1600 Taka World's Priciest Fish Ilish/Hilsa I Bengali Hindu Home Food in Bangladesh I Rosogulla Chai

In the last episode of this season of Bangladesh Food Series, Anubhav is joining our gracious host Sushmita - a young food blogger from Dhaka - at her residence for a soulful traditional fishy meal in order to find out more about the culinary culture of her community which is the Hindu Bengali community. We started this journey with a visit to the Krishi Bazar with our friend Anish to get some fresh hilsa fish for our hosts.Anish gave us a quick overview about the country’s national fish and then helped us purchase a good one from numerous options. Since it wasn’t the right season, we couldn’t get hold of a fresh catch.

From there we straight away reached Susmita’s house where we were welcomed by her gracious parents and some of her friends. Susmita had invited us for a traditional lunch spread featuring a few of their family favourite fish delicacies. Except for two things, almost all of the cooking was done beforehand to save time. As her mother prepared the shorshe ilish we joined her and her father for a brief conversation regarding their food traditions. Fish and vegetables dominate their everyday meal and rice is the staple food.

Finally we joined Susmita for the meal. The tempting spread included rice, bottle gourd dal, shorshe ilish, chingri malai curry, aalu bhaja, potol bhaja, begun bhorta, pabda macher jhol and muri ghonto. We started with the bhaja and then moved on to dal and finally the fish dishes. Malai chingri was creamy because of coconut milk, pabda jhol was light because of the non use of onion, garlic and spices and shorshe ilish was rich and piquant because of the mustard paste.

For dessert we had patishapta, gokul pithe, tomato chatni and papod. Just like the Ghoti dishes from Bengal, Bangladeshi Hindu community's food is light on spices and dependant on seasonal ingredients.

After this we tried some rosogolla chai and malai chai at a newly opened chai point.