Yellow Split Peas Halwa/Fudge

Making this rich, velvety, amber hued Halwa/Fudge will require your utmost patience. It will ask you to stir until your hands get numb. But the end result is worth the pain. If you’ve tried just one bite, the pain will hide, deep inside. And the sweet aftertaste will leave you somewhere, swinging in the spring air. . . Ingredients: Split yellow lentil/peas 2 cups…

For Her

….. Now it’s your turn to let her sleep under your wings and warmth for she turned your dark, doomed days into an unthreatened, unchained kaleidoscopic rainbow. Now it’s your turn to make her feel loved, cared, cured, appreciated for she gave you  wings and made you fly and lifted you all the way up to the sky. Now it’s your turn,  with your…

Fish Stew

With her grief, loss, failure, resentment, disappointment, defeat, death, imperfection, heartache, scars and empty cups from the previous year,  Bangladesh greets the first day of Bengali year (14th April) with festivity and day long feasts. . Devastating floods, lurking droughts, looming tidal bores, famine, oddities, hidden fears, riots, leaders pocketing relief money… still oblivion people of this emerald island would forgive the sacrilegious rulers…

Fish Pilaf

Smell of Death and Darkness hangs all around. Limbs and bones of Life and Light are wrinkled, crippled, thin and heavy with the burden of an avalanche of hatred. Love tottered and fell. But still hope remains afloat instead of sinking. Peace decided to live. . . With burning sands of the endless Sahara in our eyes, fear as heavy as the Himalayas in…

Carrot Halwa

Summer evening is falling. A sapphire night is about to flare into fullness. An amber full moon is rising across the azure sky. The chirping and tweeting of birds are fading away. The rhythm of the clean, crisp evening breeze is meditative, an unhurried one. Euphoria of an evening meal is about to waltz in Bengali homes and hearts with a simple yet full…

Hot and Sweet Egg Curry

Your garden is the place where you find yourself when you need to lose yourself. Growing peace-prosperity-serenity-tranquility and beauty in your garden will reach you towards God. There’s this beautiful garden sprouted afresh on the scorching sands … on the burnt, blackened land of my backyard. . . . . . That garden is also a lush harbor of flowers, bees, birds, butterflies.  …

Chicken Curry

With drought in my mouth, storm brewing in my stomach, whenever I knocked on Grandma’s door, uninvited, she would greet me with a spatula in hand wearing a full blown smile. Smile like a brightly blazed flaming flower. A Sunflower. Crimson colored oil drops dripping down her spatula. Drops like the Daffodils gone wild in the hills in a sizzling summer noon. I loved…

Pan-Fried Fish: The Healer of Hearts

Just a few excellent, exhilarating ingredients – condensed into a cohesion, could make an exuberant, ecstatic, fantastic dish; one worthy of worshiping. It is easy to achieve and summon such absurdly beautiful brightness, if the method is properly executed, spices carefully and lovingly cooked. This is a velvety light, love-driven, decadent, and turmeric-chili-salt-pepper covered enchanting endeavor, best served on a scoop of steamed rice…

Lal Mohon aka Gulab Jamun: A sensory bombardment

Countless snow flurries are falling soundlessly. Mother nature gets grey and as dry as the Sahara. Winter windchill enters her bloodstream and she feels a sense of resignation, fear … when the sense of hibernation is that strong, that deep, that long-lasting and that huge, why not celebrate light ! Why not feast with sweets against the darkness of Winter! . . To wade…

Shrimp Curry

There is this humongous mysterious misty Eucalyptus filled jungle standing tall between civilized world and the habitat of savages. A jungle so immeasurably dense that the trees lost track of whose leaves were whose. Darkness and densness consumed all the greens and golden rays of the sun. They say the sun never blazes over there and the moon is always curled up in darkness…