Mutton and Russian cocktail kevabs Chicken curry rice A very Parsi Sunday lunch courtesy Rita Pastakia |
My immigrant food story
In the case of Mangalore, the idea was to trace the food DNA of the Mangalorean immigrants in Mumbai who are integral to the city’s eating out culture thanks to the restaurants that they have set up here.
In Kolkata I indulged in the flavours added to the city’s food culture, by folks from Lucknow and Varanasi in what is now called Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Odisha and even Tibets. Folks who had migrated to Kolkata themselves, or whose forefathers had.
As a child I moved with my parents from the UK where I was born, and where they had migrated to themselves from India, to Iran. And then, with them again as a kid, to India when we had to escape from the political unrest in Iran. I grew up in Kolkata and then moved to Mumbai for economic reasons, in search for better job prospects. Plus I was a bit bored in the city with most of my friends having moving out too.
My trips back to Kolkata are all about nostalgia now. I also root for England, the country of my birth, in the football world cups, and identify with its literature and sense of humour and spelling. I am married to a Parsi ,whose ancestors once lived in Iran, a country I had spent a year in myself.
Parsi cutles (made by my friend Veera) which I stuffed in wholewheat buns sourced from a modern baker here. The immigrant food culture is a perpetually evolving one and follows no rules |
Of dhansak promises and lacy cutlet dreams
Having the dhansak made by my friend Veera |
Veera belonged to the very first set of ‘work friends’ that I had made in Mumbai. That was twenty years back. Veera then moved to Oman with her husband and her daughter. Thankfully we have been in touch over the years and try to meet when she is in town.
A PR professional by training, Veera had taught herself to cook years back out of necessity. That was when her mother had gone abroad to look after Veera’s newly born niece. It turned out that the dabba (lunch service) that she had arranged for Veera and Veera’s dad (who is unfortunately no more) didn’t work out. Veera then took up the onus of cooking and feeding her dad and herself and taught herself how to cook.
Veera did a professional chef’s course recently in Oman and has even worked in five star hotel kitchens there for a short while and has done Parsi food pop ups in a restaurant in Dubai.
Last heard, her daughter Rhea, a most lovely young lady, wants to be a chef too once she is done with school.
The dar (dal with meat) of Veera’s dhansak dar (dal with meat as against the masala na daar which is sans meat) |
On the menu that night, was a most amazing dhansak which truly lived up to the high billing that it had got over the year from Veera, but wait there was more.
She also made a brilliant kolmi nu patia, prawns cooked in a thick tomato based salsa like sauce. The prawn patia was my late grandmother in law’s favourite dish and she would have approved of Veera’s one I am sure.
Veera made Parsi lacy mutton cutles too. I have had many cutles over the years and let me tell you this, and with no bias, that this was the best I ever had. In case you are wondering, some say that the Parsi cutlets are referred to as cutles because of the lace-like formation that the egg batter is is coated and fried in takes.
Veera’s mutton cutles |
Veera’s Prawn patia |
At chef Veera’s table with her mother, her daughter and her husband and K |
The curry that sang a song of joy
Rita Pastakia dishes out the curry made famous by her father, the late Dadi Pastakia |
This was when K and I had joined some of her friends at our Perin aunty’s place for lunch. You might recall our Jamshed Uncle from my blog if you have been a reader for a while. He is someone who was like a godfather and Father Claus for K an had adopted me too when I came into her life. He passed away last year and this left a huge hole in our lives. Perin aunty is his sister and some of us caught up at her place on Sunday to give her company and to celebrate Jamshed uncle’s memories.
With Perin aunty, K, and her friends, who are mine too and M, who is my friend, and is now a fellow non-Parsi member of the club. That’s Jamshed uncle in the pic |
The food for the afternoon was brought by over by Rita Pastakia. There is a bit of a back story to this meal and it goes back in time a few years.
The story dates backs to when K was in college. She and a few other girls used to hang out together, everyday after college got over. They would usually meet at Rita’s house at Navroze Baug. Navroze Baug happens to be the oldest Parsi colony in Mumbai. Rita’s father, the late Dadi Pastakia, was a very close friend of Jamshed Uncle. Dadi, who was known as Dadu among the girls, would feed them lunch every afternoon. The food would be served in really ample amounts and was customised to the needs and whims of each. He would cook the food himself and pour his heart into it while doing so. It was no wonder that the food was so legendary and so loved.
I had the good fortune of meeting him and tasting his food after I got married to K.
Russian kevabs on top, mutton kevabs at the bottom |
The afternoon started with a billion Russian kevabs (stuffed with shredded chicken and cheese and mashed potatoes) and mutton kevabs (minced goat meat) . The Parsi version of kebabs, pronounced kevabs from what I gather, are shaped liked meatballs. The kebabs could also be stuffed with prawns (kolmi nu kevab) or fish. They are fried in a thin egg coated batter and are delicious. They are rather different from the rhe chelo kebabs (rice with butter and minced meat on skewers) kebabs that my mother had learnt to make from her friends in Iran and would make for me when I was a kid. I loved those. We still have the skewers. I should learn the recipe from her and make them someday.
My fellow Bengalis will be happy to know that the Parsi curry has potatoes too. This possibly explains the number of Parsi and Bengali mixed marriages that you would have heard of.
Rita’s rendition of Dadu’s chicken curry rice |
We do miss her a lot. Yes, it is the family that I found in Mumbai through K and her family and friends that eventually sealed my Mumbai story.
That peaceful easy feeling after the lunch at Perin aunty’s |
Thanksgiving meals
There was my PG aunty (landlady), Kamlesh Agarwal, who figured out what I liked from her repertoire and ensured that I got my fill of alu pararthas and pohe for breakfasts, pakoras and dal rice lunches on weekends, chhole bhatoores on Sunday nights and most importantly, hot food every night when I returned home from work. Then there was Tokaidi and Kalyanda, a Bengali couple related to our neighbour in Kolkata, who had almost adopted me when I moved into the city. They would often ask me to come over and spend my off days with them and where they would feed me the best of food and let me recharge myself. My friend from B school’s sister, Tini and her husband Gora, a comparatively younger Bengali couple from Kolkata, would also ask me to come over and stay with them and unwind over good food and some stiff drinks when the going got tough. There were Amar and Nita too, who worked in advertising and who lived in Bandra, who would feed me breakfast, lunch or dinner when I dropped in at their place during my PG days. We were connected through a Buddhist organisation I had joined. Then there was Kinnari and Dhrupal, a brother and sister duo from the same organisation, whose mother would ask me to stay on for home cooked Gujarati meals when I dropped in to chant at their place during my early days in Mumbai.
Basking in glow of the meal that Veera cooked us |
Then there were some friends from work back in the day, who were married and who had set up home and who would call us single folks over to their tiny apartments, Kumar and Anna for example…and then there was Daisy and her husband Farrokh from my office who would ask me to join them for a meal at their bungalow in Bandra. Or even Veera too who had once me invited me over home for choi. and dar ni podi (the Parsi teatime treat)
And thank you for all the fish
Heera Bai and her daughters Poonam and Sangeeta at the Khar Station fish market |
Mangshor jhol |
The more famous Bengali mutton dish, kosha mangsho, where the meat is slow cooked with lots of onions and garam masala and oil, is a dish that is more at home at the cabin restaurants of Kolkata and in wedding menus too. At home, it is the thin goat meat curry with potatoes, the mangshor jhol, that rules on Sundays. You will rarely find this dish in restaurants apart from the pice hotels of Kolkata perhaps.
It was as if the marrow in the bone that I had on my plate jumped up to say ‘hi’ when I sucked at it .
Bengali mangshor jhol with Keralite red rice |
Ilish maachh bhaaja, jheeenge posto and red rice |
Didu (my granny) says that there was abundant ilish available in Dhaka during the rainy season when she was a child. The fish was so fresh that they would just lightly saute it with a touch of oil (shaatlano) and barely add any spices to the fish so that taste of the fish was not compromised with. The ‘fancier’ ilish (hilsa) preparations ,which have mustard or even coconut or tamarind in them, and are which so talked about today were apparently resorted to back then only when the fish was not fresh she said.
Hilsa in focus |
For once I didn’t even mind going through the minefield of fish bones that the fish offered and which scare me no end usually.
Happiness is a state of mind as they say.
The happy plate of food at Perin aunty’s house |
Please write in if like me, you too had moved out of home and were made to feel at home wherever you have moved to by its people and especially the meals they fed you. I would love to hear such stories and the world definitely needs to.
Appendix:
My YouTube Channel
Have you subscribed to Finely Chopped by Kalyan Karmakar on YouTube yet |
Now, here’s some news. I was finally able to figure out how to do something that I have wanted to for around 5 years. Renamed my YouTube channel and made it a ‘brand channel.’ ‘Finely Chopped by Kalyan Karmakar.’ Here’s the link, please like, share and subscribe.
This one is an independent channel solely owned by me unlike The Finely Chopped channel for which I had associated with the Ping Network.
Recipe time
Here are a couple of my recipes from Sunday and then one more. I have already told you about this fish. Do keep in mind that the recipes are self taught and my might not match your grandmom’s.
Jheenge posto
- Heat a teaspoon of mustard oil in a wok
- Add in half a teaspoon of panch phoron spices and a dried red chilli
- Add in 2 jheenges (ridge gourd), partially skinned and cubed
- Add 1/2 a teaspoon of turmeric and salt and let it cook for a while
- Then add a 50 g of crushed posto (poppy seeds), soaked in a couple of tablespoons of water
- Let this slow cook till the water dries up and the posto becomes creamy
Mangshor jhol
Ilish maached mudo diye lau
Machhed mudo diya lau with bajra roti |
Also read:
- A post on Dadu Pastakia written by K with my chippin in
- My post on Jamshed uncle
- My post on my ‘PG Aunty’
- My post on eating out in Mangalore
- My post on Kolkata’s Moghlai food culture
- An old post with the recipe to Veera’s dhansak