Bengali traditional cuisine is all about basic ingredients, and locally available fruits and vegetables to create a flavourful, tasty delight for the taste buds. This is such a recipe with very local produce from Bengal cooked with spices and prawns found in plenty in local rivers. Jackfruit is the basic element of this cuisine, not ripe Jackfruit but unripe ones that are found in plenty during the summers. Enchor is referred to as Gachh-patha, a goat that grows on trees. Cooked with prawns or shrimp, this cuisine is a gourmet delight. It is a tragedy that these types of cuisines are losing the patronage of the younger generations of Bengali society.
The cutting and cleaning take a little bit of patience, but it is not as difficult as it looks. It is now available with vegetable vendors and supermarts all cut and cleaned to pieces. With these memorable dishes, memories of the Bengali food culture come haunting.
Ingredients:
800 g cleaned Enchor (unripe jackfruit; 1.1 kg whole)
75 g prawns (optional, cleaned and deveined)
400 g potatoes
65 g tomato
3 pcs green chillies
25 g ginger
80 g mustard oil
3 pcs dried red chilli
3 pcs bay leaves
3 pcs cloves
3 pcs cardamom
2 pcs cinnamon
1 tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp Kashmiri red chilli powder
10 g cumin powder
3 g coriander powder
5 g turmeric
½ tsp hing (asafoetida)
18 g salt
25 g sugar
500 g hot water
1 tbsp ghee
¼ tsp gorom moshla (Green Cardamom 2-inch, Clove 5pcs. and Cinnamon 7 pcs. Dry roasted and powdered)
Instructions:
Peel and chop potatoes and divide them into 3 cm cubes. Roughly chop the tomatoes and slit the green chillies.
Clean and chop the echor into 3 cm cubes. Keep soaked in water until required to prevent it from turning black.
Strain the echor and place it in a saucepan with 500 ml hot water, 10 g salt and ½ tsp turmeric. Cover with a lid and steam for about 8 minutes until slightly softened. We don't want to cook the echor fully at this stage, just give it a bit of a head-start.
Drain the water and discard it. This will also get rid of the astringent flavour of the echor.
Heat mustard oil in a pan and allow it to smoke gently until it loses its pungent flavour and turns pale yellow.
If using prawns, smear them with salt and turmeric, and fry them for a minute before removing them from the oil. Set aside for later.
Fry the echor with ¼ tsp red chilli powder and 3 g sugar. Once it has fried for 4 to 5 minutes, strain it from the oil and set aside.
Now temper the oil with dried red chillies, bay leaves, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and cumin seeds.
Add potatoes and fry for 4 minutes on medium heat until golden. You can add about 2 g salt to season the potatoes.
Make a paste of spices by mixing cumin powder, coriander powder, turmeric and hing with a little water.
Add red chilli powder and Kashmiri red chilli powder directly to the oil and allow them to fry for 20 seconds.
Now add the spice paste prepared earlier. Saute the spices on medium heat for about 5 or 6 minutes, adding a splash of water whenever the pan dries out.
Add the ginger paste and fry the spices for another 3 to 4 minutes.
Add tomatoes and green chillies. Cook for 2 minutes.
Now add the fried echor along with 16 g salt, and braise it along with the spices for about 5 minutes. If the pan dries up, add a splash of hot water and continue braising.
If using prawns, you can add them to the pan now.
When the spices are well cooked, add 500 ml of hot water and 22 g of sugar.
Simmer on medium heat until the echor has cooked through.
Finish with ghee and gorom moshla. Cover the pan and rest it for 2 minutes before eating.
Enjoy with steaming hot rice or Pulao.
Recipe courtesy: Bong Eats.
The purpose of this blog is to research and preserve the traditional Bengali cuisines from our culinary history. One cuisine might have several minute variations depending upon various parameters like regional influence, personal liking or time period. In this process, I came across various contents and found this recipe to adhere to the originality.
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