A request for shukto for lunch the next day left my mother slightly bewildered. I was home on vacation after two years of living abroad and was determined to get my hands on most of the dishes I grew up eating at home, especially the vegetarian varieties that I never quite appreciated as a child — shukto being one of them. In the many years of living away from home, I realised that it is almost always possible to find or recreate the ‘meaty’ delights, which typically don’t require seasonal produce. Your greens, on the other hand, remain elusive. Sure, we inhabit this global-glocal world where arguably most things can be procured, but the taste of home, even without a generous helping of nostalgia, is something that is hard to attain, when far away. While Bengalis have spread their love for ‘posto’ (poppy seeds) and ‘paanch foron’ (Bengali five spice mix) far and wide, there remains a great deal that is still indigenous and exclusive to the land.
From leaves and stems
Let’s start with the shaaks, as we call our leafy greens. Not many culinary traditions in India champion the shaak the way Bengalis do. There are nearly 30 varieties found and cooked across the state. Traditional recipes rarely team the shaak with other ingredients, not even the humble potato. Palong shaak bhaja, the most popular variety in the state, just needs a tempering of mustard seeds, dried red chillies and ginger, and stir frying for about five minutes till the leaves wilt. The methi shaak bhaja (fenugreek leaves fry) hits the right note with some chopped garlic, in addition to the regular process, as does the lal shaak (sauteed red amaranth leaves), a winter staple. A personal favourite of mine is the paat shaaker dal (a jute leaf dal dish) that combines the greens with a boiled mash of moong and split pea. Tempered with green chillies and nigella seeds, this dish leans slightly on the sweeter side and is a summer hit in many homes.
Ranking high among the heartland specialties is the kochur shaak (stalks of Colocasia). The plant grows most commonly in backyards, especially near ponds as outgrowths, and kochur shaak er ghonto (mishmash) is a dish that is derived out of the stem. With ponds fast disappearing from our landscape, this greenish-purple vegetable is becoming rarer by the day. Unlike the other shaaks, this recipe requires a more complex spice mix, comprising hing (asafoetida), whole cumin, bay leaves, along with ample amounts of grated coconut, ghee and milk. The technique of cutting the leaves vertically is crucial to this dish.
Speaking of cutting, one dish that requires surgical precision is the mochar ghonto – not to be confused with the coffee; here it is pronounced with the ‘cha’ sound. Mocha or banana blossom is shaped like a corn with layers of maroon leaves hiding rings of long, pale yellow flowers. Each flower requires removing the fine petals and filaments; this tedious process demands that prep time begin a day early, because even a single forgotten filament can turn the whole dish into a pungent disaster. The remaining bits are finely chopped and soaked in salt water, before being cooked with aromatic spices, coconut bits, potatoes and chickpeas. The mocha occupies a golden spot in Bengal’s vegetarian food landscape – given how intricate the dish is, a successful mochar ghonto is seen as a rite of passage among Bengal’s cooks. I still remember the day I cooked the dish from scratch; when it came out tasting just like my mother’s, I probably felt every layer of joy, as was ensconced in those mocha leaves.
Why leaves and stems?
Bengal, blessed with the bounty of the rivers Ganga and Padma (now in Bangladesh), is an inexhaustible resource of freshwater fish, earning its people the tag of ‘fish-eating Bengalis’. So then what brought about the tradition of vegetarian dishes? This can be traced to a sombre start in the early 18th and19th centuries when the widows in the state were prohibited from eating ‘aamish’ or non-vegetarian foods that in Bengal also include masoor dal, onion and garlic. Being forced to maintain a meagre niramish (vegetarian) diet, they began to innovate from the little that they were allowed – leafy greens and the not-so-fancy vegetables growing in the backyard. Thus began the practice of using every part of the plant to create a dish out of it. From roots, stems, leaves, to even flowers and peels – these women saw potential in everything. Thanks to their creativity, today we can enjoy an array of fritters like kumro ful bhaja and shojne ful bhaja made from pumpkin and drumstick flowers respectively; lau er khosha bhaja or fried strips of bottle-gourd peels are a favourite accompaniment to any kind of dal; the kaanchkolar kofta, or mashed raw banana curry, is a festival delicacy as is the shukto, Bengal’s bittersweet culinary pride. While on special occasions, mutton was reserved for the men in the family, the women conjured the jackfruit curry or enchorer dalna that tastes a lot like mutton and came to be nicknamed the ‘niramish mangsho’ or vegetarian mutton. This is perhaps the oldest known example of a mock-meat.
Vegetarian cooking in Bengal follows distinct styles; for instance, the labra is a dry curry made of a variety of vegetables cut in equal sizes, in a chhechki, they are chopped in tiny pieces and fried in paanch phoron, the chorchori requires them cut in long, slender shapes while the ghonto is yet another vegetable mishmash where they are cut in cubes – the way the vegetables are cut, defines the process. A labra would never have slender pieces nor can a chhechki work with chunky bits. Every procedure is about the delicate use of spices to extract maximum flavour from ostensibly unremarkable ingredients. Food historians credit the gifted widows for inventing these techniques, while the advent of the Bhakti Movement further absorbed and spread these dishes.
Bengal of bitters
Bitter foods are a cultural signifier in the Bengali vegetarian foodscape. Like the French, Bengalis too follow a system of courses in their meals, and the first course begins with bitters. This practice dates to the Ayurvedic ways of eating from ancient times wherein the bitter taste was deemed a tongue cleanser and an appetiser to aid a wholesome eating experience and healthy digestion. Among the common meal starters is the neem begun, where neem leaves are stir-fried with little chunks of eggplant; ucche bhaja has thin bitter gourd ringlets deep fried in mustard oil tempered with mustard seeds; sometimes pumpkin is added as a foil to the bitterness. There is also ucche diye moong daal, where the latter is cooked with crispy fried bitter gourd. Most bitter dishes of Bengal carry the mood of summer afternoons, these vegetables being a summer bounty. Also, the cooling properties of these bitters are an antidote to the harsh weather.
The piece de resistance in bitter foods, however, is the shukto, a vegetable stew of sorts that offers ample leeway in terms of ingredients, with variants for both summers and winters, but needs the precision of a baker to hit the right balance of bitter and sweet. There are the harsh notes of the bitter gourd, but you don’t get a chance to complain as you soon find a sweet spot (pun intended), from the eggplant, potatoes, and raw banana chunks soaking in the milk-and-ghee infused, sweetened gravy, balanced by a piquant mustard paste. Another bite opens gingery tones in harmony with the ridge gourd that carries its own kind of sweetness. Every bite feels like a different experience, yet none clashing with the other. It’s the art of taking a bunch of discordant ingredients and making them sing a perfect tune.
Crunchy interlude
A key ingredient in the vegetarian foodscape of Bengal remains the deceptively simple looking bori, a dried lentil dumpling of sorts made from a mixture of urad, masoor, and split pea. It is soaked overnight, drained and ground into a granular paste – the consistency is key here. Small balls with a tapering top are made from the paste and spread on a cloth or a greased steel plate to dry them over a week until they take on a hard texture. As direct sunlight and zero moisture is crucial to the prep, this can only be done in the summers. In the olden days, womenfolk would make art out of these boris, carving intricate patterns on them – the Tagore household was famous for this tradition. The boris can be preserved for up to six months or more. Seen as a source of protein, they are deep fried and typically added to shaaks, shuktos and labras for crunch. They can also be cooked with posto (poppy seeds) and as a curry of their own.
In conclusion
A rich culinary tradition paved by repressive ways of patriarchy – the origin story of Bengal’s vegetarian cooking is hard to stomach. Most traditional dishes don’t involve current staples like potatoes, tomatoes and cauliflowers – they didn’t reach Bengal until the 19th century and even then, it wasn’t easy to procure them. With the widows being confined to their immediate surroundings, most of these dishes emerged from basic kitchen gardens and backyard outgrowths. As food historian Chitrita Banerjee writes in her book quoting a 19th century Bengali author, “It was impossible to taste the full glory of vegetarian cooking unless your own wife became a widow”. In the face of tremendous odds, their ingenious minds contributed greatly to the originality and subtlety of Bengal’s vegetarian cooking – one that is entrenched in its controversial history and geographic abundance, and therefore, hard to recreate away from home.
All images via Shuttestock.