Chhota Pegs

Ruchir-Tuli Part 2. But I need to get this four-headedness out of the way first. The four heads refer not to the prawn at all, though you will pardon the titular license, but to a mysterious spice called char-mogoj (or four heads). A google search  using Bengali phonetics will excavate some motley hits, but no serious definitions. But charmagaz gets you further; thanks Chhoti:  The reference is to four kinds of vegetable seeds, something that I never dreamt would enhance the value of any kind of cooking, but certainly appears to do so in this case. As far as I can ascertain, the char-mogoj refers to four items:    pumpkin, musk-melon, watermelon and cucumber seeds. (Ma says that chal-kumro or ash-gourd seeds are essential, so I am confused, but such are the ways of Bengali cooking.) With that settled (or not), on to the recipe. Charmogoj-er Chingri, or, the Four-Headed Prawn Curry (To feed 4) First, make the masala :  4 small...

All right: Ruchir, Tuli and Chhoti, this one's for you. Ruchir and Tuli, because you are inveterate foodies and wanted these recipes and Chhoti, my sister, because she is responsible for most recipes in my life... The background: I've been in Calcutta for the last few days. I will be precise: not counting a trip to Sydney, I've been here just seven days. And this is a sampling of the food my mother has cooked for me. Yep, just a sampling, guys. For instance, all the glorious langra mangoes I have consumed have gone unrecorded. I have omitted the visually awkward but otherwise divine payesh , or rice pudding (here it is in all its visually awkward glory, to the left [update: I removed the picture, it looks awful!]). I have inadvertently excluded the best shaami kebabs  in the world, the best because some culinary alchemy dreamt up by Satya (who worked here many years ago) allows the pureed meat inside to literally stretch  in your mouth, along with the accompanying ...

Amartya Sen is now in Calcutta, and so there is just one topic of conversation. But this time there's a Star-Wars-like twist. The Drèze-Sen and Bhagwati-Panagariya tomes are out. The country is humming with the idea that "Bhagwati versus Sen" sums it all up. Bhagwati, it is alleged, is at the heart of the Modi strategy of unbridled growth, while Sen epitomizes Rahul, or more to the point, the policies of the UPA government.  Neither of these statements is particularly correct, but who cares? I don't know Bhagwati very well, and cannot speak for him, though I can quote from a recent interview in the Economic Times which is impressive for its self-centeredness: "No, we either lie prostrate at the feet of Bhagwatis and Sens; or we engage in unseemly confrontations." Wow, that takes quite a bit of the cake (though Joseph Anton wants a piece of it as well, but more on JA in another posting). An interview with Sen appeared today in the Calcutta Tel...

On May 17, 2013, I went up (or was it down) to Cambridge to give a lecture .   Sir Partha Dasgupta reminded me that it had been 28 years since I had last visited, and he was right! In 1985 I had spent a bitterly cold couple of months in St. John's College, some significant fraction of it in a British Bathtub. The depressing, sunken chill of that experience will never leave me.  Of course, apart from some new developments in the City Centre, where you still have to spin around in ever widening concentric circles and then whizz out on a tangent if you want to depart Cambridge, nothing had changed. But I was now installed in a swanky hotel, where an impeccably named company was in charge of the toiletries (see picture). Well.  As a bathroom theme periodically recurs in this story, I must recall a visit to a bathroom in another Cambridge in another country not so long ago, where this no-nonsense item just to the left figured instead. I had a wonderful time wit...

A chhota peg refers to three objects, one in the public domain, one not, and one in a currently half-dormant, crepuscular state: 1. Object 1 . A 30 ml serving of alcohol, preferably single malt whiskey, and even more preferably, served in units of two (or more) chhota pegs. This definition is circular but entirely reasonable, so we will leave it at that. For more information, see here , and for additional enlightenment, also check out the Patiala peg , which makes no further appearance in this posting. 2. Object 2 . A series of small videos made by me, for the enjoyment of my primary and extended family. Some of these chhota pegs will leak onto my blog in due course. 3. Object 3 . This blog, still half-asleep, still to be born. What will it contain? I don't have a clue. But We Shall Find Out.