With an assortment of decadent goodies, Indian cuisine offers something or the other to everyone. From the vast array of savoury dishes to the toothsome desserts, Indian cuisine is an amalgam of the numerous regional cuisines native to the Indian subcontinent. From the rustic and buttery Northern delicacies to the tangy and spicy Southern dishes, the cuisine has foods of varied flavour profiles, textures and aromas. Keeping all the regions apart, let’s talk about the region I hail from. Hailing from Odisha, no matter where I am and what I am eating, my heart always craves some Odia or Bengali comfort food. Both cuisines share some similarities that are enough to provide me with comfort when I am homesick. Out of all the delicious goodies, the things that appeal to me most are the indulgent desserts. As I have already talked about a lot of Odia and Bengali desserts, let’s talk about yet another popular Bengali dessert. The dessert is called Langcha and is made with chhena.
Believed to have originated in the Burdwan district of West Bengal, Langcha is a deep-fried sweetmeat that is made up of chhena. If we start pondering over the genesis of Langcha, locals believed that the sweetmeat was first made by an artisan of Burdwan. The man used to make Pantua (huge oval-shaped deep-fried sweets made out of chhena) and tried to make them bite-size which resulted in the invention of Langcha. However, like most Indian food articles, this isn’t it for Langcha too. While half of the population believes that the artisan named his bite-sized sweetmeats after a British officer who used to limp and walk who was quite pleased with the sweet, the other half believes something else.
Legend has it that Langcha is born out of a matrimonial alliance between the royal families of two of West Bengal’s distant districts- Krishnanagar and Burdwan. It is believed that the desire of the princess of Krishnanagar (who was the queen of Burdwan) to eat a sweet from her maternal home gave the name to Langcha. Upon knowing her desires, her father went to the Moiras (the confectioner caste) to find the man who used to make it. However, the only piece of information he could gather was that the man used to hobble (Langchano in Bengali) and the king named the sweet after it.
No matter what the real story behind the origin of Langcha is, it has kept Bengalis hooked to it for centuries now. And we know that we have left you craving it and we won’t disappoint you. Here’s a quick recipe of Langcha that you can try at home.