When Sundays meant seasonal produce, wooden fires, and a caretaker-cum-gardener-cum-cook who loved feeding each the physique and the soul
When Sundays meant seasonal produce, wooden fires, and a caretaker-cum-gardener-cum-cook who loved feeding each the physique and the soul
Growing up in Calcutta (now often known as Kolkata), the place meals is one thing akin to faith, and in a home presided over by my mom who was a wonderful prepare dinner, my reminiscences of nice meals and grand meals are prodigious. Yet, once I sat down to put in writing this piece, a single reminiscence leapt to my thoughts — a reminiscence from so way back that it ought to have pale by now. Only, it hasn’t. Even at this time, on somnolent Sunday afternoons, I wistfully recollect our day journeys to Barasat on the outskirts of Kolkata, the place we had a bagaanbari (actually, a home with a backyard), and the place the caretaker would prepare dinner lunch for us guests. The meals wasn’t something fancy, however sitting al fresco and consuming off chipped, mismatched plates whereas the birds saved up a drowsy monotone of cooing within the timber above, every little thing tasted heavenly.
The caretaker-cum-gardener- cum-cook’s title was Ponchu. He should have had a extra civilised title, or bhalo naam, as we are saying in Bangla. But he was universally often known as Ponchu. I referred to as him Ponchu da. In winter, and in addition in autumn and spring when the climate is nice in Kolkata, we went to the bagaanbari a minimum of one Sunday each month, accompanied by both the prolonged household or a few of my mother and father’ shut mates.
En route ‘shingara’ and ‘jileepi’
Barasat within the Seventies was not the bustling Kolkata suburb it’s at this time. In reality, it was fairly bucolic, and each time we went there, I felt as if we had been journeying to some far-off land. Once you left the confines of the metropolis, the street grew to become magical, flanked on both facet by shimmering waterbodies and plush inexperienced vegetation.
The foodie expertise started en route. Around 9.30 a.m., we might cease for breakfast at a big mishtanno bhandar (candy store). Leaning in opposition to our Ambassador vehicles, we ate freshly fried, thin-crust shingara (samosa) filled with cauliflower and potato, khasta kochuri (flaky kachoris), and delectably crispy jileepi (jalebi) and aumriti (imarti), passing across the newspaper packets that held these goodies, our fingers greasy with ghee and our palates alight with pleasure.
You’d suppose that after such a heavy repast, there will surely be no elevenses and lunch could be an abstemious affair. But nobody was watching their ldl cholesterol again in these days. And I believe Ponchu da would have been severely baffled and harm if anybody was.
For he saved the meals coming virtually from the second we reached the bagaanbari. There could be a number of rounds of tea and tidbits to go together with it — daler bora (lentil fritters), machher dim bhaja (fish roe fritters), beguni (brinjal fritters), pneyaji (onion fritters)… Sometimes tea was eschewed for drinks that the adults had introduced alongside, whereas I glugged from a bottle of Fanta.
The one-storeyed baari (home) a part of the bagaan was fairly rudimentary, however the grounds had an air of plenitude — laden with timber like coconut, mango, jackfruit, wooden apple and banana, a largish vegetable patch bursting with seasonal veggies, and a pond which, Ponchu da claimed, had numerous fish, although I not often caught a glimpse of them by means of the layer of kochuripana (water hyacinth) that floated on it. Much of the meals cooked on these memorable Sundays got here from the produce of that land, and perhaps that’s what accounted for its intensely recent and satisfying flavour.
As a prepare dinner, Ponchu da’s repertoire was pretty restricted. Our late lunch often had an ordinary menu: smoking scorching rice with aromatic, regionally sourced ghee, narkel diye chholar dal (Bengal gram dal cooked with diced coconut), with perhaps some fried topshe fish on the facet, phulkopi-alu-koraishutir dalna (potato-cauliflower curry with peas), chingri-alur tarkari (prawns with potatoes), rui maccher kaalia (a wealthy curry with rohu fish) and a hen or a mutton or a crab curry, adopted by tomato chutney and mishti doi.
‘It’s the wooden fireplace that makes every little thing wholesome and attractive,’ Ponchu da stated.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images/ iStock
Sitting within the dappled shade of the winter solar, we ate this elaborate meal with gradual relish. Every dish had a hearty, considerably rustic flavour, slightly excessive on spice, and better nonetheless in its potential to talk straight to the soul. One that I significantly appreciated was the chingri-alur tarkari, a easy peasant-style preparation seasoned with paanch phoron and cooked with prawns, diced potatoes and onions. My mom had requested Ponchu da for its recipe. He had obliged, however had additionally added sadly that she would by no means be capable of replicate its style as a result of, like all of the meals he cooked for us, this dish too was performed on wooden fireplace. “It’s the wood fire that makes everything healthy and tasty,” he stated.
Maybe there was some reality in that. Or perhaps it was the sylvan setting, the glowing air and the soothing fowl name that gave these meals the elevated, soulful dimension they appeared to have.
Or perhaps it was just a few magic wrought by Ponchu da, chef and multitasker extraordinaire, whom we by no means noticed once more after the bagaanbari was offered just a few years later.
The author is a journalist and writer with an obsessive curiosity in meals.
Source: www.thehindu.com