Thursday, July 30, 2009

indian food - Bengali


Bengali cuisine, Bihari cuisine, and Oriya cuisine
Nollen Sandesh, a popular sweet from West Bengal, India.

East Indian cuisine is famous for its desserts, especially sweets such as rasagolla, chumchum, sandesh, rasabali, chhena poda, chhena gaja, chhena jalebi and kheeri. Many of the sweet dishes now popular in Northern India initially originated in the Bengal and Orissa regions. Apart from sweets, East India cuisine offers delights of posta (poppy seeds).

Traditional cuisines of Orissa, Bengal, and Assam are delicately spiced. General ingredients used in Oriya, Bengali, and Assamese curries are mustard seeds, cumin seeds, nigella, green chillies, cumin paste and the spice mix panch phoron or panch phutana. Mustard paste, curd, nuts, poppy seed paste and cashew paste are preferably cooked in mustard oil. Curries are classified into bata (paste), bhaja (fries), chochchoree (less spicy vapourized curries) and jhol (thin spicy curries).These are eaten with plain boiled rice or ghonto (spiced rice). Traditional breakfasts includes pantabhat or pakhaal, as well as cereals such as puffed rice or pressed rice, in milk, often with fruits. The cuisine of Bangladesh is very similar to eastern Indian cuisine, particularly that of West Bengal. Fish and shellfish are commonly consumed in the eastern part of India. The popular vegetable dishes of Orissa are Dalma and Santula. The most popular vegetable dish of Bengal is Sukto. Deep fried, shallow fried and mashed vegetables are also very popular. As in southern India, rice is the staple grain in Eastern India too. A regular meal consists of lentils, a primary non vegetarian side dish usually made of fish and a few other secondary side dishes made of vegetables.

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