Bengali food encompasses the rich assortment of foods eaten in West Bengal in India and Bangladesh. The neighboring states of Assam, Orissa and Tripura have also borrowed richly from the cuisine of Bengal, a cuisine which consists of highly diversified foods that include rice and fish as the staples and meats, lentils and chhana (cottage cheese) based sweets as the other significant inclusions. Popular Bengali food preparations include Shorshe Ilish (Hilsa fish cooked in mustard gravy), Alu Posto (potatoes cooked in a processed poppy seed base) Bhaja (fries), Roshogolla (chhana based spongy, round and white sweets soaked in syrup) and Jhal-Muŗi (spicy puffed rice snack).
Historical and Cultural Influences
Bengali food has evolved out of several historical culinary cultures. It has inherited the culinary styles of the Nawabs, the Europeans, Baghdadi Jews and several Indian as well as foreign religious cultures. This is mainly due to the powerful trade relations of West Bengal with some of the most prominent nations of those times in the world. During the 13th century, i.e. the period of Muslim power in Bengal, it is believed that Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the exiled erstwhile Nawab of Avadh was accompanied by a large number of cooks and spice mixing experts called masalchis who post the Nawab's lifetime, dissolved with the local population, taking to occupations such as running food carts and eateries in Bengal. There was also an influx of different other foreign migrants into the state including the Afghans, the Chinese and the Jewish. Baking, cake making and tea ritual were the impacts of the British rule between the 18th and 20th centuries as well as the Jewish culture. People of Marwari background engaged in the Bengal's world famous thriving sweetmeat industry. The partition of Bengal into West Bengal and East Bengal (now Bangladesh) introduced significant differences in the preparations of the two regions as the latter is a region dominated by the Muslim culture which has influenced the region's food with the Muslim culinary culture.
Ingredients Commonly Used
Bengali food preparations make use of fish, a lot of vegetables, dairy products and spices alongside rice. The fish comes in many varieties including rohu or rui. The catfish varieties include shingi, tangra, magur, butter fish and koi. Fishes like pabda, Ilish, chitol are popular both in Bangladesh and West Bengal. Seafood like pomfret, chingri (prawns, shrimps and lobsters) and kankra (crabs) are also much preferred. Dairy products such as chhana (cottage cheese), milk and yogurt are exclusively used in the Bengali cuisine to make sweets and confectionaries such as roshogolla and pantuva. Spices and spice mixtures used in fish, rice and vegetable preparations include holud (turmeric), kalo jeere (black cumin), dhone (coriander seeds), jeere (cumin), methi (fenugreek), mouri (saunf) and shorshe (black mustard seeds). Shorsher tel or mustard oil is widely used in Bengal for frying, cooking and roasting fishes and vegetables.
Traditional Bengali Cuisine
- Dom is a popular Bengali dish which takes its name from the Dum (or Dom in Bengali) cooking technique borrowed from the Nawabs that requires slow cooking potatoes, meat dishes or rice (precisely biriyanis) in a closed top shallow cooking vessel.
- Roshogolla is a widely relished sweet made in Bengal using mashed cottage cheese balls.
- Pantua is a sweet from the Bengali cuisine made by deep frying cottage cheese balls in clarified butter or ghee till it is golden brown and then soaking it in sugar syrup.
- Jhal-Muŗi is a common street snack made using puffed rice, pinches of different seasoning spices (moshla), chopped vegetables and a little mustard oil.
- Machh bhaja or fried fish is a Bengali food made by deep frying fishes, popularly the rui rohu or the ilish variety, either after being coated with chickpea batter or simply after being rubbed with salt and turmeric.
Bengali Meal Routine
A typical traditional Bengali breakfast comprises cha biskut (tea and biscuit), followed by luchi – torkari (a combination of a deep fried flatbread with a savory curry side dish which is generally potato based). Sweets like bonde (syrup soaked tiny yellow and red balls made of gram flour) or sondesh (soft or semi-hard mashed cottage cheese based sweets which are made into different shapes using varied colors and flavors) often follow this dish.
The lunch is the heaviest and the most elaborate meal of the day, which takes off with seasonal bitter vegetable based preparations like shukto, neem jhol, uchhe bhaja etc and continues with sheddo bhaat (steamed rice), dal (lentil soup), a non-vegetarian spicy and thin soupy preparation called jhol or a gravy preparation called torkari. The lunch ends with papor (roasted, crispy and thin flatbreads with digestive properties), chatni (chutney) and traditional sweets like mishti doi (sweetened curd). Digestive pastries made of Betel leaves called Paan are often served post lunch.
Dinners are comparatively lighter and comprise flatbreads like ruti (roti), parota (paratha) or luchi (deep fried, fluffy flatbreads), one or more vegetable, fish or meat curries and sweets.
Book Reference for Further Reading
Bangla Ranna: An Introduction to Bengali Cuisine by S. Banerjee
