Tel Koi—Faridpur-style: Pasher Barir Ranna feat. Tapati Lahiri

In this episode of Pasher Barir Ranna, Tapati Lahiri, whose family hails from pre-Partition Faridpur, shows us her recipe of "tel koi". There are many variations of this dish all over Bengal, so much so that it may be best to think of "tel koi" as a style of cooking the koi fish rather than a single recipe.

"Tel" in Bengali means oil and "koi" is the climbing perch fish (not to be confused with the Japanese "koi"). So "tel koi" is koi fish cooked until oil floats on top. That is about where the similarities between all of the "tel koi" variations end. Tapati Lahiri's version of this recipe uses whole fenugreek to flavour the mustard oil in which the fish is cooked. The koi fish is marinated simply with ground brown mustard, salt, sugar, turmeric and plain sour yoghurt. The dish is ready to eat in under half an hour if you don't count the time it takes to clean the fish.

Koi fish is always bought live. These days fish mongers happily scale and cut the fish for you. Even then the fish is very slimy and it takes a good bit of scrubbing with either coarse salt or whole-wheat flour to rid it off the slippery stuff. It is all well-worth the effort, of course—koi is meaty, flavourful and delicious.

Coming up in a future episode is Rohitashwa's paternal family's version of tel koi, which looks and tastes completely different, but is equally delectable.
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📝 FULL WRITTEN RECIPE WITH INGREDIENT LIST
https://www.bongeats.com/recipe/tel-k...
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🎵 Music: "Barir pashe arshi nagar" originally composed by Lalon Fakir in the 1800s.
Re-arranged and recorded for Bong Eats by
Diptanshu Roy @dolinman (mandolin)
@TarishiMukherjee (vocals)
Abhijit Kundu (guitar)
Nilesh Banerjee (drums)