In West Bengal, one can smell the winter before feeling its chill. It smells of newly harvested baby potatoes, or notun aloo, crushed green peas, and the date palm jaggery called nolen gur, melting slowly in warm milk.
For those born during winter, celebration always arrived on a plate.
No birthday is complete without a mother’s payesh or rice-pudding, made with gobindobhog rice and sweetened with seasonal nolen gur, which is is richer, darker and more fragrant than its summer counterpart. Payesh is ladled out generously, first to mark the occasion, then again because someone insists you must have “just a little more”.
Payesh is no dessert but a ritual, which tastes of family kitchens, steel bowls and the pride that comes with a tradition done right. Then comes the koraishutir kochuri, or peas stuffed kochuri, hot, puffed, and impossibly light. Split open, they release the scent of winter peas ground with ginger and green chilies, fried until just shy of crisp, best paired with a spicy notun aloo dom – baby potato curry. It is birthday nostalgia served hot on a plate.
Meals like these hardly call for restraint, and once done, what follows is a well-needed afternoon nap.
