Something About Shukto On A Dark, Dismal Day…

It wasn't supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be a cookbook-writing Bengali. I was supposed to have my own cooking show. I was meant to sign my cook books. I was supposed to look all fab, and flaunt my manicured nails while chopping onions on television. I was meant to look like a Bengali version of Goddess Nigella, in lal-parer sari and sindur’er teep.

But here I am. working 8:30 to 5 pm.Taking the subway home each day from the financial district of TO. If I am lucky, I can get into the first train that arrives on the platform while I am waiting. Waiting with the hundreds of people on the downtown subway station. Everyone looks the same. In a hurry. Dressed in black. Tired. Withdrawn. Like workdogs, who are only trained to well…work! I have become one of them. I am one of them.

I dress in black, not because it looks classy, but because its easy to dress in. And it also makes me look slim.

Its another thing that three-fourths of my wardrobe is black.

And then I see color peeking through the dark clouds and the dark clothes all around me. Vibrant, luscious, beautiful colors in the ingredients of Shukto. Green, white, purple, yellow, and some more green.

Shukto or Shuktoni is a medley of fresh vegetables. It has the perfect balance of bitter, sweet and savory. A food very sophisticated and time taking to cook. Its always made from scratch in Bengali homes. Its a starter for many memorable meals. This dish is made to be mopped clean with rice. Eat the shukto and rice with your hands and experience manna-like experience down here on Earth. Incredibly enough, the Shukto is personally satisfying and it has been on my agenda to share it with you.

Its a pretty engaging recipe with several vegetables and ingredients. But the key ingredient for traditional Shukto is bittergourd or karela and a whole spice blend we call paanch phoron - fenugreek seed, Nigella seed, cumin seed, celery seed and fennel seed in equal quantities. Apart from the usual ginger paste, posto paste and yellow mustard paste.

 

For this dish, Bengalis typically use easily available vegetables in the Summer season. I have used uchche (bittergourd), sheem (broadbeans), shojne data (drumsticks), begun (Oriental eggplant), alu (potato), potol (parwal, sorry I do not know the English name!), lal alu (sweet potato), and mulo (radish).

On another day, if I do not find any of the green vegetables in the Bangladeshi store, I’d replace it with borboti (longyard beans), or kanch kola (green banana). But uchche is a must! Anyone cooking THE Shukto without bittergourd is not really a Shukto.

 

Ingredients for Shukto

1 large bittergourd, cut lengthwise into two inch pieces

1 large white potato, cut into two inch large sticks or Batonnet

1 medium size sweet potato, cut into Batonnets

Handful of fresh drumsticks, cut into two inch pieces

1 plump Oriental eggplant, cut lengthwise into two inch pieces

Handful of broadbeans, halved if large

Handful of longyard beans, cut into two-three inches

1 small radish, cut into Batonnets

Handful of potol, cut into two inch pieces

2 tablespoons poppy seed/posto paste (Start by dry grinding posto seeds and then add water little by little to make a smooth but thick paste)

2 tablespoons yellow mustard paste (Follow the process mentioned above)

2 tablespoons ginger paste

2 tablespoons roasted panch phoron powder (dry roast the panch phoron on low-medium heat and make a coarse powder)

1 and a half tablespoons whole panch phoron

Handful of bhaja bori (I did not have it, and hence skipped adding)

2-3 bay leaves

Sugar

Salt

Ghee for cooking and garnish

Start by heating ghee in a kadai/thick wok/pan. Add the bittergourd pieces and shallow fry for a 3-4 minutes till they get coated with the ghee, remove with a slotted spoon and keep aside. Now add each type of vegetable in no particular order and shallow fry them and keep. Do not be lazy and mix all of them together for shallow frying. One at a time. That’s how Grandmothers and Mothers made Shukto! Even the ones who worked outside.

Once all the cut vegetables have been shallow fried, mix all of them in the same wok and cook together for 3-5 minutes with sugar and salt.

Now add the posto-ginger-mustard paste and coat all the vegetables nicely. Let the vegetables cook on medium heat in their own juices. Add very little water if the moisture is drying up. The consistency of Shukto should be makha-makha, or thickish. The three different paste used eventually make the dish quite thick. Check the taste, and adjust sugar and salt. The vegetables should have cooked through but not mushy.

In a small butter pan, heat ghee and add the bay and the whole panch phoron. Once the seeds crackle, add the garnish to the vegetables cooking. Mix everything well and turn the heat off.

Just before serving the Shukto, add the dry roasted panch phoron powder and the (already fried) crushed bhaja bori.

Serve warm with gorom bhaat/rice to start a traditional Bengali meal. I usually sit there with a smug look on my Nigella Lawson-like face as I see my guests savor the delicate flavors of a traditional Shukto, often asking for seconds. I am pretty pleased with my Shukto outcome - juggling between a job, a kid, the kid’s dad, and living in a country called Cantartica!

The Good, the Bad and the Bengali English; Now Translate Potol

A couple of days ago, when we were singing paeans about Tagore, updating our status messages on Facebook about the literary achievements of the genius called Rabindranath, somewhere in a dark corner of another world, some Bengali was heard saying (to his host) - the phood was yammy! (Literally translated as – I do not know the difference between the sounds “u:” and “ɑ:”. Why? Because my mammy did not make me laarrn.)

There is something endearing about us Bongs and our pronunciation of English words. I admit, we are no Jhumpa Lahiris out there to impress the English-speaking world, hence we have all the right to roll our eyes and say - Bhee the peepull, with as much pride as our Big Sista in Calcutta does.

It does not take long for a non-Bengali to discover that we Bongs mix up our “w” and “v”. In vain is most certainly In wain, and a woman is always a voman. Try saying that ALOUD. But to do that, you will need the soul and the soft, mellifluous voice of a Bengali. That would mean you will have to take a huge riks (read risk; pronounce riks!). While we are on the topic of enunciation, its not entirely unusual for the phish-eating Bengali to mix the “f” and “ph” sounds. The accent gets thicker when he is drinking.

I have never known a Bengali who writes grammatically incorrect English. In my circle of Grammar Nazi friends, we poke fun at each other for our community’s inability to pronounce certain words. That’s how perfect we are. At least in our heads. And I am not even venturing on to talking about the bushy-faced Bengali still hanging on to his embroidered jean pant and bush shaart.

Perhaps another day.

But my favourite mention will be from the recent movie Bhooter Bhobishyot, where the front desk lady at the real estate developer’s office is heard saying (to someone) on the phone, Hard diks crash hoye gæche. Kichchu shave hochche na.

I squealed with glee. Little things make me happy.

That is exactly the reason I turned these mundane-looking potols into a dish fit for royalty. The Shorshe-Narkel-Potol. That’s Parwal in Mustard and Coconut for you.

 

Ingredients for Shorshe-Narkel-Potol are:

10-12 potol/parwal washed
1 heaped tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 tablespoon poppy seeds/khus-khus/posto
Half cup grated coconut (I use the freshly frozen kind)
5-6 green chillies
2-3 bay leaves
4-5 tablespoons mustard oil
Sugar
Salt

Begin by randomly (but gently) running a blunt knife on the potol. Just to scrape off lengthwise bit off the skin from places. DO NOT peel the skin off. Cut both sides of the ends. You can keep the potol whole for the recipe or cut them in halves if they are larger.

Grind together the mustard seeds, poppy and green chillies. Start by dry grinding the seeds first, once a coarse powder, add the green chillies and a little water to do a coarse wet paste.

For the coconut, do a coarse wet grind and keep.

Heat mustard oil in a thick pan and add the bay and potols. Sauté on high for 4-5 minutes. You can cover and cook till the potols get lightly coloured at the edges.

Add the mustard-poppy-green chilli paste to the potol and mix well till the vegetables get coated with the paste. Reduce the heat and cover again.

After about 4-5 minutes, add the coconut paste. Give it a good mix, cover and cook for about five more minutes.

The moisture from the wet ground ingredients will help soften the potols. Make sure you keep scraping the spices from the bottom of the pan, else they may burn.

Once the potol has cooked, add the sugar and salt. Cook uncovered till the extra moisture evaporates and the spices and the coconut cling on to the potol.

Do one last taste test and season with more salt and sugar if necessary. You can throw in a couple of broken green chillies to add some more heat or leave the dish as it is. I did not add any turmeric to my dish. Just because I wanted the natural colors of all the ingredients to show. You can, if you want to.

An accent-deaf Bengali would eat this Shorshe-Narkel-Potol with mushurir dal and rice. And maybe a rui maach bhaja on the side.

From BongMom with Lau’er Malaikari

This malaikari is inspired by everyone’s favourite – the BongMom! Though I’d admit, I did not follow her, sorry her Mum’s recipe to the T. I did minor hera-pheri here and there. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I had my Mum’s Chingri Malaikari too. I am hoping I will be pardoned for the culinary license I took.

The Lau’er Malaikari or Lauki (Bottle gourd) cooked in coconut milk is a very new recipe for me. Probably that’s what makes it all the more interesting.

Ingredients for BongMom-inspired Lau’er Malaikari are:

1 small lau/lauki, peeled and diced
1 medium size red onion made into paste
1 can of coconut milk (I use the Thai variety)
1 tablespoon ginger paste
3-4 whole green chillies
1 tablespoon mixed whole garam masala spices (cloves, green and black cardamoms, cinnamon)
2-3 bay
Half teaspoon red chilli powder
Half teaspoon turmeric
4-5 tablespoons desi ghee
Sugar
Salt

Heat the ghee in a thick pan. Add a pinch of sugar and let it caramelize. Now add the onion paste and the whole garam masala spices and bay. Very soon the onion paste will start turning a darker shade of pink. Keep moving the onion in the ghee and the spices, till you have a line of ghee on the sides. This will also indicate that the onion paste is cooked and does not have its conspicuous raw smell. Add a couple of green chillies if you want to at this stage. Do this cooking on low-medium heat. We don’t want the onions burnt.

Now add the cubed/ diced lau pieces. Mix with the onion paste. After about 2-3 minutes, add the ginger paste and salt. Add the red chilli and turmeric powder. Cover and cook for 5-7 minutes.

Open the lid to see that a lot of juices and moisture from the lau has been released. Cook on high for a minute or two and pour the coconut milk.

Let the coconut milk come to a rumbling boil, then reduce the heat. Let the lau cook in the coconut milk for about 8-10 minutes. You will see a thin layer of the ghee surface on top. Add sugar and more salt if necessary.

Move around the thickened coconut milk and lau pieces. Pray that you have done a good job and turn the heat off.

Your Lau’er Malaikari is now ready to be eaten with plain, white rice.

Thank you, BongMom for being an inspiration and a friend I can run to with my cribs and complains.