Fish cooked in a spicy sauce, flavored with nigella seeds, hot green peppers and cooked in mustard oil is a recipe very close to my heart. Memories churn, my heart and body warm up, images slide by and the taste lingers as I savor the peppery fish curry with some hot steamed rice on this chilly winter afternoon.

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Here is a mashed pumpkin recipe with a big twist from the traditional, with very different flavors.

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Late afternoon – a few jingle of the  Ghungroo/Ghungur ( Images of  Ghungroo) & a holler ” Garam Chanachur” (Hot Spicy Mix) ,would draw all the kids in the neighborhood out of their front door to the iron grilled entrance gates of their houses, the little ones clamoring & climbing over the horizontal bars of the gates for a better view.

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The Shak/Shaag (any leafy green) Bhaja (Stir fried or deep fried) is a big part of the Bengali/East Indian Cuisine. Back home, if I was having a typical Bengali meal, I do not recollect a single day that went without some kind of leafy green, & unlike many kids I would love every preparation of the Shak.

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This dal is one of my comfort foods. Every time I make it, the sound of the sizzling spice & the aroma reminds me of home, of my childhood…. Masoor dal used to be a staple food for me – for I rarely would want to try any other dal. Why? Because I love the flavor these special spices cooked in Mustard Oil- yes that is what is used to season this dal. If you are not aware, traditionally most of the recipes in Bengal use mustard oil for cooking. It cannot be denied that the flavor that mustard oil adds can not be replaced with any other subsitute. To season this recipe, you would need a very little of the oil- & I would warn that this would not taste the same without this particular combination of  Mustard Oil & the Panch Foron (very commonly used spice mix in Bengal to temper lentils & vegetables….I have explained that later in the post).

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Talking of  Dum Aloo…There are some hundreds of ways to make Dum Aloo. In West Bengal it used to be a must dish served for weddings with “Radhaballavi” (lentil stuffed puri), and I loved the slight & subtle sweet taste of that kind of dum aloo.

Also during fall/winter time, when there would be small new baby potatoes, & the peas in the shell, my mom would make peas kachori and dum aloo with the bite size potatoes. It used to be an all evening activity when we would all sit and shell the peas and rub the potatoes to skin the already peeling skins.

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