Bengali Food: Taste of Joy

Bengali people are foodie (Bhojon Rashik) .They love to try new  new delicious foods .Whenever they get any opportunity to taste the food they never miss the opportunity. Bengali food have oriented and evolved from Bengal to different parts of the world. Although the food habits ,tastes varies fromperson to person but the items remain the same. Bengali food are rich in spices so they are tasty.

Bengali people are known for innovations and it goes with food also. For e.g. they named a bitter dish preparation as shukto, pulses as dal, different types of vegetable as ghat .They present dessert as chatni and few of the most famous dessert where invented in Bengal only e.g. Curd (Dahi) and Rosogolla . They never miss any wedding ceremony .
 

The mouth-watering rosogolla, chomchom and rasmalai are famous Bengali dessert. Mainly people are fond of rosogolla .The famous main courses like sorshe llish , mutton kasha, chicken kasha, chingri macher malai-curry , alu posto, tangra macher jhal, lao ghonto are a source of life in bengal .

Sandesh (sondesh) is the most popular sweet from Bengal .The dish is made from khoya, milk and sometimes chana . This sweet is neither overly sweet thus this allows diabetic patient to enjoy it too. People also love pitha and payesh. There are different types of pitha such as pati sapta pitha , puli pitha , gokul pitha and chitoi pitha. Whenever there someone’s birthday they always make payesh first. One of the famous dish is known as Kolkata’s Mutton Biryani. It’s origin starts from year 1856 when the first war of independence was fought. Nawab Wajid Ali Shah Awadh has been dethroned and deported to Calcutta. The face of nawab face a singular problem. The Privy Purse or the compensation package was limited. From there the innovation of the chefs gave birth to a new recipe where potatos were added in biriyani and it was named as Awadi Biryani.

Bengali cuisine, fish and rice (Maach-Bhaat) comes to mind. But Bengali cuisine isn’t as fishy as one thinks. A fabulous vegetarian spread and an amazing range of sweets are also hallmarks of the cuisine.
 

Bengalis, like the French, spend not only a great deal of time thinking about food but also in its preparation and eating. Quips like ‘Bengalis live to eat’ and they ‘spend most of their income on food’ are not entirely misplaced.

The early morning shopping for fresh vegetables and fish is the prerogative of the head of the family, and it is believed that he alone can pick the best at a bargain.

Bengal’s distinct cooking techniques set the cuisine aside from any other. The ingredients keep varying, but the cooking method remains the same under certain broad categories. 

For example, jhol is a light, watery concoction, cooked almost daily in a Bengali home. It can be made with vegetables (niramish jhol), fish (macher jhol) or meat (Mangshor jhol). Chechki is a lightly spiced, stir-fried preparation tempered with panch phoron (five-spice blend). It could be made with potatoes (aloo chechki) or cauliflower (kopi chechki). The variety found in Bengali cuisine is limitless, each with a distinctive style, taste and flavour.Bengali are so much addicted to food that sometimes they prepare the food ingredients at home only.

Luchi is also a quintessentially Bengali and despite indulgent and low health quotient, which is mainly served in breakfast with cholar dal or aloor dum.
 

Another Special type of food is street food of Bengal. Bengali people claims that no 5 star hotel food can’t be replaced with the street food.

In West Bengal there is a famous place called Dacres Lane on James Hickey Sorani it is famous for its street food and mainly the office employees gather there in Lunch break and its pocket friendly also.

Especially during festivals people spent a lot of money in food and beverages there are food stalls in every section of roads during Durga puja in Kolkata. All restaurants are fully booked and overcrowded because Durga puja is the biggest festival of Bengal and it is attached to the heart of bengali people.
 

During this time people spent a lot of their time on pandals for the authentic taste of Khichdi (a bengali dish).

 

-Pallabi Ghosh
Amity university ,kolkata