Planet Kolkata

Where I write about my memories and my current experiences of Calcutta.

Pice Hotel Mutton Curry

“This can’t be right. TWO teaspoons of turmeric for half a kilo of mutton?” my cousin’s voice is shrill with disbelief.

“No souring agents either. No tomato, curd or tamarind” I say, playing the devil’s advocate.

“This is a Bengali curry, why should there be tamarind?”

“Right. Let me know what he says.”

My cousin’s husband, a retired judge, spent his days at the golf course, evenings at home writing his memoirs, and dreaming of food throughout. My cousin spent her days between her puja room and talking on the phone. She had completely withdrawn from the kitchen. The judge would occasionally demand exotic dishes from the two cooks who catered to his needs. Quite recently he had asked for ‘Goalanda chicken curry.’ Apparently, he used that streamer many times to cross the mighty Padma, now flowing through another country, and recently the taste of the curry cooked on the boat, had rekindled in his memory.

Goalando Ghat was where the trains from Calcutta would arrive and end, and travellers would take the steamer to reach other cities and towns of erstwhile eastern Bengal, later East Pakistan and now Bangladesh. The food available at the Ghat, and the steamer, was very famous for its taste and freshness. It was also inexpensive as it primarily catered to the poor and working class. My father had used the steamer many times and used go into raptures over the food there. Baba claimed that the Hilsa fish curry would use no oil at all, and the fresh fish, caught a few hours ago, would cook in its own fat, in some water with turmeric and fresh, green chillies, with an unbelievable flavour and aroma. I never believed him.

Now the judge wanted a chicken curry from that time. The cooks were from UP and Odisha and had no clue. So, my cousin turned to me. And I turned to my friend, a food historian, and could instruct her, “tell them to mix one tablespoon of dried shrimp paste in one kilo of chicken. And only onion, turmeric, garlic, ginger, dry red chillies, and couple of glugs of mustard oil. Tell them to mix everything together, massaging it all in, then add a few potatoes cut in two. That’s it. Nothing else. Cover the pan and put it on to cook on low heat. Open the lid after 40 minutes. You will get the most amazing chicken curry to die for.”

I heard that the judge was pleased.

The latest request was for Pice hotel mutton curry. Pice hotels were inexpensive eateries that came up at the turn of the century in Calcutta. They fed the young men who came alone to work or study. Pice stands for paisa. Pice hotels still stand in Calcutta providing fresh and inexpensive food. Their mutton curries were, and are, very famous. The Judge had lived, and eaten in one, while studying at the Presidency college.

I managed to trace a recipe and made it first as usual.  The flavours exploded in my mouth. Layers of taste, complex and exotic. I couldn’t believe the alchemy these simple spices had brought about. The game changer was jeeere-morich bata – a paste of cumin seeds and peppercorn.

You marinate the mutton with one onion sliced, and the paste of another, paste of dry red chillies, turmeric powder, paste of ginger and garlic, little cumin and coriander powders and jeere-morich bata. Mix in one teaspoon of mustard oil and let marinate for 3-4 hours. Put the mutton to cook, add hot water once everything has dried out, add a bay leaf, couple of cardamom, cloves and a tiny cinnamon. When nearly done add fried potatoes. That’s it.

I heard the judge had cried.

Longing for home is an eternal human craving. But when home is in a land separated by a national border, truncated by a line drawn by the colonial masters, guarded by men in arms and barbed wire, when visiting is nearly impossible, memories take on special significance. Both sides of my family, like millions of others, were forced to leave home, land, trees, crops, livestock, river, ponds, the sunrise and sunset, the soft eastern breeze, the family Gods, and migrate to a new place. Not quite as refugees, but as dispossessed certainly. Loss ran so deep that I, the two generations away, can describe the family home as though I have seen it. I haven’t. Naturally then food became one of the few surviving connections to a way of life lost forever. A life mourned like death. Food is nostalgia after all.