leaves, it still serves my main purpose of wrapping fish or making a shell for baking eggs. Also, with these cooking in parallel, you will be saving a lot of time, money and energy :)
So the next time you invite people over, instead of making an elaborate fancy dinner, try to surprise them with a traditional home cooked authentic Bengali meal.
PS: Recipe for chingri paturi can be found here. I really like this lady and her own recipes (as well as some of her guests'). Also like the fact that she is so inherently Bengali.
I like simple foods. Western food in general is way more simple to cook than Eastern food, one reason is that there are very few spices involved. Also, the process is much simpler. You can bake, or grill food which are not possible for Eastern/Indian food. Salads or simply steamed veggies are looked down upon by eastern connoisseurs. Striking the right balance between flavor and seasonings is difficult. And that is where Bengali cuisine enters into the picture.
It is true that I will be biased towards Bengali cuisine, but now after actually sampling food from (almost) all over the world I can say for certain that if I were to give a choice, I would still choose Bengali food as the best. I am not a big fan of spicy Indian food though. Also, if you make every gravy taste the same with onion, ginger-garlic paste and tomato I think that would be very unpalatable. There was a capsicum (bell pepper) recipe I looked up that had onion, garlic, ginger, tomato, coconut and crushed nuts. I could not understand what would the final thing come out as. Nowadays I see Bengali recipes like that too in newspapers. Putting ilish in a yogurt sauce itself if pretty devastating. And then if you add your own stupid concoctions to that, it just becomes a sacrilege. Before you cook something, you need to think what your end goal is. Putting every spice on hand in your food reminds me of my dorm-days, when I sprinkled garam-masala in my daal.
The best foods are the simplest ones. The ones where you actually get the taste of the main thing being cooked (unlike paneer. I still don't understand what is there to like in paneer. That blob of thing always tastes like soggy paper. It's just the gravy that you get to taste.) along with a flavor of the different spices. Adding spices to food is like adding colors to a painting. The colors need to be different enough to stand apart, but they also have to complement each other. Yesterday I made a shrimp dish called "chingri machher paturi". All it needed was mashed up shrimp mixed with shredded coconut, a little mustard oil, sliced green chillies, turmeric and salt. The process of "cooking" was to flatten out that mixture on a fry pan and heat over fire for 10 mins. That kind of food is what I like most and in order to really find those, we need to go back to our roots.
In the villages, they would try to save fuel as much as they could. So many dishes can be cooked in parallel with others. There is one where you smear pieces of fish with spices, wrap them up in banana leaves and immerse the small packages of fish in already cooking rice. By the time your rice is ready, your fish pieces are steamed as well. There is another similar one where you basically bake eggs in the heat generated while cooking khichuri.
It is true that we can't get banana leaves these days as easily as they could in the villages. But, if you think about what purpose that is to serve, you can easily come up with your own substitutions. I use Reynolds Aluminum Wrap in place of banana leaves and though I don't get the smoky smell of the leaves, it still serves my main purpose of wrapping fish or making a shell for baking eggs. Also, with these cooking in parallel, you will be saving a lot of time, money and energy :)
So the next time you invite people over, instead of making an elaborate fancy dinner, try to surprise them with a traditional home cooked authentic Bengali meal.
PS: Recipe for chingri paturi can be found here. I really like this lady and her own recipes (as well as some of her guests'). Also like the fact that she is so inherently Bengali.
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