Haha! This was crazy. This was a homemade birthday dinner menu. But two conditions were applied. Firstly, it should be strictly lockdown special and secondly dinner menu must be pure Bengali style meal. Lockdown special dinner means meal must be prepared with all easily available ingredients, so that we do not need to rush to market to buy any special items. Secondly, each & every dish should be a pure Bengali dish. So there were so many self imposed conditions applied before preparing that homemade lockdown special Bengali style birthday dinner menu.
So are you interested to know the dishes in such Bengali birthday dinner menu? Then here is the menu for you. I enjoyed this dinner on my birthday.
Luchi
If you are not Bengali then this may be something new to you. But actually it is similar to puri, only difference is that it is prepared with all purpose flour (maida) instead of whole wheat flour (plain gehu atta). It is one of favorite items like any other Bengali people. This all purpose flour made deep fried flatbread is very delicious with aloor dom, aloo chorchori, kasha mangsho etc.
Bengali Aloo Chorchori
It is a simple potato based curry and it needs only a few ingredients to make this Bengali style aloo chorchori. Potato, kalonji/kalo jeera (nugella seeds), green chillies, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, refined veg oil and salt are need to make this simple dish. Heat oil in a cooking pot and add nigella seeds, turmeric powder, red chilli powderfinely chopped green chillies. Now pour 1 cup water and stir to mix. Then cut a boiled potato into small cubes and add to cooking pot. Add salt too & cook till gravy almost dried up. Then switch off fire and serve it with luchi.
Payes (Indian rice pudding)
It is most popular & traditional Bengali dessert. It is used to prepare at any Bengali ceremony for guests & family members. This is nothing but an Indian style pudding prepared with rice, milk, sugar/jaggery & dry fruits. From eight years old to eighty years old person, everybody love this dessert. The word ‘payes’ comes from Sanskrit word “Payasam”. I don’t know how much simple dish can be so delicious. If you just boil milk with rice and add enough sugar, the whole thing becomes so mouthwatering. If you add handful groundnuts like kishmish, cashew nuts then nobody ask anything, just hold the bowl and eat to satisfy the soul, haha. The taste of payes goes to next level when it is cooked with nolen gur instead of sugar. It becomes unbeatable and the king of all desserts, haha. Did you ever try such nolen gurer payes? But point is that nolen gur is only availble in the market during winter season, that too for a short period of time.
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