The Well-Fed Bong

Some time ago, I decided to impress Sunanda by cooking for her. So I decided, what better than to lean on my heritage? I dont quite remember why but vegetarian was a requirement so much of my standard repertoire had to be put aside. Not to be deterred, I dug deep and real-Bengali dishes bori dyie kacha posto, kumro bhapa, chhanar dalna and bati chochhori were lined up. The cooking went well (I’m not telling you how the rest of the evening went) but as a special touch, with a little help from the impressee, I decided to pretty things up before wolfing it down. Square plates, some coriander, a bit of cookie cutter magic (I use it to press the rice into nice shapes) and the deep golden colour of raw mustard oil helped out. Here are the recipes Bori Diye Kacha Posto Bori ( vadi for all the other Indians) are dried lentil cakes. The most common lentil for vadi is urad , but this recipe uses the moong variety, small hershey-kiss shaped thingies that fry up to a nice crunch. Po...

Bits and pieces of food experience have been accumulating, not enough to carve a post out of, but enough to cobble together into a potluck. The first was my visit to Chennai, where a last minute google search found me a late late lunch at Ponnusamy , just a short deviation off the straight line between two meetings. In the course of my earlier googles about food in Chennai and the biriyani wars, this name had surfaced a few times; some had even appointed it top rank. Curiosity, hunger and the aforementioned shortness of deviation was thus all very propitious, and in due course I was seated at the somewhat seedy interiors of the Adyar Branch of Ponnusamy Hotels (yes, like nearly every eatery in Chennai, this is also a chain). Ponnusamy promises "South Indian and Chettinad" food and is also supposed to be renowned for it's biriyani (so google claimed). Hungry as a dog, I promptly rolled off an order for Chettinad staples rabbit fry, pepper chicken and mutton biriyani. ...

Mumbai is full of ghasphoos, especially the kind espoused by our northern neighbour. Even in this sea of veggie wonders, however, some dishes stand out and one of them is the near–mythical undhiyu . I say near-mythical with reason; there are so many stories around its origins, ingredients and preparation, starting with the name itself – upside down. Apparently the authentic version is prepared on the farms of Surat by burying pots of exotic winter vegetables underground, and then lighting fires above it. Moonlight and morning dew are also rumoured to be involved. Here’s a short list of the ingredients that really go into the dish: Surti papdi (a kind of flat winter bean) Ariya kakdi (a kind of zucchini) Old potatoes Ravaya (small purple brinjal) Kand (purple yam) Sakhariya (sweet potatoes) Unpeeled ripe Rajagiri bananas Methi muthia (fenugreek leaf and besan dumplings) Lilva (green tuvar dal) Green garlic (garlic chives) Lots of oil ...