Edible Memories
I love to cook, and it’s a rare occasion when I haven't cooked a meal the whole day. Yet, there is only so much time, and what I crave might not be what’s best for me. A lot of authentic Bengali food falls into the combined category of not being the healthiest option, needing a variety of ingredients that are not easy to source, and, most importantly, taking a long time to cook. Yet, this is the food that feels like home; it feeds the nostalgia for a place and time that will never be again, surrounded by people I loved who are no longer alive. There is no way to recreate that perfection of food and care coming together.
My solution is to browse Bengali food blogs. I particularly like the ones that tell the backstory of the recipe—the aunts, mothers, and grandmothers involved in its making. That is how most of my favorite dishes came into my life; I learned from someone who set the standard for what "great" tastes like. It is my way of reliving my memory of times past. I could spend a happy hour browsing through pictures of food I have not cooked in decades, imagining the day when I summon up the enthusiasm to drive to a well-stocked Bangladeshi store, which is my best bet for getting the long list of ingredients these things require.
When we visited Lisbon a while back, we were surprised to find ourselves in a "Bangla central" with at least a dozen Bengali grocery stores on one street. That would be grocery heaven for me, just about everything it takes to make a festive Bengali meal could be bought there. There is nothing quite like that within hours of where I live. I'd have to get creative by combining fresh, frozen and canned ingredients and that feels like defeat. The dish ends up tasting nothing like I remember it to be because it is not meant to work without fresh ingredients. So, I have to soothe the pangs for my metaphorical home in the images of food I long for and, maybe more than that, the people who are so closely associated with it.
Recently my online wanderings took me to Garur Dal. This is a seasonal Bengali lentil curry prepared with a mix of leftover summer vegetables and early winter veggies, cooked on the last day of the Bengali month of Ashwin (mid-October) and consumed on the first day of Kartick. Typically, it includes
a mix of seasonal veggies like potol (pointed gourd), kumro (pumpkin), kakrol (teasle gourd), sim (broad beans), begun (brinjal), jinge (ridge gourd), kachkola (raw banana), kochu (taro), sapla (water lily stalks), thor (banana stem), and jolpai (olives).I loved this dish and struggled to remember when I had it last but it made me want to make it my kitchen the best I could.
My solution is to browse Bengali food blogs. I particularly like the ones that tell the backstory of the recipe—the aunts, mothers, and grandmothers involved in its making. That is how most of my favorite dishes came into my life; I learned from someone who set the standard for what "great" tastes like. It is my way of reliving my memory of times past. I could spend a happy hour browsing through pictures of food I have not cooked in decades, imagining the day when I summon up the enthusiasm to drive to a well-stocked Bangladeshi store, which is my best bet for getting the long list of ingredients these things require.
When we visited Lisbon a while back, we were surprised to find ourselves in a "Bangla central" with at least a dozen Bengali grocery stores on one street. That would be grocery heaven for me, just about everything it takes to make a festive Bengali meal could be bought there. There is nothing quite like that within hours of where I live. I'd have to get creative by combining fresh, frozen and canned ingredients and that feels like defeat. The dish ends up tasting nothing like I remember it to be because it is not meant to work without fresh ingredients. So, I have to soothe the pangs for my metaphorical home in the images of food I long for and, maybe more than that, the people who are so closely associated with it.
Recently my online wanderings took me to Garur Dal. This is a seasonal Bengali lentil curry prepared with a mix of leftover summer vegetables and early winter veggies, cooked on the last day of the Bengali month of Ashwin (mid-October) and consumed on the first day of Kartick. Typically, it includes
a mix of seasonal veggies like potol (pointed gourd), kumro (pumpkin), kakrol (teasle gourd), sim (broad beans), begun (brinjal), jinge (ridge gourd), kachkola (raw banana), kochu (taro), sapla (water lily stalks), thor (banana stem), and jolpai (olives).I loved this dish and struggled to remember when I had it last but it made me want to make it my kitchen the best I could.