A beautifully tender piece of lamb flavoured with the aromatic shatkura lemon sits on my lunch plate; the lemon has come all the way from Sylhet in Bangladesh where it grows. Shaktura Mutton – lamb cooked with fenugreek, onion and finished with Shaktura juice, is one of the many dishes being served at an ongoing festival devoted to Bangladeshi food. The food festival is a part of the Sofitel’s ‘Home Chef’ series and the Bangladeshi cuisine is being showcased by Nayan Afroz, who is from Dhaka.
Afroz, who moved to Dhaka from Kolkata after her marriage, has been cataloguing recipes from Bangladeshi kitchens since the last 15 years. Her aim is to familiarise people with the cuisine of the country. “Unlike the cuisine of West Bengal, Bangladeshis use a lot of onion, garlic and ginger in their cooking,” Afroz tells me as I dig into the Begun Kashi – a sweet and sour brinjal preparation made with tamarind, jaggery and tempering of panch phoron (the famous Bengali five spice mix). A section of menu is dedicated to the bhortas, an essential part of Bangladeshi meal which can be made with anything be it vegetable, meat or even fruits. On the menu you’ll find chicken, boiled egg with lamb liver, shrimp and beans tomato bhortas.
Layered experience
Afroz’s menu covers all of Bangladesh’s food traditions, that’s food served during weddings, festivals and even death ceremonies. It also features a few dishes that are a Mughlai or Afghani influence on the cuisine; case in point being Bangladeshi Chicken Roast which is cooked with saffron, yogurt and almond. There are dishes from various economic stratas too, “For example a korma is cooked in different ways with different ingredients depending on what you can afford. Prawns, which are expensive, are usually cooked with dry fruits and ghee by the wealthier families while potatoes are cooked in peanuts by the people of lower income group,” shares Afroz.
The staple Bangaldeshi diet consists of rice and cereals while roti is something that’s eaten for breakfast. “We make roti differently; flour is cooked in boiling water and then turned into dough to make rotis,” says Afroz. While the Bangladeshi roti is not on the menu, khichudi – made with chana dal and mutton - is definitely there to warm a Bengali heart. For me the Anarashi Ilish – hilsa fish cooked in pineapple gravy, stands out for its subtle sweet and sour flavour. To wrap up the meal, there’s Dudh Kodu –a delicate kheer made with bottle gourd, and Green Mango Halwa made with khoya, sugar and ghee.
The Bangladeshi Food Festival is ongoing at Jyran, Sofitel until April 21.