maach, cha, and fried green tomatoes

I take back everything I said about the food of Bangladesh. I must revise it to just don’t eat out and eat at some momma’s kitchen. The home cooking in Dhaka has really spoiled me and has let me get to know what Bangladeshi food has to offer.

Their subzis have a common spice (I think haldi/turmeric) that is in most of them so they all have a similar taste. What’s in season these days is carrot, papaya, aloki, gobhi, bhaigan, lal saag, cabbage, etc. They’ve all been excellent which is the case abroad with most produce. The different one I had was this fried bhaigan dish that isn’t breaded and keeps the skin on. They have both purple eggplant and a green one as well. Still not fully sure if they taste differently.

The roties are extremely soft and can’t really compare to any taste as far as Indian roti. Apparently they put boiling hot water into the aata before making it and this makes it really soft. They almost look like flour tortillas, but use the same flour as rotis in India. Made fresh, these are pretty good. They have parotha (which I think is slightly fried and not like ours), puris (both plain and stuffed with beef, not complaining here), naan, etc. The main thing is that they’re not eaten often and usually at breakfast or dinner if at all.

Side note : Pizza hut in india is currently running a stuffed crust deal there that stuffs it with your choice of paneer or chicken sausage. And we thought we had it good.

They have something they call singhara, which is essentially a aloo samosa. Their samosas usually mean stuffed with beef and the aata is made differently almost given it a puri crispness to it, versus flaky singhara.

The only daals I’ve had have been yellow. I couldn’t really tell you what types, but I know I’ve had moong. Besides that, they seem to be local varieties that are slightly different from ours.

Mithai has been par excellance at the household. Saveyaan, shondesh, rosgollah, sooji ki mithai (which is kinda like the saveyaan consistency), firnee, this one where they took frozen mango pulp (preserved in the freezer from summer) and mixed it with milk powder (sounds weird, but tasted good once again). Haven’t had a bad mithai yet.

The fish. The first day I was here, they had a fish that had quite a bit of bones, but since then, auntie has made fish with easy to remove bones. I couldn’t tell you the name of them, but they’ve all been pretty good. One kinda like bass, one tilapia type. Most are of the white variety, some flaky, some a little tougher. They seemed to be cooked pretty similarly in a salan, cut in pieces from the head down to the tail, cooked with skin on which is easy to remove. Usually aloo, pyaas, tamatar are added in a haldi based salan.

I haven’t had two cups of “cha” that tasted the same. Cha without milk seems to be pretty popular. I’ve had cha with elaichi, wth cinnamon, with milk, etc. I guess the variety of tea leaves is pretty high as they do produce tea here and are close enough to india to get tea from there.

While writing this email, uncle just came back from a weeklong business trip along the northwestern district of Bangladesh. With him, he has brought an arsenal of food from the region. Huge bags of “super quality” rice, a damn tasty fruit called kewel (a combo of an amrut because of its consistency and apple because of it’s outward appearance and sweetness, but the size of an extra large grape), a special kind of matar, green tomatoes, green bananas (to cook with fish), green eggplant, 2 humongous fish from a friend’s pond, 2 King ducks, 4 boxes of mithai (types specific to their region which were mainly milk based), green coconuts (to drink the healthful milk) , a ripe papaya, and a partridge in a pear tree. Man, it’s like when pappa comes back from his meetings, except these things don’t have pharmaceutical companies written all over them and are edible. They were happy to see me excited (and thought I was a sheltered American boy though I tried explaining I like this kind of stuff). They also commented that it’s a good trait that I eat and enjoy whatever they feed me. The legend continues.

It is now 11 pm, and we are eating snacks while cooking dinner. I helped by cutting onions for a fish stew using rewey fish (cross between the white flaky nature of flounder and steak like qualities of tuna). It was first fried and then put in a salan with onions and tomatoes and may have been one of the best fish dishes I’d ever eaten. With the fresh green tomatoes, I cooked fried green tomatoes to share my food with them. I used a tempura mix, salt, and pepper and it turned out pretty good, owing mostly to the great tomatoes. Everything happens for a reason, and I have thoroughly enjoyed having my train cancelled for today. Though I had planned to lose enough weight to fit comfortably into my sherwani, signs are now pointing to doubtful.