Junk the food
We are scarcely immune to media hype. Guided by the profit motive, the food conglomorates shape and restrict what we…
The bhadralok who walks into the Gariahat, Hatibagan or Lansdowne market to explore what kind of fish would please the family for the next few days or whether he should offer meals with meat is in a serious dilemma.
It has to be a choice between standing in an ATM queue to satisfy winter palates or more modest preparations for lunch and dinner.
The reason is simple. There is not much cash available for the purchases and, for many, it has become a desperate tale of cost cutting so as not to miss deadlines.
How can one splurge on the choicest varieties of fish – even if one can afford it – when cooks, servants and other staff have to be paid in hard cash.
For some time, the big sellers of fish and the grocery stores were accepting 500-rupee notes if they did not have return the change. Now that benefit has disappeared and there are limited budgets that one can play around with in the market.
The food-loving population may have no regrets that classy restaurants and food courts have had to survive with a thinner crowd over the past few weeks.
What about the regular recipes back home? Can the traditional homes in north and south Kolkata and in the suburbs like Baranagar and Garia – not to forget more affluent areas like in Salt Lake and New Town – do without their bhekti and katla?
This could well be the time when several families have been compelled to turn vegetarian on at least two or three days in the week.
The fierce debate on the impact of demonetisation
on the common man has nothing to do with murmurs that may be heard at lunch and
dinner tables. But come to think of it, aren’t there exciting alternatives for the food buff ?
A colleague who had borne the brunt of a marketing ritual last weekend returned home to suggest a sumptuous meal of chaley-daley – the popular concoction otherwise known as khichuri.
Normally, it is a delicacy reserved for occasions like Saraswati and Durga puja when local clubs and housing societies are required to offer a community meal.
The domestic cook knows that the same item for the household must have more attractive inputs and addons. It can be mixed with potato and cauliflower to begin with and then sprinkled with the best varieties of pure ghee and finally savoured with fried brinjals and papad with the chutney serving as the sweet finale.
Can this experience every two or three days be anything to complain about?
For dinner there could be the crispy paratha had with boiled potatoes sprinkled with pepper and
munched down with the chutneys prepared at home. Or it could be the phulko luchis with alur dam that one loved as refreshments but which now can constitute a dinner that is modest but relished all the same.
The cash crunch has led to heartaches all around, perhaps nightmares in some cases. But with so many options on both the official and domestic menus, the kitchen prospects may not be all that bad after all.
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