Anju
IIF Counsellor
Joined: 07 Dec 2007
Posts: 379
Location: Palaiseau
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 Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 2:27 pm Post subject: Courses of Bengali Meal |
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A friend brought it to my notice that traditional Bengali meal consists of courses, like French meals.
However, I remember that in South India also, they have courses, I hope someone will post in detail on that.
Bengali cuisine is arguably one of the vastest and most varied cuisines of India. Not only a huge variety of vegetables and freshwater fishes are cooked, there are a multiple ways to cook the same item as well. And the way the vegetables are cut depends on the dish, so there are multiple styles of cutting potato and other vegetables. So there is a lot of emphasis on the look also. Vegetables are never broken by hand (like beans in some states) and are always cut in a certain style, and in equal sizes. The dishes range from very rich to the bland.
The meal never consists of rice and 1 or 2 sabzis.
It is always in numerous courses, which used to be served one after the other. Although with modern life we tend to serve multiple courses in the same plate, and also tend to omit courses (we cannot eat that much, whew), but even now when we visit relatives, we are served almost all the courses.
Courses in a daily meal
The courses progress broadly from lighter to richer and heavier. Rice, being the staple food, remains common throughout the meal until the chaţni course.
1-Bitter
The starting course is a bitter. The bitter changes with the season but common ones are karela or tender neem leaves in spring. Bitters are mostly deep fried in oil, or steamed with cubed potatoes. A very small portion is served, and it functions as a daily dose of medicine I think. I don't like it much, but it is good for health!
Another bittersweet preparation usually eaten in summer, especially in West Bengal, is a soupy mixture of vegetables in a ginger-mustard sauce, called shukto. This usually follows the dry bitters, but sometimes replaces it, and is eaten in much bigger portions. Shukto is a complex dish, a fine balance of many different kinds of tastes and textures.
2-Shaak
This is followed by shaak (leafy vegetables) such as spinach, palak, methi or any of the numerous green leaves (more than 25 maybe?). There are numerous ways to cook each shaak, steaming, frying, with or without aubergine, and steamed shaak is sometimes accompanied by a sharp paste of mustard and raw mango pulp called Kasundi.
3- Daal
The đaal is eaten with a generous portion of rice and a number of accompaniments. Many different dals are used, each has a different or multiple styles of cooking and chaunk, and sometimes mango or other vegetables like peas may be put in Dal.
Accompaniments to Daal:
a- bhaja (fritters) 'deep-fried'; most vegetables are good candidates but begun (aubergines), kumra (pumpkins), or alu (potatoes) are common. Machh bhaja (fried fish) is also common, especially rui (rohu) and ilish (hilsa) fishes. Bhaja is sometimes coated in a beshon (chickpea flour) and posto (poppyseed) batter. A close cousin of bhaja is bôra or deep-fried savoury balls usually made from posto (poppyseed) paste or coconut mince. Another variant is fried pointed gourd as potoler dorma with roe stuffing.
b- this is followed by a few vegetable preparations. Each vegetable is cooked differently, some with onion, some without onion, with or without potatoes, different chhaunks, etc. Some dry, some semi-dry! Sometimes multiple vegetables maybe stewed slowly together without any added water. Labra, chorchori, ghonto, or chanchra are all traditional cooking styles. There also are a host of other preparations that do not come under any of these categories and are simply called tôrkari - the word merely means 'vegetable' in Bengali. Sometimes these preparations may have spare pieces of fish such as bits of the head or gills, or spare portions of meat.
4- Egg curry and other egg dishes, if it is in the menu
5- Fish.
Fish comes next, and is compulsory. Common fish delicacies include machher jhol, tel koi, pabda machher jhal, Doi machh, Chingri machh malai curry, and bhapa ilish (steamed hilsa). A huge variety of dishes are routinely made from different kinds of fish, it is common to have two kinds of fish even for a routine daily meal.
5- Meat course.
If in the menu, then comes the meat. Meat is not a frequent part of the daily meal, it is mainly had over the weekends and also when any special occasion is there. Khashi mutton or goat meat is traditionally the meat of choice, but chicken and is also commonly consumed.
6- Chutney:
Next comes the chutney course, which is typically tangy and sweet; the chutney is usually made of mangoes, tomatoes, pineapple, tamarind, papaya, or just a combination of fruits and dry fruits.
7- Dahi: The last item before the sweets is Doi or yoghurt. It is generally of two varities, either natural flavour and taste or Mishti Doi - sweet yoghurt, typically sweetened with charred sugar. This brings about a caramel colour and a distinct flavour. Like the fish or sweets mishti doi is typically identified with Bengali cuisine.
8- Sweets : there are hundreds and hundreds of types of sweets and most of them are specially made by sweet houses who specialize in them. Commonly rasgulla, shondesh (numerous types) are had.
Other than these, other dishes or styles of cooking commonly used in West Bengal are :
(content credited to Sutapa Ray)
• Ambal: A sour dish made either with several vegetables or with fish, the sourness being produced by the addition of tamarind pulp,
• Bhate: ('steamed with rice') any vegetable, such as potatoes, beans, pumpkins, or even dal, first boiled whole and then mashed and seasoned with mustard oil or ghee and spices. Traditionally the vegetables were placed on top of the rice; they steamed as the rice was being boiled.
• Bhôrta: Any vegetable, fish, or shrimp boiled and coarsely mashed, mixed with spices, mustard oil, and onions.
• Chachchari: Usually a vegetable dish with one or more varieties of vegetables cut into longish strips, sometimes with the stalks of leafy greens added, all lightly seasoned with spices like mustard or poppy seeds and flavoured with a phoron(chhaunk). The skin and bone of large fish like bhetki or chitol can be made into a chachchari called kanta-chachchari, kanta, meaning fish-bone.
• Chhanchra: A combination dish made with different vegetables, portions of fish head and fish oil .
• Chechki: Tiny pieces of one or more vegetable - or, sometimes even the peels (of potatoes, lau, pumpkin or patol for example) - usually flavored with panch phoron or whole mustard seeds or kala jeera. Chopped onion and garlic can also be used, but hardly any ground spices.
• Dalna: Mixed vegetables or eggs, cooked in medium thick gravy seasoned with ground spices, especially garom mashla and a touch of ghee.
• Dam or Dum: Vegetables (especially potatoes), meat or rice (biriyanis) cooked slowly in a sealed pot over a low heat.
• Ghonto: Different complementary vegetables (e.g., cabbage, green peas, potatoes or banana blossom, coconut, chickpeas) are chopped or finely grated and cooked with both a phoron and ground spices. Dried pellets of dal (boris) are often added to the ghanto. Ghee is commonly added at the end. Non-vegetarian ghantos are also made, with fish or fish heads added to vegetables. The famous murighanto is made with fish heads cooked in a fine variety of rice. Some ghantos are very dry while others a thick and juicy.
• Jhal: Literally, 'hot'. A great favorite in West Bengali households, this is made with fish or shrimp or crab, first lightly fried and then cooked in a light sauce of ground red chilli or ground mustard and a flavoring of pãch-phoron or kala jira. Being dryish it is often eaten with a little bit of dal pored over the rice.
• Jhol: A light fish or vegetable stew seasoned with ground spices like ginger, cumin, coriander, chili, and turmeric with pieces of fish and longitudinal slices of vegetables floating in it. The gravy is thin yet extremely flavorful. Whole green chilis are usually added at the end and green coriander leaves are used to season for extra taste. This term is also used to refer to any type of stew in meat, fish or vegetable dishes.
• Kalia: A very rich preparation of fish, meat or vegetables using a lot of oil and ghee with a sauce usually based on ground ginger and onion paste and garom mashla.
• Kofta: Ground meat or vegetable croquettes bound together by spices and/or eggs served alone or in savory gravy.
• Korma: Another term of Urdu origin (literally 'braised with onions), meaning meat or chicken cooked in a mild onion and yoghurt sauce with ghee.
• Luchi: Small round unleavened bread fried in oil.
• Paturi: Typically fish, seasoned with spices (usually shorshe) wrapped in banana leaves and steamed or roasted over a charcoal fire.
• Polau :Fragrant dish of rice with ghee, spices and small pieces of vegetables. Long grained aromatic rice is usually used, but some aromatic short grained versions such as Kalijira or Gobindobhog may also be used.
• Pora: The word literally means charred. Vegetables are wrapped in banana leaves and roasted over a wood, charcoal or coal fire. Some vegetables with skin such as begun, are put directly on the flame or coals. The roasted vegetable is then mixed with onions, oil and spices.
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ANJU |
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