priya's tumeric fried fish (maas baja)

Whenever I think of Durga Puja, apart from the beat from the dhaks (drums) and aromatic aromas from the dhunachis, the first thing that comes to mind is khichdi! I'll be honest, i'm not the biggest fan of khichdi but it is a wholesome and (probably, unconfirmed) nutritious food. Especially when you consider it was probably used to feed the ill during the Bengal basonto (small pox) epidemics as mentioned in our earlier post.

There is probably not a single Bengali household that doesn't have their own, finely refined, recipe that they follow. So this is not aimed at those households. This post is aimed at those who haven't been so lucky to have their family recipe handed down to them, find themselves 'out of the home' for the first time for uni or work, or have never tried Khichdi (I can relate to this one).

This is my mum's personal recipe and as a lot of you will know: first generation Bengali mums have an encyclopedic knowledge of 100s if not 1,000s of delicious Bengali recipes and my mum is no exception. With cooking so intuitive to her, she is also not much of a 'measurement' person so when discussing this recipe, mum provided measurements in the form of 'handfuls' and 'pinches', so I have translated this for us mere mortals where cooking is not yet intuitive.

Give it a go and I hope you enjoy it!

ingredients

The following measurements should be sufficient for a nutritious (probably, unconfirmed) meal or as prasad:

• 1.5 cup of moong dal (skinned split mung gram)

• 0.75 cups of white rice, washed

• Water as required

• Sambas:

• 1. Red dried chilli

  2. 1 tsp Panch puran (fenugreek seeds, nigella seeds, cumin seed, black mustard seed and fennel seed in equal parts)

  3. 1tsp Ginger, grated

• Tumeric - 1 tsp

• Salt - for taste (I added 1tsp)

Extras, as desired

• Mixed powder

• Tomatoes

• Vegetables

• Coriander leaves

Method

• In a saucepan on a medium heat, heat the lentils (you can add a little oil if required) for two to three minutes.

• Add the water to cover half the saucepan.

• Add the rice into the saucepan.

• Add the tumeric and salt to the saucepan.

• Gently stir the mixture and let it simmer until.

• In a separate frying pan, prepare the sambas by heating oil in the frying pan on a high heat. Once the oil is hot, add the red dried chilli, panch puran, and ginger and stir constantly until the chilli turns black.

• Add the sambas to the mixture in the saucepan and stir gently.

• The khichdi is ready once it is at a similar consistency to porridge.

Best served the traditional Bengali way with aloo baja, a few boras, and upon a banana tree leaf (as pictured). For a British Bengali twist, you can throw in a couple of poppadoms and some sweet mango chutney on the side (more the merrier, trust me - it needs it!).