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Scrolling through a whole series of recipe videos on social media every day is something all foodies and home cooks engage in. But you will hardly find anyone who doesn’t stop the unending scrolling when faced with the spirited Usha Bishoyee from Mohanpur, a small town in West Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district. And in case you are one of the few who have never heard of her, Bishoyee is the woman behind the popular food channel, Oldays Kitchen, which is dedicated towards giving people a glimpse into rural Bengali cuisine.
What she does is presenting rare and rural Bengali recipes in ASMR-inspired cooking videos to people across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Though her videos are in Bengali, they are quite easy to understand because Bishoyee herself is such a relatable woman, personifying the simplicity and genuine love of food that our mothers and grandmothers have brought us up with. All of this has turned the 48-year-old into the new face of rural Bengali cuisine.
“My entire focus is on presenting old-school rural Bengali dishes that can be tried not only by Bengalis within and beyond Bengal, but everyone,” she says. “These are usually dishes prepared with very few ingredients, spices and oil, and I want these to reach every home.” Recently, YouTube gave Bishoyee their Silver Creator Award for crossing 100K subscribers, and her elation was clear for all to see. “I couldn’t believe that all this hard work would give me so much joy,” she exclaims. Here’s all about this incredible woman’s food journey.
Video Credit: YouTube/Oldays Kitchen
A Long-Winding Journey On Social Media
“I got married at a very young age, and I have been a homemaker since then,” she explains. “We had a family sweet shop and it was running quite well. In 2017, my husband invested in building our own home and in 2018, my in-laws passed away. When COVID-19 hit, however, we had to face financial issues that nearly broke us. And in 2021, my son and I decided to start a YouTube channel to showcase my cooking skills and maybe even earn a living.” Fate, however, had other plans for Bishoyee, and her first foray on social media didn’t work.
“I tried it for a year, but it simply didn’t work,” she says. “And since our financial situation wasn’t good at that time, we couldn’t dedicate any time and effort to it. So, we closed the YouTube channel and faced the COVID-19 financial crisis instead. We had to sell our home to handle the bank loans. Somehow, we managed to survive and in March 2023, we decided to reinvest some of the leftover money in restarting the YouTube channel.”
And this time around, Bishoyee’s Oldays Kitchen picked up like never before. The credit is certainly hers—and so is the key talent—but she says that her son, who has studied hotel management, has guided and supported her every step of the way. “He suggested that this time around, let’s do short videos instead of long ones,” she said. “We never imagined the reception we would get! Our channel started getting a lot of engagement on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram simultaneously. On the one hand, we had lost so much during the pandemic, on the other, we found a new hope.”
Bishoyee’s Rural Bengali Recipe Treasure Trove
As for the recipes themselves, where does Bishoyee get this exhaustive range of rural Bengali dishes? “I have always known most of these recipes, they are like second nature to me,” she explains. “I learnt a lot from my mother and mother-in-law, and these are mostly very ordinary rural Bengali dishes. The dishes that aren’t Bengali have been mostly suggested by my son based on his own training, but the Bengali ones are all my own recipes that I have mastered over the decades.”
Quite a lot of the recipes Bishoyee cooks up are unknown to Bengalis living in urban areas. Here’s an example: You may have heard of Ilish Paturi and even Chingri Paturi, but did you know that there exists a popular vegetarian version of this leaf-wrapped Bengali delicacy? Bishoyee explains that Peyaj Paturi is a version of Paturi that she loves to cook up. “Chopped onions, chillies, mustard paste are all wrapped in a tempered banana leaf, and the dish tastes simple but delicious,” she explains. “I also like to make a Mourala Fish Paturi wrapped on bottle gourd leaves.”
She insists that Bengali cuisine is not homogenous and monolithic, and her dishes have a distinct Medinipuriya touch too. “People from Medinipur district eat a lot of onions and garlic, and we love our fresh fish and seafood as well as local green veggies,” she explains. “We source fish varieties like Shol (snakehead) from the local ponds and we cook Shol Maach Dhoka with it—this is one of our local specialities. We have a wide range of locally popular Amish (non-vegetarian) and Niramish (pure vegetarian) dishes, and I love sharing them through my videos too.”
But, Bishoyee says, she doesn’t want to restrict herself to only rural Bengali dishes from Medinipur. This is one of the reasons why she often cooks dishes like Chocolate Milkshake and Papad Spring Roll with the help of her son. This apart, she is also interested in showcasing East Bengali or Bangal dishes. “My elder sisters and cousins have married into East Bengali homes, so I know quite a few Bangal dishes too,” she says. “I will gradually present all of these to people as well, including Shutki Maach dishes.”
A Unique Style Of Presenting Rural Bengali Recipes
Facing the camera is not as easy as it looks, and many people find that out the hard way. For Bishoyee, her on-camera journey has been an interesting one. “When I started in 2021, I was pretty new to this and it took me some time and a lot of support to get used to the camera,” she says. “My son’s presence always helps. He handles the camera for me and that always calms and inspires me.”
Bishoyee’s videos now have two endearing signatures, and she credits her son with coming up with both ideas. The first is that she begins her videos with a chhora or short rhyme about the dish that she is about to cook in a direct-to-camera bit. The second is that at the end of the video, she eats the dish she just cooked with appropriate pairings, and exclaims, “Darun!”. The word means excellent in English, and conveys just how amazing the dish tastes. Truth be told, it’s the perfect way to invite others in joining up and trying the recipe.
“These are the two attractions of my videos that make it my own,” Bishoyee explains. “No matter what recipe we are cooking, my son and I sit together and come up with an appropriate rhyme for it.” As for the ending note, she says that youngsters especially love it when she exclaims “Darun!”. “Kids always write in the comments that ‘grandma, don’t skip the exclamation, you must say it every time’,” she says. “People also send me videos in the DMs where kids and mothers are together responding to my videos with their own take on the simple Bengali exclamation. And I love this reaction.”
