Food is part of our belonging. Food is so important that mention of it can be found in Bengali poetry. My favorite poet Sukumar Roy said…
” খাই খাই কর কেন, এসো বসো আহারে
খাওবো এমন খাওয়া, ভোজ কয় যাহারে!”
– সুকুমার রায়
My hubby lovingly translated the two lines I mentioned above –
“Don’t lust for a meal when you can feast at a junket
Will feed you such a spread you will feel like a banquet”
– My Hubby
And later more aptly put by Kabir Suman “জীবন আসলে বাঁধা পাকস্থলীতে” means our life is bound to our stomach.
Thus, here I present some recipes to satisfy our stomach and I also try to make the spread such a way that it fulfills the Banquet criterion as well.
I tried to keep all the recipes easy and quick to make. I believe anyone of us can cook, we only required a good recipe, a little bit of imagination and a some courage. A good recipe is just a guideline, it is all up to you to mold it as per your own taste buds. So try these and change as you wish, but most importantly enjoy!
As for something about me –
I am Sharmistha and this is my attempt to share my quick and easy recipes. I am a working mother and just like any other mothers I am very short of time. You see a day only contains a finite number of hours, so we need to use every single one of them very carefully.
Before going into the reason of this blog, let me tell you my story. I learnt to cook when I went for my higher studies and had to stay with couple of friends outside hostel. Before that I didn’t even turn on a stove! Embarrassing! But what can I do, I had to learn.
Fortunately I got a good teacher. Both of my friends were not only good cooks, one of them was exceptionally good teacher as well. It was long ago, and now I can cook most of the dishes. I am still a bit shaky when it comes to desserts. Most of the times the procedures are very complicated. I will tell you that story some other time may be.
Cooking is something I am passionate about when I have to do it not too often and luckily (may be my granny’s gene) most of the times my experiments with food paid off. But when it comes to daily cooking, I am not too thrilled about it. Most nagging part of it is the planning and close second is cooking. Then an epiphany dawned on me, that I am trying everything wrong!
What was I trying wrong? I was trying elaborate cooking, which takes almost whole day of preparation and pre-preparation and post-preparation. The number of ingredients makes a list, which is seven feet long. Now who has so much of time!
Then by compulsion I had to think of recipes which I can make under 30 mins. I tried Bengali, North Indian, South Indian, Continental, Chinese, Veg, Non-Veg and off-course Baby-Foods. I was able to bring out the taste of most of the dishes, and if you are a Bengali or you know a Bengali, then you maybe aware of the importance of the taste.
Now my plan is to share my recipes, so that people like me, working moms, do not need to spend a lot of time on thinking, planing, shopping and cooking, so that they can spend more time with their loved ones. And also all the bachelors out there, who do not want to spend a lot of time in kitchen but long for a good home cooked food, you also can try out some of the recipes and see if this work out for you.