The Spiritual Way – Ceylon Arrack The Appetizer – Curry Fish Balls The Main Course – Kabuli Pulao The Dessert – Shahi Tukda The Takeaway – Hilsa Diplomacy |
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Hello and welcome to the 11th edition of Foodgasm – a five-course meal for your inbox. It’s fitting that the 11th edition deals with cricket, a game in which two teams of 11 muscular whey-powered troglodytes try to hit a leather ball with a wooden bat as far as they can, while commentators come up with superlative invectives to describe said hitting. And then they have the temerity to call it the “Gentleman’s Game”.
Realising that no one had the time – or inclination – to sit around for five days, the game was finally whittled down to 20 overs each.
Tonight, is the final of something called the Asia Cup which will be contested between Sri Lanka and Pakistan, a showdown which some have dubbed the IMF Loan Classico. Of course, it’s unlikely to match the scenes from the time Afghanistan took on Pakistan.
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Most nations that take cricket seriously (barring SENA) are from the Indian subcontinent, dubbed ‘South Asia’ by American think tankies.
Now, whatever your views on the geopolitics of the region, there’s no denying that this cradle of human civilisation has one of the greatest culinary traditions in the world. So, to commemorate tournament that celebrates hitting leather with willow, we’ve five dishes – one from each team that contested the final round of the Asia Cup (barring India).
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Ceylon Arrack from Sri Lanka |
(Source: Twitter / Ceylon Arrack)
Jug Suraiya, India’s pre-eminent humour columnist, who also happened to be a decent travel writer had once observed, while visiting Sri Lanka in 1984: “The job of the travel writer was the polar opposite of the war correspondent.” He goes on to point out that while the war correspondent must “seek conflict and carnage”, the travel writer must discover “the normal, the unthreatening, even in war zones”. And no country lays out the red carpet like Sri Lanka.
To begin our meal, we’ve Sri Lanka’s favourite spirit, arrack, which is made from toddy and tastes like a mix of rum and tequila. The word “arrack” comes from the Arabic ‘araq’ meaning sweat, from the phrase ‘arak al-tamr’, indicating a spirit made from dates.
The drink is mostly consumed neat or with ginger beer. It’s also mixed with cola, soda or even lime juice.
Some popular cocktails include:
Aliya: Sinhalese for elephant, where the mixer is fresh coconut water or even coconut water cubes. In some cases, coconut water is replaced with ginger ale.
Island Currency: The Island Currency consists of 50 ml of Ceylon Arrack poured into a cracket coconut (without spilling the water) with a wedge of lime.
Arrack Attack: 35ml of arrack with a long slice of peeled cucumber, six drops of turmeric bitters and topped with Ginger beer. Garnished with a sprig.
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Curry Fish Balls from Hong Kong |
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
From Hong Kong, we’ve curried fish balls, a local delicacy which is widely popular in that part of the world and looks a bit like rosogullas. The dish has been popular in Southern China since the Qing dynasty. However, Hongkongers took it to the next level by frying them till they get a golden coating.
In fact, there’s an entire debate about the preparation of fish balls, with purists arguing that machine-moulded balls lack the firm bite of hand-made ones.
There are three kinds sold in Hong Kong – yellow, white, and golden. Yellow ones are the most common on the street, while white ones are made with white fish (like Spanish mackerel) and tend to be more elastic and bouncier. Golden ones on the other hand are popular on Cheng Chau, the dumbbell-shaped Southwest of Hong Kong and made with fresh fish.
In fact, such is the popularity of the fish balls that it made its way into the popular lexicon. A “fish ball girl” refers to an underage sex worker while the 2016 Mong Kok civiil unrest where hawkers took on the government has been referred to as the “Fishball Revolution”.
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Kabuli Pulao from Afghanistan |
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
For many of us, the first we heard the words Kabul was in Rabindranath Tagore’s sublime melodramatic short story titled Kabuliwalla, which portrayed the filial friendship between a Pathan hawker and a young Bengali girl Mimi. And the first dish we often heard of was Kabuli Pulao. Incidentally, both are sweet stories revolving around nuts.
As this Dawn piece notes, in both Central Asia and Afghanistan, meat was considered the key to valour, strength and virility and rice cooked in meat became the warrior’s food of choice. In fact, when Babur came to India, he complained about the lack of produce as people from Khyber were used to eating what they called superior food: meats, grapes, melons, dry fruits et al.
And it’s these ingredients that gives the Kabuli pulao its quintessential mix of savoury and sweet. In fact, carrots were indigenous to Afghanistan for at least 5000 years as, were grapes, dry fruits, raisins, all of which came together to create what is thought to be a superior amalgamation of meat and rice.
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Shahi Tukra from Pakistan |
(Source: HT PHOTO)
And now from Pakistan, we’ve shahi tukra – a dish that literally means a “royal piece” or a “royal bite”. In its simplest essence, it’s bread pudding from Mughal courts. Before purists enter the chat with digital daggers, it’s important to point out that the dish is equally popular in India, and a staple during Eid.
Like many other dishes, including butter chicken and chicken lollipop, the propensity to prevent waste created this culinary marvel. Instead of throwing away stale bread, the shahi tukda became the perfect dish to break one’s fast on Eid.
Bread is fried in oil/ghee, post which milk and sugar is added. It’s also infused with dry fruits. Some say it came with Babur, while others find a link with baked Egyptian bread dessert created by one Umm Ali. Legend states that the king and their troupe were hunting along the Nile when they felt hunger pangs. The villagers called the village cook who whipped a dessert consists of cream, milk, sugar and some nuts.
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Ilish machher tirish kata Boal machher dari Bhutto saheb bhikkha kore Sheikh Mujib-er bari.
Hilsa has 30 bones
The Wallago catfish has a beard
Mr Bhutto is begging
At Sheikh Mujib’s home
It’s a testimony to Hilsa’s supremacy that the rebellious taunt against Pak PM Bhutto in 1971, during Bangladesh's war for independence, included a reference to hilsa. This just shows the hallowed pedestal that hilsa or ilish is placed.
The truth is that being a Bengali means one has to fulfil various criteria to prove one's Bongness, a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Bong Needs and Wants if you will.
Considering Boroline the panacea for ailments.
Getting up at 3AM to listen to Mahalaya.
Drinking Gelusil after inhaling a deeply fried meal to ward off acidity.
Singing Rabindrasangeet with an out-of-tune pitch.
But at the very base of Maslow’s hierarchy of being Bengali is to admit the supremacy of Ilish or Hisla. East or Oeest, Ilish is best. In fact, if Napoleon was Bengali, his war cry after exile would’ve been: “Able was ere I saw Ilish.”
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Of course, East Bengalis have a stronger inclination for the fish compared to their Western counterparts, which is evidenced by the fact that East Bengal fans celebrate a football win with ilish while Mohun Bagan fans prefer prawns.
In fact, it’s not like ilish isn’t available in West Bengal, but the sweetest hilsa is found in Padma River, and so while Hooghly has Hilsa, Bengalis from India crave the ilish from across the border.
Hilsa Diplomacy
While ilish turned up in the war cry for independence, Mujibur Rahman’s daughter Sheikh Hasina has elevated hilsa diplomacy to an artform, on par with India-Pak’s “cricket diplomacy” and US-China’s “ping pong diplomacy”.
While there’s an official ban of export on hilsa from Bangladesh to India (since 2012), the ban is lifted in times of goodwill, especially during Bengali festivals like Durga Puja and Jamai Shasti.
Hilsa Diplomacy originated in 1996 when she sent hilsa to erstwhile Bengal CM and aristocratic communist Jyoti Basu before the landmark Ganges water-sharing treaty.
In 2010, she brought hilsa for Mamata Banerjee, who was then the railway minister.
When former President Pranab Mukherjee visited Dhaka, she had a five-course meal for him, including hilsa.
When Mamata became CM in 2016, she received 20kg hilsa from Hasina. In fact, she even took over the Rasthrapati bhavan to cook ‘steamed hilsa’, among other cuisines for Pranab Mukherjee.
In fact, in 2021, there was a no hilsa export from Bangladesh which reports suggested was due to a delay in sending vaccines to Dhaka. And even during her recent visit, [http://on%20cue%2C%20hilsa%20arrived%20with%20the%20bangladeshi%20pm/]4 tonnes of hilsa made their way to India.
The Bangladesh PM even joked about the stalled Teesta water agreement: “Had you let the water flow, all Hilsa (fish) would have flown towards India, and you would not have depended on us.”
In fact, many Bengalis have spent their lives scouring the earth for the freshest hilsa.
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As Delhi-based Bengali Prasad Sanyal, who had never had hilsa which wasn’t put on ice before taking a trip to Bangladesh wrote for Slurrp: “Words, I’ve often found, are not adequate to describe the taste of a Hilsa done in some mustard oil. The highs and highs of that eating experience is like dancing the tango in perfect sync while whispering the Upanishads to your partner — sublime to the point of being ridiculous.”
And if you can’t make the trip, here are some hilsa recipes you can try at home.
Peace out everyone and see you two weeks later. And yeah. May the best team of troglodytes win.
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