Page 74 - Forbes - India (January 2020)

ForbesLife food

PhotograPhs: KalPana sunder
nside the bustling Natun Bazar neighbourhood
of North Kolkata, we walk through narrow,
muddy lanes, lined with small shops and
homes, stray goats, and children playing,
i to Makhan Lal Das & Sons. The factory-
cum-shop has been in the business of selling
sweetmeats since 1830, and its nondescript
appearance is no indication of its lineage.
Shib Nath Das is the ninth generation of a
family that came from Debrajhat village in the
Purba Bardhaman district of West Bengal to first
sell sweets in the local haat, or market; he sits on
a wooden platform, supervising the sweets that
are being made to order. Thickened milk is made
into chena (cottage cheese) and then into sandesh
(sweets), sometimes with nolen gur (palm jaggery),
sometimes chocolate, and sometimes a dash of
saffron. Two large plates in front of Das contain
the samples of the day, with fanciful names like
‘Mono Hara’ (one who steals your heart) and
‘Abar Khabo’ (I will eat again). Wooden moulds
in different shapes and sizes lie on another board,
where an artisan makes conch shell-shaped
sweets. Small clay cups of creamy mango curd and
different varieties of sandesh are offered to us.
74 Mishti, or sweetmeats, is an integral part of
Kolkata’s cuisine. Many attribute the beginnings
of the sweet industry to the Portuguese who
introduced cottage cheese to the region in the
16th century. Others claim that in those days, the
milkman would often be left with unsold milk at
the end of the day that would then go sour, and,
therefore, chena was made (by curdling the milk)
and mixed with sugar to make it more palatable. Of mishti,
Kolkata is a veritable melting pot, with the
British, Portuguese, Chinese, Armenians and Jews
making it their home when the city became the
hub of the East India Company in the mid-18th mughals
century. Its culinary heritage is a product of all
these cultures and communities, which I am in
the process of discovering while on a culinary
trail curated by Novotel Hotels and Residences,
and Indrajit Lahiri, a food blogger. By sampling and
some quintessential items from the city’s diverse
foodscape, we get a peep into the culinary history
of more than 300 years in the course of a few days. nOOdles

the neighbOurs frOm next dOOr
Kolkata was home to India’s largest Chinatown,
with the Chinese coming to the city in the late 18th
century to set up sugar mills in a neighbourhood A brief lesson in Kolkata’s history, through its food
called Achipur, on the invitation of the British. We
walk through the narrow lanes of Tiretti Bazar,
which is one of the two Chinatowns (the other By Kalpana Sunder

forbes india • January 31, 2020