A veggie delight..

Chalkumro, known as white gourd is a tropical vegetable that grows abundantly on the thatched roofs in Bengal. It has a thin green skin covering soft succulent flesh and white seeds inside. My first introduction to this seemingly unassuming vegetable had happened in a otherwise awkward situation. The celebration of the cult of the Mother Goddess requires animal sacrifice.  In some families, however, a harmless animal is replaced by more benign entities, like white gourd and sugarcane.

In front of the deity this benign vegetable is sanctified and sacrificed symbolically. So there I go, my first introduction to chalkumro was during the 'Durga Puja's balidaan' ceremony at my ancestral house when i was five-six years old. 

Having tasted the curry though, I had mixed feelings. As a kid I do not remember my tongue tingling with the taste of chalkumro and frankly, thought it to be a rather bland replacement for a goat. The kid had also found arrays of amusements and had forgotten all about humble chalkumro.

Living overseas for more than a decade makes me homesick every now and then, I yearn to touch my roots and what better way than rediscovering the food trails of Bengal! I started revisiting traditional bengali recipes and voila, here comes a real gem. 

Boris are sun-dried lentil cakes made from urad dal (white lentil) paste. Conventionally prepared by women folk in villages, boris added generously to bengali curries (dry ones as in with pnui shaak chorchori, or watery runny ones as in jhol) not only impart a characteristic flavour but also provide for a source of protein in a predominantly vegetarian diet. The boris I have used here have been specially prepared by my husband's paternal grandmother from Bankura. 

Pnach Phoron is a aggregation of five types of seeds: cumin, mustard, fenugreek, aniseed and nigella.

Narkol Bori diye Chalkumro (White gourd with coconut and bori)

Chalkumro (white gourd) - 1- large, cubed

Ginger paste - 1 tbsp

Desiccated Coconut - 5-6 tbsp (can go upto 8 tbsp for die-hard coconut fanatics like myself!)

Pnach Phoron - 2-3 tbsp, dry roasted and ground to a powder

Bori - 1 cup

Mustard oil -5 tbsp

Ghee -2 tbsp

Salt and CaneSugar - to taste

Whole red chili -1-2

Nigella seeds - 1 tbsp 

Turmeric powder - 1/2 pinch

Procedure:

1. Heat Mustard oil, fry boris and keep them aside.

2. Add more mustard oil, temper oil with whole red chillies and nigella seeds (kalo jira).

3. Add ginger paste and fry for 3-4 mins.

4. Add the chalkumro cubes, fry gently, add salt, 1/2 pinch of turmeric and sugar, cover with a lid and cook for 10 mins till the gourd softens. Since addition of salt would lead to water release from the gourd, at some point this would get very watery. Open the lid to let the excess water dry off.

5. Add fried boris, desiccated coconut and mix well. Turn the heat off.

6. Add ghee and the ground pnach phoron powder.

7. Serve with white rice.

My epicurean promenades

Meat, meat and more meat!!!

Having grown up in Calcutta in a typical middle-class bengali household, food became as much part of life as were attending the never-ending tuition classes, frantic runs to catch an already over-crowded bus and navigating around the eternally dirty and busy streets. Sundays would start with my dad emptying grocery bags back filled with variety of seasonal fresh vegetables, different varieties of fresh fish and of course, mutton, that he had woken up very early in the morning to procure. Sunday meals would traditionally start with luchi and aloo r chorchori for breakfast followed by an elaborate lunch starting with something bitter (as in Shukto or fried bitter goard (ucche/korola) or neem jhol) followed by daal (musur), torkari ( jhinge posto, postor bora, lau chingri, thor, mocha r ghonto), mangsher jhol (mutton curry), chutney and full-fat creamy yoghurt (misti doi). My mother never bothered to dunk in whole range of exotic spices in her preparations. She kept it really straight forward by cooking the mutton with onion, ginger, garlic, tomatoes, cumin, coriander, turmeric, green chillies, salt and sugar. However, she cooked the mutton to the very super soft stage; her theory was, the softer the mutton was, the more the nutrients from the muscle fibres and bone marrow entered the gravy, the tastier and thicker the gravy became. Even now she wields the same trick and I, a self-confessed Mistress of Spices still lick my plate dry.

Recently I came across this punjabi recipe to cook mutton. I loved the delicate balance of the rustic and exotic flavours in this dish. I have incorporated two steps; being a quintessentially ghoti lady (born in West Bengal to a family hailing from Burdwan and being married to a family from Bankura) I have added sugar and a bit of mustard oil.  

Dum Pukht Maas (Punjabi style)

Mutton (shoulder cut, with bone, preferably halal) - 4 lb

Onion paste:

fried - 11/2 cup

boiled - 2 large

Ginger paste - 4 tbsp

Garlic paste - 4 tbsp

Tomatoes - 2 small (boiled, pureed)

Ghee- 5-6 tbsp

Salt and Sugar (optional) - to taste

Kashmiri Chilli powder - 2 tbsp (optional)

Whole dried dry chillies - 8-12

Whole Masala:

Cumin - 3 tbsp

Coriander - 3 tbsp

Cinnamon - 1 long stick

Cardamom - 5 green, 2 black

Cloves - 6-8

Nutmeg - 2 whole

Mace - 3-4 strands

All spice - 3-4 (optional)

Dry roast the whole spices in mild heat and crush them coarsely.

Marination: Marinate the mutton with salt and 2 tbsp of mustard oil for a few hours. If frozen, I usually thaw the meat overnight. In the morning I wash and drain, add salt and oil to it and refrigerate it till i cook in the evening.

Procedure:

1. Heat ghee in a pan and temper the ghee with the whole read chillies till you can smell the burnt chili flavor. Remove the chillies.

2. Add fried onion paste and cook for 10 mins.

3. Add boiled onion paste and cook for additional 10 mins. (At this point, the smell would completely captivate you!)

4. Add ginger garlic paste and fry for 4-5 mins.

5. At this point, may add sugar and kashmiri chili powder. (optional)

6. Add the marinated mutton and mix well with the fried spices.

7. Add tomato puree.

8. Add the crushed dry whole garam masala.

9. Add water to cover the meat completely.

10. Seal the lid with a dough and cook in low to medium heat for 2 1/2 hrs.

The final product after almost 3 1/2 hours of cooking!! Believe me, it is worth every bit of the wait..:)

Serve with Naan and Raita as was preferred by my husband 

or go with the good old-fashioned rice!!