“We’re going to begin off with some telebhaja,” he stated. “‘Fried in oil’ in Bengali—this refers to an entire class of fried snacks. This course is known as telebhaja, and it’s a really quintessential snack merchandise for the evenings. I want to share a few of my evenings with this within the native retailers.”

The primary course opened with Chana Bora, a vegetarian delight made with selfmade cottage cheese—“pressed, seasoned with inexperienced chillies and salt, after which fried.” Subsequent got here the Gondhoraj murgi cutlet, “rooster and potato filling, flavoured with gondhoraj lime—that’s a really fragrant lemon,” he defined. The platter continued with vegetable chop, made with seasonal greens—potatoes, beetroot, carrots, inexperienced peas—and macher chop, full of a mixture of bhetki and lote machh (Bombay duck), dry-cooked and full of flavour. “So this whole form of meals—the refried type—is known as chop and cutlet.”

“This salad can also be a selected type that you just solely get with cutlets in West Bengal,” he smiled, pointing to the plate of sliced onions, carrot, beetroot and cucumber.”

And that was only the start. “It’s like a Bengali family meal,” he stated, including, “The very first thing we take is aam kasundi, a mustard paste blended with uncooked mango. It retains the physique cool and helps digestion.” The subsequent set of dishes included Shaak bhaja (spinach), kumro bhaja (pumpkin), and begun bhaja (eggplant)—fried in step with the Bengali custom of serving an odd variety of bhajas for festive events.