The Golda Chingri Rises With Narkel-Shorshe

I must tell you that this was made on the spur today. I pretty much decided at the nth moment that this is what I wanted for dinner tonight. For my hasty decision, the pictures for this post have suffered and I have really *beep* photos today.

I have made this same recipe with headless shrimps, and I do notice the difference good old Golda can do to a recipe. So if you can, please use large prawns with heads for this recipe.

Ingredients for Narkel-Shorshe Chingri are:

12 large prawns/Golda Chingri with head, deveined and head cleaned
Half cup grated fresh coconut (just the white portion)
4 tablespoons yellow mustard seeds (shorshe)
1 tablespoon brown mustard seeds (rai)
10 green chillies, slit lengthwise
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
5-6 tablespoons extra virgin mustard oil
Banana leaves (not necessary but important)
Salt

Line the banana leaves in a microwaveable bowl. Lay the prawns/chingri on them in a way that all fit in the bowl. Sprinkle half a teaspoon turmeric powder on the prawns and keep.

In a blender, dry grind the two kinds of mustard seeds until coarse. Add the remaining half teaspoon turmeric, throw in a couple of green chillies and add the grated fresh coconut little by little. Grind this mixture to a coarse paste. Add little water while grinding.

Now slather the mustard-coconut mixture on the prawns till all of them are coated well. Top the ingredients with the slit green chillies, drizzle the mustard oil, and season with salt.

Now add another sheet of banana leaf on top of the prawns. Tightly wrap a cling film/wrap on the bowl to cover the banana leaves. Leave for 30 minutes.

Then microwave the whole thing for 12 minutes. Make sure you time it well and do it just before you eat your meal.

Remove the cling wrap and the top layer of banana leaf just before serving.

Serve the Narkel-Shorshe Chingri with plain white rice.

Ilish Maacher Paturi Photoshoot and Some Learnings

So I took this Bobby Flay-like challenge upon me to make Ilish Maacher Paturi the way it should be, wrapped in banana leaves! No steel tiffin box or microwaveable bowl came in my way this time. I had suffered enough scorn from Bengali food-e-ratis for long. It was now time for redemption.

I used one heaped tablespoon of yellow mustard seeds, one teaspoon of black mustard seeds and one teaspoon of poppy seeds along with few green chillies, and a teaspoon of turmeric to make the marinade for the paturi. Once all the ingredients were wet ground to a smooth paste, I slathered it over the fish steaks. The Ilish we get here is from a Bangladeshi store, they have the best Padma river Ilish, known for its distinct taste and buttery texture.

The thing about Ilish is that you don’t need to wash it thoroughly. Too much washing will drain the taste out of this king of fish! Ideally, a whole fish should be un-scaled, washed and then sliced.

To the mustard marinated fish I threw in few more slit green chillies and some salt and drizzled mustard oil. Mustard oil is one of the most essential ingredients in an Ilish Maacher Paturi, please do not substitute it with any other oil. It will be Ilish Paturi blasphemy.

I kept the marinated fish covered for about 15-20 minutes, before I transferred each individual Ilish piece (with its marinade and the mustard oil; drizzle some more if you want to) on a rectangular piece of banana leaf.

I found the banana leaves in the frozen section of a Chinese grocery store. Make sure you wash the frozen leaves with warm water before you wrap them around the fish. This way they will soften a bit and will not tear.

I used kitchen twine to make banana leaf packets for my fish. You can use bamboo cocktail picks to keep the ends of the leaves together.

Each packet was then kept in a large baking dish and microwaved for 10 minutes. I did think of my traditional bamboo steamer for cooking the fish, but then got lazy and settled to microwave. I don’t think the end result suffered because of that.

Time the cooking process of the paturi well, so that you can serve the dish just before you are sitting down to eat your lunch or dinner.

Snip off the twines and unwrap each leaf to keep on the plate in which your guest/you will eat.

Ilish Maacher Paturi needs nothing else but pearly white plain rice to eat with and your deft fingers to artfully make morsels of the fish and rice and its zingy mustard sauce to transfer you into Ilish heaven. Return from there would be very difficult, because everything then will look so ordinary.

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.

Pôddar Ilish Paturi in the Microwave

Apparently the best and the most precious Ilish (Hilsa) comes from the river Padma of Bangladesh. Pôdda is the Bengali name for the same river.

When I moved to Canada, I wasn’t quite surprised that I got to eat better Ilish here than in India (Bihar and Delhi). Obviously the best produce of any country is exported to the western countries. Plus the Ilish we get here from the Bangladeshi store in Danforth is straight from Padma rather than the Rupnarayan River in Kolaghat.

The best quality of Ilish is known by its silver skin, which almost scintillates to your touch. Its scales are softer compared to a Rohu or Katla, two other voraciously consumed river fish by the Bengalis.

A fresh Ilish’s taste is the avatar of butter. Silken and oily, Ilish has a distinct taste, probably from the freshwater plankton it feeds on. You don’t have to be an Ilish connoisseur to quickly separate a fresh from a not-so-fresh Ilish. The latter will become chewy and also not have its deep and distinct flavor.

I do not know what exactly the word “Paturi” means. But the connotation is “steamed” or bhapa. Traditionally, Paturi is made by wrapping the fish in fresh banana leaves and steaming it. Though I do get to eat the best quality Ilish in Canada, I am not quite close to finding banana leaves (or a tree!) in layers of snow outside. Thus I am forced to settle with something that every city-dweller has convenient access to. The microwave.

Oh, a rather important thing about Ilish, please do not “thoroughly” wash Ilish. You will just wash off all its flavor and taste. Ideally the scales of the fish are first removed, then the whole fish is washed and cut. But if you get your fish monger to cut the fish for you, bring it home and only lightly wash the pieces.

Ingredients for Ilish Maacher Paturi are:

4-6 slices of Ilish
Half teaspoon + 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
4-5 heaped tablespoons yellow mustard seeds
1 tablespoon khus khus/posto/poppy seeds
2.5 tablespoons plain yogurt
5 + 7-8 green chilies
5-6 tablespoons mustard oil
Salt

Grind to a smooth paste the mustard seeds, poppy seeds, half teaspoon turmeric powder and 4-5 green chilies. Use little water to wet grind. What I do is, first dry grind the mustard and poppy seeds and then introduce the green chilies with very little water to get the smooth consistency.

Arrange the slices of fish in a shallow microwaveable glass dish.

Slobber the spice mixture on the fish. Add the yogurt, slice lengthwise the remaining green chilies and add them too. Top the fish pieces up with a teaspoon of turmeric powder, salt and drizzle the mustard oil. With a small spatula, evenly coat everything onto the fish pieces.

I start with a spatula but usually end up using my hand to get the spices on both sides of the fish.

Cover with a cling wrap and keep for at least 10 minutes. Microwave the fish for 10 minutes.

Serve the Ilish Maacher Paturi with steaming plain white rice.

Gota Sheddho Revisited

I am a fourth generation Bengali to grow up in Bihar. I also went to a convent school. Such socio-cultural dynamics are not strange or unheard of in India. But they clearly contribute largely in raising a sufficiently confused young girl.

Tomorrow is Saraswati Puja in India. Growing up, it meant an extra holiday in school. I do not remember myself doing any prayer ritual on this day; although something that lingers on from this day is the taste of Gotta Sheddho, literally translated from Bengali as “whole boiled”.

I am told, Gota Sheddho is a Ghoti thing, where Grandmothers and Mothers cook at least five types of whole vegetables with lentils on the day of Saraswati Puja, and eat it the next day, when its cooled down. The day of Sheetal Shasti.

Saraswati Puja in the part of Bihar I lived in, meant young boys and men setting up pandals in the neighborhood and praying to the Goddess of Knowledge. It often translated into muted nuisance where the more boisterous boys would visit every home in the neighborhood to collect donations or chanda, which sadly was more forced than voluntary. These were also the boys who probably never went to school. So their association with “learning and knowledge” remained questionable.

But I do not want to undermine the credibility of their efforts in making arrangements for just one day only (though “celebrations” often stretched to a week). Loud music - most often the raunchiest songs of that year made a perfect set up to tease and torment scared girls who ventured out on the streets that day. Another reason for me to stay in and prepare for the final exams coming up the next month. Though traditionally, its a pen and paper down day in India for all students.

But watching young girls and boys in their finest dresses made a great celebration from home. Some girls as young as 12 or 13 would wear saris.

On this day, it is traditional to wear the color yellow (or mustard yellow) to welcome the Spring/Basant season in India. My memories of girls wearing yellow cotton saris, their hairs washed and smelling of Head & Shoulders, making a wet patch of damp at the back of their blouses where their hair ended are quite vivid. Each girl giggling, walking nervously in their little heels when they saw a group of boys coming their way. This day also made for a great desi, pre-Valentine’s Day celebration. All in the name of knowledge!

With all the Saraswati Puja gung-ho around me, I would shift between bending over the cast iron railings of our terrace to people watch, run to the kitchen to see how Mum was making Gota Sheddho and sprint back to a very visible spot where people could see me “studying”. Clearly I was the only one who was not letting the Goddess of Knowledge down.

Now back to the taste of tradition – Gota Sheddho. There is no one recipe for this vegetarian stew, packed with hearty vegetables. Each family pretty much does it their own way. I will of course share how its made in my family. I had previously made Gota Sheddho on a regular day and the recipe is here.

Ingredients for Gota Sheddho are:

Half cup whole urad dal
Half cup whole green moong
2 small sweet potatoes (either whole or cut into quarters)
Handful of whole green peas, remove the stringy part
Handful of broad beans/sheem, remove the stringy part
6-7 small eggplants
Few green chilies, slit
1 1/2 tablespoon ginger paste
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
2 tablespoon mustard oil
Sugar
Salt

Wash the two dals and begin to boil them in a pressure cooker or a thick bottom saucepan – for about 25-30 minutes.

When the lentils get to a rolling boil, add vegetables, ginger, green chilies, turmeric powder, salt and sugar and pressure cook on medium-high heat for 10-15 minutes or until vegetables and dals are cooked. Just when you think all the vegetables and dals and well cooked but not too mushy, drizzle the mustard oil, remove from heat.

The Gota Sheddho is the right balance of sweet and savory, so do a test taste and adjust accordingly.