My Bengali Foodways 

  by Abir Sarker, High School for Community Leadership

 

Food is an important aspect of our lives because we eat food everyday. I feel like food should also be understood as in the quote, “Water is Life” such as “Food and Water are Life.” Every culture has their own varieties of food. In my Bengali culture, we have so many food that I don’t even know all the names. In Bengali culture every dish has one thing in common, every dish is spicy.

I have some favorite Bengali foods. One of these is all bharta. Aloo bharta is our version of smashed potato, butaloo bharta is much spicier and definitely has a kick to its taste. You can add so many other ingredients if you want. Recently I wanted to experiment little, so I tried it  with scrambled eggs. It turns out to be not that bad and it was very juicy which made it even tasty.

Another one of my favorites is goat curry. This dish is very famous and traditional food in our Bengali culture. Goat curry is not limited for any kind of special event, so people can eat goat any time they want. But usually we eat goat curry during some kind of big event like weddings, cultural events, or new year celebrations. This food brings a lot of people together starting from children to older people. veryone loves this dish.

Another food that is known and loved by every Bengali (though not me) is hilsa/Ilish curry. This is our national fish. Even thought this tastes awesome, it has a lot of tiny bones which I don’t like. We must eat hilsa curried or fried on Bengali New Year. But my family eats it quite often.

The last traditional food which I will write about is considered a sweet treat. It’s called payesh (rice kheer), and it is traditionally servied in a clay pot. It’s a sweet that includes milk, rice, sugar, raisin, and cashew nuts. This is both a cultural and religious food for Hinduism. It has a big role in both Hindu and Muslim marriages. When the parents of both the bride and the groom’s relatives congratulate them on the marriage, they have to feed them a spoon of payesh. This is my favorite because my mom makes it every time on my birthday and offers her blessing to me by feeding me a spoon.