The unsung architects of Bengali vegetarian cuisine

One of the earliest memories I have of my maternal grandaunt is a vision in white—and, of course, a magician in the kitchen. My father would always say how it was easiest to cook mutton (or, for that matter any non-vegetarian dish), but cooking vegetables required skill. My grandaunt (dida, we called her) had those skills in plenty. She could make the most humble of vegetables taste divine. Cooking sans onion or garlic, she would magically raise a simple chechki (a semi-dry preparation made either with potatoes, cauliflower, pumpkin, or even bitter gourd with a tempering of only nigella seeds, a pinch of asafoetida and a slit green chilli) to a sublime level.

As children, when we hungrily devoured her cooking, it did not strike me—or any of the other kids in our extended family—then that behind dida’s unparalleled skills in the kitchen was a story of painful want, social sanctions, taboos and regressive customs.

Now, Bengali cuisine has been pre-dominantly hailed for its non-vegetarian preparations. In fact, most Bengalis would find great comfort in the colloquial appellation of being a ‘maache bhaate Bangali’, roughly translating into ‘a true Bengali is one who would be most satisfied with fish and rice’.

From gravies and steamed dishes made with fish to the Sunday must-have variations of the humble mutton curry—be it mangsher jhol, kalia or kosha, Bengali cuisine has boasted its love for all things non-vegetarian. Chicken made a late entry into the cookbooks, as most Bengalis of earlier generations considered chicken and eggs (unless it was duck eggs) too ignoble and impure for the high table.

And yet, amid all this grand non-vegetarian fare, there also exists side-by-side a booming vegetarian cuisine—one that is relished in equal measure by any Bengali household now but has a past that is silhouetted by rigid historical dogma.

This vegetarian cuisine owes a lot to the so-called ‘unsung architects’, the widows of Bengal. Mohona Kanjilal in her brilliant book, The Taste of Time: A Food History of Calcutta, talks of the contribution of widows to Bengali vegetarian cuisine. She writes:

In the chapter ‘Bangla Ranna’ from their book, The Calcutta Cookbook: A Treasury of Recipes from Pavement to Palace (1995), the authors describe the plight of a Bengali widow, ‘In a secluded corner of the cookhouse, a widowed relative sits over her own stove. She has added delicate nuances to the rich vegetarian cornucopia of Bangla ranna. Her role in the kitchen warrants an explanation of her situation. Up to the turn of the century, a ten- or twelve-year-old girl was sometimes widowed and lived for the rest of her life dressed in white with her hair cropped, eating a radically vegetarian diet’.

But, naturally, Bengali widows craved tasty food. Gradually, they decided to make the best of the bad bargain and began using their innovativeness to add colour to their fare. They started experimenting with the limited ingredients that went into their dishes in order to add more taste to them.

It was a kitchen of want and need, as far as the widows were concerned. They learnt to innovate and also forage. With their diet deeply impacted by the restrictions forced upon them, they looked at how to manage their cravings and nutrition in the limited scope their diet offered. Aromatic spices like garam masala (powdered or whole spices comprising cardamom, cinnamon, mace, pepper, cloves) were ruled out. Masoor dal (red lentils) was ruled out, as was in some cases parboiled rice. These were believed to have aphrodisiac qualities and were, thus, taboo for a widow.

“The patriarchal society deemed it its responsibility to keep the widows and their passion under control. They had to follow a Spartan diet. So they learned to make do with whatever little they had,” says food historian and curator Aali Kumar.

Making do with little taught the women—what we stylistically refer to nowadays as—‘sustainability’. The concept of root to shoot became their abiding principle when cooking. Nothing was put to waste. Since they had so little to spare in the kitchen, they focused on not wasting anything. Not even the peels of potatoes, bottle gourd, spine gourd and the likes. These were either made into a stir-fry with a tempering of panch phoran (five spice mix) or nigella seeds, or made into a paste (bata) and lightly sautéed in the pan with chillies and a tempering of mustard seeds.

“Bengali widows did not eat onion or garlic for religious reasons, so they learned to make dishes with other spices, sometimes very simple, as with a panch phoran tempering, or kala jeera (nigella seeds) and green chilli tempering. For more elaborate dishes they used ghee and jeera (cumin seeds), bay leaf and red chilli for tempering. For heavier dishes, they made sauces from mustard seed paste and poppy seed paste. All these slowly became well accepted into the overall cuisine and would be served at feasts and weddings. Also, fritters became very popular, especially fried eggplant, potato and pumpkin,” says award-winning author, poet, activist and teacher of writing Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

In time, the society’s rigorous social sanctions on widows paved the way for a new cuisine.

This majestic cuisine was simple, due to the minimum use of spices. Hence, it could bring out the vegetables’ own flavours.

A variety of bhaja (fried) vegetables, chorchori (stir-fried side dish comprising the leftover peels of vegetables, stalks of leafy greens and cauliflower that would generally be thrown away), dhokar dalna (lentil dumplings steamed and made into a thick curried dish), mochar ghonto and thor bhaja (banana flowers and banana stems cooked with a simple tempering in mustard oil, with sometimes grated coconut to alleviate the taste) were born out of this want and need for food. As an alternative to meat, was born echorer dalna—a vegetable preparation made with raw jackfruit.

Palash Gupta, executive chef, Taj Hotel and Convention Centre Agra, says, “All these innovations have led to a significant contribution by widows to the Bengali vegetarian cuisine. The dishes that were created by them, because of the restrictions imposed, are now an intrinsic part of modern Bengali cuisine.”

Devoid of the kitchen of plenty of their married or single family members, the widows would also go foraging to add to their sparse ingredients. From near the fish ponds, they would harvest the easily available colocasia (arbi) leaves to make a simple stir fry. They would make sun-dried lentil dumplings to fry and add to their vegetables as a means of protein. They would also harvest fresh neem leaves for their stir-fries such as neem begun (made with neem leaves and eggplant). While the rest of the household would celebrate a tableful of plenty, the widow would quietly sit by her open stove to cook her simple meal.

The biggest irony was that the rest of the household would always make a beeline for what she cooked, for its unbeatable simple and rooted flavours. Little wonder that slowly the cuisine of the widows made an entry into the regular kitchen and before long found its way to the high table. In fact, no traditional Bengali feast today is complete without the various fries and, of course, sukto (a mixed vegetable dish made with a prominent taste of bitters such as bitter gourd and a splash of milk). “With passage of time, the cuisine of the widows evolved as heirloom recipes that imparted a distinct identity to myriad vegetarian dishes,” says Indian academic, food critic and historian Pushpesh Pant.

A cuisine that rose out of societal restriction has now made its space in the larger scheme of things. The condition of widows in Bengali has undergone a progressive sea-change. But in their time of want, they quietly contributed to the melting pot of Bengali cuisine.