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Streetside menu

Kolkata special
Last Updated 25 July 2015, 18:43 IST

Hundreds of recipes for lunch, dinner and snack time have been developed lovingly over the centuries by homemakers and food vendors of Kolkata. Snacks, mainly treated as street food, figure prominently in the list. Bengalis usually have late dinners, and an afternoon snack is quite the norm. Even today, despite the fancy outlets and the so-called mall culture, a majority of city folks swear by signature street food.

On Kolkata streets, going hungry will be the least of your problems. You don’t have to go to a particular locality to eat. It’s spread all over the city like a vast food court. The varied fare is affordable. For, where will you get the tasty bread toasts topped with butter and sprinkled with sugar that have to be washed down with freshly brewed tea served in earthen bhars?

Take a walk around the old part of the city in north Kolkata or a bazaar area in the afternoon and you will find it alive with the aroma of freshly made snacks. Fried dishes, commonly referred to as tele bhaja, sizzle in big flat karais: beguni — slices of brinjal dipped in besan mix, mochar chop (banana flower croquettes), mangshor chop (mutton) and nimki — all beckon to be savoured. Chingri (prawn) chops and fish fry (made with bhetki fillet) and fish roll are among the favourites of fish-loving Bengalis.

Culinary combo

Some like to enjoy tele bhaja with jhal moori, puffed rice with chopped green chilli, a spoonful of mustard oil, groundnuts, spices and perhaps a few pieces of coconut, and served in cones made of old newspapers.

Singara (samosa) takes in different stuffings — potato and cauliflower with peas in winter. Add to it, kachuri or radhaballavi (stuffed puri) accompanied by alur dum (potato curry) or thick cholar dal (gram dal) and it can even replace a breakfast or lunch. Ghugni (chickpea curry) and roti is another popular dish.

For a lip-smacking quick bite, try out alu kabli, a boiled-potato mix. Or take Kolkata’s ubiquitous phuchka. Admirers would dismiss its counterpart gol-gappa of north India as a backbencher. Every street corner has a kiosk, but the ones lining the Vivekananda Park in south Kolkata are popular.

With changing tastes and a large presence of vegetarian communities, the people of Kolkata, who are known to experiment with food, have taken to dosa, idli-sambar and chaats (north-Indian style) with equal zest. You just have to scour the streets for this.

Coming to meat lovers, nobody can ignore the famous kathi roll, Kolkata’s invention, which has today made forays into other metros. Simply put, it’s a roti stuffed with smoked tandoor meat pieces. But done the right way, it’s heavenly, filling and satisfying. Around any festival or puja venue, you cannot avoid bumping into one of these portable vans holding huge flat tawas, churning out an assembly line of mutton, chicken, egg-chicken and double-egg rolls. Remember Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan savouring rolls by the riverside in the film Piku?

Mughlai paratha, filled with minced meat and layered in egg before folded into squares and fried, has its own group of admirers. It is said to be another Kolkata speciality.

The other perennial street food is the chow mein, the Chinese community’s gift to Kolkata cuisine. Even today, despite the dwindling population, Kolkata has the largest Chinese community in the country. It is concentrated in old Chinatown in Tiretti Bazaar and Tangra. People may say this concoction is nothing like that in the home country, but who cares? Every country adds a bit of its own to a ‘foreign’ cuisine, after all. Where else will you get a plate of mixed chow mein or a vegetarian version in a jiffy and at an affordable rate? Or, maybe you would like to order a plate of chilli chicken or chilli paneer to go with it? No problem at all. Of late, momos, introduced by the hill people living in the city, is a popular order, and momo joints are flourishing here.

Kolkata was the capital of British Indian empire till 1911, and the Anglo Indian influence is palpable in some of its snacks. For example, the cutlet, the dimer devil (something like Scotch Egg, but spicier) etc. Kabiraji, a Kolkata speciality, is a cutlet with a difference. Mutton or chicken is pounded and shaped into ovals and covered with a thick layer of whipped-egg mix before it is deep fried and then served with green salad and mustard sauce. The dish would tempt any non-vegetarian.

Kolkata has thousands of sweetmeat shops, some of which also serve savouries. Even then, homemade sweets like malpua and coconut laddoo (brought in by vendors in local trains) have their own clientele. Kolkata is indeed a place for gastronomic delights.

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(Published 25 July 2015, 16:27 IST)

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