Why Bengali Vegetarian Food Deserves a Place in Your Kitchen

Bengali cooking, whether from Kolkata or Sylhet, has always been built on rice, lentils and vegetables. Meat was the treat; dal and shaak were the everyday. Walk into a Sylheti household on a Tuesday evening and you are more likely to smell mustard oil tempering with whole spices than anything else. That tradition is worth borrowing, because it produces food that is deeply savoury, cheap to make and quietly good for you.

The principles are simple. Use lentils for body and protein. Cook whatever vegetables are in season, and cook them until they taste of something. Finish with a slick of raw mustard oil or ghee, a squeeze of lime and a handful of coriander. Nothing here needs specialist equipment, and most of the ingredients live happily in a UK kitchen cupboard.

Build a Bengali Spice Shelf

You can cook a great many Bengali vegetarian dishes with six things:

• Panch phoron — the five-spice blend of fenugreek, nigella, cumin, fennel and radhuni (use celery seed if you cannot find radhuni). Temper it in hot oil until the seeds crackle and smell nutty.
• Mustard oil — pungent, peppery and essential. If the raw heat is too much, heat it until it just smokes, then cool it slightly before cooking.
• Turmeric, ground cumin and ground coriander — the quiet base notes behind almost every dish.
• Fresh ginger, garlic and green chillies — buy ginger in a large piece and keep it in the freezer; it grates straight from frozen.
• Red lentils (masoor dal) and chana dal — the workhorses of the vegetarian kitchen.
• Ghee — a teaspoon at the end of cooking transforms a plain dal.

Everyday Masoor Dal with Panch Phoron

This is the dish to learn first. Rinse 250g red lentils in several changes of cold water until it runs clear. Tip into a pan with 1 litre of water, half a teaspoon of turmeric and a teaspoon of salt. Bring to the boil, skim the foam, then simmer gently for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring now and then, until the lentils collapse into a loose purée. Add hot water if it thickens too much.

Now the tempering, or tadka. Heat two tablespoons of mustard oil in a small frying pan. Add a teaspoon of panch phoron and one dried red chilli, and wait for the seeds to pop. Add a small sliced onion and fry until golden, then two grated garlic cloves, a teaspoon of grated ginger and a chopped tomato. Cook for three or four minutes until the tomato breaks down, then pour the whole lot into the dal. Simmer for five minutes, taste for salt, and finish with a squeeze of lime, a teaspoon of ghee and plenty of chopped coriander. It serves four with rice.

Aloo Posto: Potatoes, Poppy Seeds and Comfort

Soak three tablespoons of white poppy seeds in warm water for half an hour, then blend with one green chilli and a splash of water to a thick, slightly grainy paste. Heat two tablespoons of mustard oil, add a pinch of nigella seeds and a dried chilli, then 500g of potatoes cut into small cubes, half a teaspoon of turmeric and salt. Fry for six or eight minutes, add a splash of water, cover and cook until nearly tender. Stir in the poppy paste and a little more water, and cook gently for five minutes so it thickens and coats the potatoes. Finish with a drizzle of raw mustard oil and a slit green chilli. Eat with plain rice and a wedge of lime.

Bhorta: The Sylheti Art of Mashing

Bhorta is the heart of Sylheti home cooking: vegetables or pulses boiled or charred, then mashed with raw onion, green chilli, coriander and mustard oil. Begun bhorta is the classic — hold an aubergine directly over a gas flame (or under a hot grill) until the skin blackens and the flesh collapses, then peel, mash and dress it. Aloo bhorta does the same with boiled potatoes. Try it with boiled and mashed red lentils, or with charred tomatoes and a little garlic.

The trick is restraint. Mash by hand rather than blending, keep the texture coarse, and add the raw oil and onion at the end so they stay sharp. A spoonful of bhorta next to hot rice and dal is one of the most satisfying things you can eat.

Seasonal Ghonto, Charchari and a Balanced Plate

Bengali vegetable cooking divides neatly into two styles. A ghonto is soft and saucy, often with lentils or coconut added, and works well with bottle gourd, pumpkin or cabbage. A charchari is a dry, ginger-heavy stir-fry, ideal for cauliflower, beans, aubergine and peas. Both begin the same way: heat mustard oil, temper with panch phoron or nigella, add ginger and turmeric, then the vegetables, and cook until they are tender but still taste of themselves. Look for potol (pointed gourd), lau (bottle gourd), kochu (taro) and fresh shaak in South Asian grocers, and use British seasonal vegetables freely in their place.

To build a balanced meal, serve rice or roti alongside a dal, one cooked vegetable and one raw or mashed bhorta, with yoghurt or a lime pickle on the side. The lentils and yoghurt bring protein, the mustard oil and ghee bring satiety, and the vegetables bring the vitamins. Cook dal in a large batch — it keeps for three days in the fridge and freezes well — and make bhortas to order in ten minutes. That is how a Bengali kitchen feeds a family, generously, every single day.