Cooking with Thamma

Anupam's great Aunt and Uncle came to visit us.  True to usual Bengali style, they came with an appetite for good food and with family recipes to share.  I had a great week sharing with them all the lovely things I enjoy making, the vegetables in my garden, and learning all the family recipe secrets.  Lucky for you, I'm willing to share them too, but I'll start by talking a bit about how Bengali's eat and why I respect it so much.

Bengali food has a specific order in which it is enjoyed: first anything bitter, followed by posto, followed by daal, followed by fish, then meat and finally dessert.  Why do I respect this so much?  Well, for one, it starts with the healthiest (vegetables with bitterness contain quinine which is known to have many health benefits including preventing and fighting malaria) followed by other foods with important nutritional value such as daal (provides healthy protiens and vitamins) and fish (essential fatty acids) and ends with the less healthy dishes but which often give much satisfaction regardless of their nutritional value (meat and dessert).  Quantities are anyways small because a true Bengali feast has every course, but we finish the meal with the items we should eat the least of meaning we tend to eat less of it!  I love the subtleness with with Bengali tradition teaches the important of balance and satisfaction with food (it's okay to eat whatever we want, if we eat it in the right order and quantity). If only we would have followed that wisdom... ;)