Tuhin Kar| September 1, 2021

What do I most remember when I think of home-cooked food? If anyone were to ask me that today, I might find it difficult to answer, mainly because I had such mixed feelings about home-cooked food, growing up as I was, a Bengali outside Bengal. What that essentially meant was, the menu at home was almost always a curious mish-mash of more than one cuisine, often in the same meal. I remember there were days when we would have some quintessentially Bengali curry with roti at home, which to me was an absolute travesty. I was what people may call a bheto bangali at heart. I think you cannot enjoy Bengali food unless it is paired with a bowl of steaming rice. Not biryani, not pulao, but plain white rice. That’s just how it is.

Probably that is why most of my earliest and fondest food memories are from our biannual visits to my dida’s place in Kolkata, for Durga puja and winter holidays. Her food was Bengali to their most basic ingredients. I have no recollection of her ever cooking anything fancy or even putting a flashy twist to a familiar recipe. Her food has always brought me the comfort of a hot bowl of runny khichuri with alu sheddho and dim bhaja on a cold, wet, monsoon afternoon. I don’t know if she knew instinctively what I’d loved most to eat and cooked those specific dishes, or if I loved whatever she cooked. We can’t be certain at this point. What I can recall with absolute certainty is that I made not a single visit to her place, the first meal of which didn’t start with my favorite alu posto, accompanied by steaming white rice and a green chilli for an added zing. Most people would peg the humble posto as the opening act of the main course before moving on to the more important dish du jour, or in case of the Bengalis, the fish du jour. Not me. I can, and often have, opened and closed a meal with just alu posto and rice.

A similar fate befell the haansher dimer daalna, that dida makes as a thick gravy on a bed of a million potatoes cut like matchsticks (I don’t care if I am a minority of one, but I will go to the grave maintaining that the taste of duck eggs is far superior!). These remain, to this day, my comfort foods. With the first aromatic whiff and morsel in the mouth, they take me back to the carefree days of childhood spent in dida’s place.

I couldn’t possibly talk of comfort foods and not mention the winter staple at our home, a fish curry with a watery jhol and chock full of veggies like carrots, broad beans, okra, cauliflowers, drumsticks, potatoes (of course!) and whatever else may be available at home. We used to call it the “shorir kharap jhol” because it was often served piping hot when anyone was down with the flu or stomach ache, or any other ailment, really. Take my word for it, it’s the best pick-me-up ever to exist, definitely more potent than medicine, and a whole lot tastier!

Talking of taste though, I feel one area I radically differ from all my Kolkata-based extended family is my less-than-absolute reverence for the much-vaunted king of fishes, ilish. As any self-respecting Bengali would point out, there’s no better thing in the world than well-cooked food and there’s no better food in the world than well-cooked ilish. And I would agree to a certain extent. But if I were made to choose between that and mutton curry with a soupy jhol and potatoes (at this point, I think the presence of potatoes should not have to be made explicit, but just assumed it’s in every dish), or even a muri ghonto, I would go for those any day. To me they feel more, for lack of a better word, everyday meals cooked with a lot of love. And that is what I most remember about home-cooked food. Not the bedazzling array, not the cuisine, or even the flavors. Just the love that went into making them. That’s all there was to it. The secret ingredient to all my most memorable meals.