Cuisine

Bangladeshi

Khichuri is rice and lentils cooked into one pot until the grains soften into each other. The Bangladeshi version is often a rainy-day or invalid-day pot, or a festive one with more ghee and spice, depending on the household. Turmeric, bay, ginger and a tadka of whole spices in fat season it. A dry aloo bhaji or a fried fish sometimes sits beside it. Mustard oil, river fish and a sharp green chilli are the wider East Bengali facts. Khichuri is related to Indian khichdi; it is still a Bengali pot with its own fat and spice.

Rice-and-pulse porridges are old across the subcontinent. Bengal's wet climate and river fish made rice the centre and fish the protein. Partition put the same kitchen on two sides of a border; Bangladeshi cooking is Bengali cooking with a national name and a Muslim festive calendar that favours certain meats and sweets. British colonial administration did not invent khichuri; Anglo-Indian 'kedgeree' is a breakfast descendant that added smoked fish and egg.

The rice should collapse more than a pilaf and less than a baby porridge, unless you are cooking the loose version on purpose. Lentils (often moong or masoor) disappear into the grain. Ghee or mustard oil at the end is the perfume. Green chilli and ginger keep it from tasting flat. Bangladeshi cooking is East Bengali: mustard, fish, rice, sweets. It is not Punjabi gravy food and not a generic Indian khichdi with the label swapped.