Taste of Bengal

Baked shingara and home made bhapa pitha.

Fresh kolmi shaak bhaji and pui shaker jhol

Lau chingri, chingri shutki diye lauer khosha bhorta, kacha tomator khatta. All organic produce.

Kacchi khacchi.

Due to growing up in Dhaka, I have been quite a carnivorous person. But after getting fresh produce from a friend, I cooked Kumra shak with potato and daler bora in a mustard gravy (which is actually the best tasting one out of this three dishes), kacha tomator chatni and amrul/amruli/shushni shaaker jhol. Used minimum spice to keep the veggie's tastes intact. Probably the best tasting food I made till now. Chatni and amrul shaker jhol is finished in a day.
What marvelous veggies we have in Bangladesh. Didn’t appreciate these when I was living back home.

Due to kitchen renovation, sadly, there won’t be any service for next three weeks. 😓

Introducing moondi/moongdi.
Moongdi is a rice noodle soup from Rangamati, Bandarban hilltracts of Bangladesh. It’s majorly consumed by Chakma, Marma, Rakhain indigenous communities. Several versions of Moongdi is found in the south-eastern hilltracts of Bangladesh and several other variations are found in Myanmar.

The speciality of Bangladeshi Moongdi is the thicker handmade noodles. In the hilltracts, the makers and sellers are often not indigenous! The variations of Moongdi found in Bangladesh are egg moongdi, shrimp moongdi, chicken moongdi. Moongdi is often served with Chicken Lakso (Chicken salad), chicken tikka kababs, egg and shrimps. The chicken used for moongdi broth is later turned into salad. A great way to avoid food waste.

The soup has quite sour, hot taste and a strong smell of dried shrimps.

The best kind of moongdi according to me is one which has a mix of indigenous chicken tikka kababs, shrimp and a half-boiled egg in it.

Shorisha chingri is one of my mother's dishes that I terribly missed. With all the headless shrimps frozen to rubberiness, I was looking for fresh whole ones. Yesterday I got lucky and got some from a fish market of chinatown. In addition to that, got some live crabs as well. At 3am cooked all these and served myself with shorisha chingri and kakrar jhal.

If you want any of these in the future menu, let me know in the comment.

Introducing Assamese Masor Tenga (Maacher tok). In many areas of Bangladesh it is known as Maacher khatta. In Bangladesh, unlike some traditional variations of Assam, oil and tumeric is used. The sour ingredient can be any sour fruit or leaves. The variation depends on the seasons produce and also the cook. The fish can be small to big, any size.

Most traditional Masor Tengas aren’t cooked with oil and tumeric. The sour fruit can be tomatoes, green mangoes, chalta (elephant apple), amruli shaak (creeping woodsorrel), chuori (roselle) or chuori pata/mesta shaak (roselle leaves), olives, hog plums, Garcinia pedunculata (থৈকর ফল), etc. My father's absolute favourite was with chuori (roselle). And aah that magnificent red colour of that Maacher Tok, poured on a plate of steaming rice, on a summer noon, and then a bhatghum used to be so relaxing.

Proceedure:
1) Fry the fish on a non-stick pan. If you have no problem with the whitish hue of the raw fish, skip the frying part.
2) Thinly slice onions, 2 chillies, and your sour fruit/ingredient, take the vietnamese basil leaves, some salt and mix well with the fish. Use your hand for mixing please. Pour water according to your desired amount of gravy. Place on stove and cover. Let it come to a boil.

3) When it starts boiling, smash 3/4 cloves of garlic, 3-4 green chillies and half an inch of ginger. Do not use paste or powder. The taste completely changes.

4) Put the crushed garlic, ginger and green chillies and cover again. Let it cook for 10 minutes

5) After 10 minutes cut thai coriander leaves (culantro), spread on the curry and cover for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes your curry is ready to be served.

Anyway, just make sure to use thai/bileti dhonepata rather than regular coriander leaves and to make it absolutely authentic, you will need some Sabarang pata (Vietnamese basil) from Indonesian or Thai grocery stores of Ottawa.

Happy cooking🤤🥳!

What's the name?

None of our dishes are cooked with local onions which are sweet in taste and hence makes our Bangladeshi dishes rather sweet. Our bhorta becomes sweet, our mangsher jhol becomes sweet, our alu-korola bhaji becomes sweet. We only use deshi peyaj (aka thai shallots) to maintain the authentic taste of Bangladeshi dishes.

Bhuna khichuri with dim bhuna available for pick up from 76 Rue Jolicoeur on Tuesday (9am-2pm) at $5 per box. Delivery not available.

Craving some sorishar teler tehari anyone?

This week's delivery complete.

Menu for this week