Fish or Chicken or Mutton Cream

Binapani Mitra

Amala Bala’s spin on her aunt Binapani Mitra’s recipe which we grandchildren on our visit to Calcutta and having made gluttons of ourselves for some consecutive meals; be given food to eat that weaned us, gradually, from our epicurean desires. One of the first dishes was this one. It duped us into believing our granny was giving us a continental dish. The progress to boiled foods came far too cruelly fast. With a stern look at us, granny would say, ‘you need to clean up your insides.’

Fish half kg. Boil the fish with one large onion and some ginger. Remove the bones and skin after boiling. Drain the water. In another large bowl whip two eggs, half litre milk, one large tablespoon of butter, one large sliced onion - parboiled, few sprigs of parsley, one pinch of pepper, salt, and two thick slices of bread. Mash the boiled onion and ginger and whip these with the rest. Add the boiled fish and whip till the mixture is light. Line steel or copper bowl with butter and spread biscuit crumbs over the butter. Pour in the whipped mixture and cover with buttered paper. Place the bowl in a larger bowl or saucepan with water and begin boiling the water. Cover the container of mixture with a lid and place some burning coals on it. Cook for half and hour and it is ready to eat.

My friend Ammu, a Malayali who was born in Chennai and eventually married a Bengali, remaining in Chennai; served this dish to us and once I got past the deep fried crumbled curry leaves; it was straight into nostalgia territory. Ammu said she didn’t know how this dish was introduced to her, but it had been in her family for generations. That’s what I meant when I mentioned that Binapani Mitra’s recipes are so very traditional it is hard to trace the tradition. The only difference is that instead of parsley Ammu uses deep fried curry leaves.

To serve four

Ingredients

Fish or chicken or mutton – half kg

Eggs – two

Onion – two large

Ginger – 250gms

Butter – 100gms

Parsley sprig or deep fried curry leaves

Milk – one litre

Bread – two thick slices

Pepper – one pinch

Salt – to taste

Step One

Wash and clean the meat or fish or chicken.

De-bone meat and put to boil – 20 minutes

If you use fish or chicken boil 10 minutes

Remove and throw away water.

De-bone and skin again till absolutely clean. Shred the meat finely.

Step Two

Slice fine the onions.

Crumble two thick slices of bread.

Put onion and bread in a bowl.

Pour one liter of milk into bowl.

Add two eggs.

Add 100gms butter, chopped parsley (or curry leaves), salt to taste and pepper.

Whip with fork for 10 minutes till the ingredients have consistency of a smooth sauce.

Add the meat or fish or chicken to the whipped ingredients.

Whip for another 10 minutes till the sauce is thick and without lumps.

Take a bowl and coat it with butter. Use biscuit crumbs to line the bowl. Pour in the ingredients. Roast at 250 degrees for 10 minutes OR Pressure cook for 15 minutes.

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Brinjal Apple Kashmiri dish

Binapani Mitra (translated by Ketaki Dutt)

The thought of this lady from one hundred years ago cooking a Kashmiri dish, fills me with wonder.

It is common now to do so. Most of us are looking for dishes that will please our palate and there are ample dishes to choose from. In the days of Binapani Mitra food that appeals to persons so far north was a rarity. At the most Binapani would cook ‘Madrasi’ dishes; Bihari dishes were common enough and only a rare Punjabi dish made its appearance, but this was the only Kashmiri dish in her file.

I had cooked this for a French couple who practiced Yoga and preferred Sattvik food. So no onions and garlic. How well it was appreciated! Enjoy.

Ingredients

1. 1 kg apple.

2. 1/2 kg brinjal.

3. 2 table spoon mirchi (red chilly powder).

4. 2 table spoon sounf (fennel powder).

5. 1/2 tea spoon saunth (ginger powder).

6. 1 table spoon namak (salt).

7. 1 tea spoon garam masala (mixture of ground cinnamon, black cardamom and cloves).

8. 1 tea spoon zeera (cumin).

9. 1 table spoon mango powder (if apple are sweet).

Method

1. Wash the frui and vegetables.

2. Cut the apple and brinjal into pieces.

3. Fry the brinjal and apple in a pan and keep them in a bowl.

4. Drain off the excess oil from the pan and add zeera in it

5. Put the chilly powder in oil and stir it along with 50ml water till the water evaporates and oil separates.

6. Add the fried contents in the pan and mix evenly.

7. Add all the ingredients along with 500 ml water and keep on low flame for 5 minutes.

8. Serve hot with boiled rice.

Note: If the apples are already sour, do not add mango powder.

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Anglo Indian Mutton Vindaloo

Binapani Mitra

(When I first made this recipe somewhere abroad fellow Indians thought I was pulling a fast one, making do with available spices as a result the dish was a far cry from the Goan Vindaloo that most were used to. I suppose at the time of Binapani Mitra it was a brave to cook an Anglo Indian dish and publish it too. Remember this is the 1930s when publishing European dishes were not a no-no but the Anglo-Indian dishes were a hot favourite for the Bengali palate. But to proudly describe it so at the time must have been a brave act - Editor)

Ingredients

 Goat meat – 1 kg

 Cumin seeds – 200gm

 Pepper seeds – 50gm

 Dry red chillies – six

 Mustard seeds – 200 gm

 Ginger – 1” stick

 Tamarind – 1 medium sized ball soaked in water

 Onion – 2 big roughly chopped

 Garlic – 10 chopped

 Mustard oil – 4 medium serving spoons

Wash and clean and then soak the mutton in half the ball of soaked tamarind ball water. Keep aside for half an hour.

Grind the mustard seeds with some tamarind water. Keep aside. Grind the rest of the spices with the remaining tamarind water. Mix the ground mustard seeds with the rest of the ground spices.

Take the mutton and mix the marinade well into the meat. Heat the oil and dip the marinated meat into the hot oil. Stir the meat in the oil so the grease seals the juice of the meat. You can chop 4 to 6 potatoes in French fry shapes and fry the potatoes in the oil with the meat. When the meat starts turning brown, put the onion and garlic in. Fry. When the onion loses color put in the ground spices and salt. Toss everything well and put in a cup of hot water for the gravy, the gravy should be enough to coat the meat and potatoes, avoid too much water.

You can use a pressure cooker, but at the time of Binapani there was no such quick-cook apparatus. I suppose the slow cooking made the dish that much more tasty.

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More of Binapani’s Recipes

Binapani Mitra

This the section of the book on BODA

Or the small dumplings made in the kitchens of India, Binapani Mitra introduced the interesting recipes of the forgotten days.

We start this section with KOCHUR BODA.

This is somewhat like the Gujarati rolls of the stalks and leaves found in shallow waters which most of us do not eat, because truly, it is a tedious cooking process. Also it is an infrequent sales article; perhaps the domestic staff can help pick the correct vegetable. The vegetable looks like thick green leaves with paler shade of green stalks that are thick and juicy.

Kochur Boda

Ask for Kochu in the market and pick the freshest looking leaves.

Try to snap the leaves to test the freshness. Wash well. Often a pinch of salt rubbed onto the leaves while washing, does a good job of cleaning.

Now cut the leaves in strips and use a pestle to roughly crush the leaves. Use running water to clean the leaves again.

Squeeze the water out and use the pestle to make a paste. Or use the food processor/mixie or hand mixie. The paste need not be very smooth. Throw out the extra liquid.

Now mix coconut powder to the paste. The coconut powder should be twice as much as the paste.

Now heat a shallow kadai and use two drops of olive oil or coconut oil to fry two teaspoons of mustard seeds and sliced green chillies (to taste) and toss the paste in the oil.

Try to dry the entire paste. Keep aside to cool. Now mix two teaspoons of rice flour to the mixture, form balls and pat dry to form kabab like cakes.

(Translated by) Ketaki Dutt-Paul

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Recipe for Potato chop

Binapani Mitra

101 Traditional Recipes from a Bengalee lady of Olde Calcutta

The original Bengali book Randhan Sanket (literally translated ‘Cooking Instructions’) was my grandmother’s wedding gift to all her female relations. My grandmother, Amala Bala Dutt was fourteen years old when she married and died at the age of ninety – during her life-time there were many girls who married and she would dip into her rapidly diminishing pile of this cook-book till it became a family joke. She was very proud of this book. Because her aunt had written it.

Amala Bala and her aunt belonged to one of those illustrious Bengali landed gentry that one reads about today. I have myself visited their ‘country seat’ just once. My grandmother had insisted on rounding up her grandchildren, over-riding the objections of our parents, and whisked us through miles of monsoon mist and swampy lands to reach this palatial building that stood on the banks of one of the swollen tributaries of the Hooghly river.

The building was of course a shadow of its original grand self. Rooms with high ceilings, ornate doors and marble floors, towering oil paintings on mouldy walls, cracked Belgian mirrors and dusty chandeliers, dark wood Victorian furniture draped in dust-sheets – a veritable ghost Bungalow setting! The two-storied building did not have electricity at the time. I remember my granny presiding over the meal that we ate sitting on the floor, eating from brass plates and served by the family retainers. She asked us to savour the freshly plucked vegetables from the vast fields surrounding the house, we competed to recognize the various scents of the turmeric and the spices grown in the fields and dried, ground and added to each dish. It was a wonderful experience that made future foodies of the children there. And all those dishes are included in this book.

Amala Bala’s aunt, the author of the book, Binapani Mitra must have been a very rare woman. I have heard tales of how she had been one of the early convent educated women, fluent in English and French, an avid tennis player, a voracious reader of books in three languages and a writer of an extremely popular cookbook.

Pirated copies of the book Randhan Sanket can still be found in cheap editions and still form a part of the dowry of a new bride. The traditional recipes are still used today and bear the nomenclature of ‘Hindoostani’ recipes and South Indian recipes are very simply described as ‘Madrasi’ in the book.

The recipes in the book have been selected on the basis of traditions, and for the simple easiness of preparation. The author’s characteristic easy cooking style makes it very contemporary and suitable for cooks of today. And naturally, that which sets it apart from the other cookbooks in the market is that the recipes form the corpus of traditional recipes of India and British India.

In the 1930s when Binapani Mitra wrote her cookbook, ladies were not really expected to enter the kitchen and the recipes read out to the cook by an employee higher up in the hierarchy of domestic employees.  Measures were not needed; everything was by ‘andaaz’ loosely translated to mean a knowledgeable estimate.  

Some samples of the recipes of Binapani Mitra in direct translation are given and we hope others out there, our friends from the rest of India, and from the world over will submit their own recipes – those handed down, those rediscovered, those with a twist … Or perhaps some will give more updated versions of the recipes with measure and cooking time and the method of cooking – by oven or on gas-fire and pressure cooker or by microwave. Write in?

 

Devilled Potatoes

(Translated by) Ketaki Dutt-Paul

One of my earliest memories are of the splendid potato dish, Alu Bonda served at the birthday parties next door at Aunty Norma’s at Hyderabad. This is where we stayed as children for a few years and more than the memories of the kababs at Hussein Sagar dam, the Alu Bonda is the comfort food from childhood for me. After being gifted Randhen Sanket I found this recipe, but why it should be called ‘devilled” I don’t know.

Ingredients:

Medium sized potatoes, paneer, khus-khus, almonds, zafran, salt, sugar, ground red chillies, flour or arrowroot, milk, powdered puffed rice or chivda, ghee.

Method:

Parboil the potatoes in jacket. Be careful that you do not over-boil. Slice the top of the potatoes and keep aside. Cool the potatoes and then scoop out from the center. The scooped out area should be sufficient for the stuffing.  Now take the zafran and mix it with milk and knead into the paneer for colour. Heat the ghee and fry the chilli paste. Sprinkle water from time to time adding the paneer, almonds and khus-khus. Do not fry it, and stir till it turns golden. Now stuff the potatoes with the paneer. Make a thin paste with the water and flour. Cover each potato with its lid and apply the paste to keep the top firm. Now make another paste of flour and water or with arrowroot. Dip the potatoes in the paste. Roll the dipped potatoes in the powdered rice or puffed rice or flat rice (chivda). Fry till golden brown, use a brown paper to soak the extra oil and serve hot.

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