The Wire Recommends: The Meals We Remember From 2023 - The Wire

1. Pariplab Chakraborty: Shutki maccher bhorta

It has been almost two years since my grandma passed. She used to make the best shutki maccher bhorta I’ve ever had. It’s a Bengali preparation of dried loitta fish slow cooked with sweet pumpkin and a lots of onion, garlic and mustard oil – generally served with warm white rice and green chillies.

We used to have it with Tulaipanji rice, an indigenous rice variety of North Bengal. This year I tried a lot of times to recreate that recipe. I couldn’t reach my grandma’s perfection but it was worth exploring. ‘Shutki bhorta’ is very inherent and attached to our ‘Bangal’ identity. And cooking it here in Delhi made it easier for me to navigate the urban haze – fulfilling yet very empty, populated yet very lonely and green yet ‘fresh’ inside the plastic airtight container. The dish bears a testimony to my childhood, both personally and politically.

2. Atul Ashok Howale: Moving to Delhi

I had to move to Delhi for work from Sangli, Kolhapur – a city famous for its food in western Maharashtra. When I first moved to Delhi, the food culture was a drastic change. The vada pav that we get in Sangli was replaced by momos here in Delhi.

While walking in Kolhapur, I used to come across Kolhapuri misal within evert 100 metres; now those stalls were selling chhole bhature and rajma chawla.

I have been a staunch non-veg food lover since childhood. Kolhapur Sangli is very famous for non-veg and the red-white gravy here is very famous. I have eaten non-veg at many places in Delhi – and when I first started out, all if it felt a little lacking in spice.

But the exception was the first time I went to Old Delhi, Jama Masjid in the month of Ramzan. I was reminded of the small food street in Kolhapur. Now finally I could see what my friend in Delhi had been saying about the food. Making my way through the crowd, me and my Maharashtrian friend Saurabh went to Rahimtullaha restaurant. We ordered biryani along with mutton korma, nihari, and their famous mutton and chicken kebabs. This was my first kebab – and it was amazing.

Even though I don’t get red and white gravy like Sangli Kolhapur in Delhi, today that has been replaced by the kebabs and biryani of Old Delhi.

3. Sravasti Dasgupta: Ladakh’s apricot jam

This summer I travelled to Ladakh on a family road trip after over a decade. While the trip came with its many ups and downs as family vacations and road trips often do, the local Apricot jam sweetened the experience for the better.

Served as a breakfast staple everywhere we went, made from the apricot trees in dry and arid Ladakh, this delicious jam made us want to bottle up all that goodness and bring it back home – a reminder of the grandeur of Ladakh’s soaring peaks, challenging climate, unparalleled scenic beauty and just the correct amount of sweetness of its gentle friendly people.

4. Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta: Ragi mudde and nati koli

The ragi mudde (ragi balls) and nati koli (country chicken) curry I ate during my election tour in Karnataka was a meal to remember. Making the mudde is an extremely painstaking process. Traditionally, ragi, or whole grain finger millet, is first milled to flour, slowly cooked into a dough, and rolled for at least an hour to be eaten as soft and moist balls. It may be an acquired taste for many, but its combination with the delicious village-style chicken curry fills you with energy that easily lasts for a day. Hugely popular in Old Mysore, the mudde characterises all the strength, grit and love that transformed the region into one of the most prosperous regions of India.

5. Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty: Khaar

This is a dish that forms part of a homemade Sunday meal. We call it khaar, a marker of my identity as an Assamese.

Khaar is a black alkaline liquid methodically extracted from the peel – burnt or sun-dried – of a ripe banana of a local variety found in Northeast India.

Khaar can be both vegetarian and otherwise. Two of the varieties I savour the most are made with dried jasmine flowers and with cucumber and black chickpeas.

Try any of the khaar preparations (including a yummy one made with pork) not just to have a finger-licking experience but also to understand why I frequently call it the fifth flavour, India’s equivalent to the Japanese umami!

6. Seema Chishti: Bread

The year ended with reading about and staring at Gaza bakeries in the early days of the war by Israel. Just seeing and reading about the bread that kept the population of 2.2 million alive till it did, the long queues for it made an impact. Bread, freshly baked or not, seemed to mean so much more, as this year closed.

7. Soumashree Sarkar: Tea, Kolkata, October 2023

Each year when the Durga Puja in Kolkata ends, giant idols from around the city make their way to the banks by the Ganga for a bittersweet immersion. The result is chaos beyond your wildest dreams – exactly the thing that draws people to witness the end of the festivities. This year, it rained on Dashami, the day the immersion process starts. One second, the river was red with the setting sun, and the next, it was at one with the sky in a singular wash. After the rains ended, I drank some milky, sweet tea while more idols were sent homewards into the river. It made me think that in every ending, there is a sweet beginning too.

8. Taniya Roy: Croissant

I had a croissant for the first time in over 30 years. I binged on it day and night during my trip to Barcelona. You know that feeling when you’re so happy that you cannot stop eating your favourite food? Well, the croissant became my absolute favourite during my time in Spain. Although I tried other items, nothing could compete with a freshly baked butter croissant. I didn’t even need anything else with it – just the croissant. I was totally obsessed.

9. Aathira Perinchery: Paal kappa

I’m Keralite alright, but I had paal kappa for the first time only some time earlier this year. Fluffy and filling, creamy but comforting, this dish is a mix of mashed tapioca and coconut milk. Pair it with a mean meen curry or some succulent beef roast!

10. Jahnavi Sen: Laphing

During a recent trip to Humayunpur in Delhi, a friend suggested I try the laphing from a stall on the road – and now I crave it frequently. This Tibetan dish is a cold noodle wrapped around dried red chillies, a garlic paste and minced meat/chicken or vegetables, and the version I had also had some wai-wai in it for crunch. Even the ‘medium spicy’ very was quite fiery, and mouth- (and eye-)wateringly delicious.

11. Siddharth Varadarajan: Kolhapuri mutton in Pune

After a lecture I gave in Pune earlier this month, the organisers took me to ‘Dehaati’ on Prabhat Road, famous for its Kolhapuri thalis. I had a mutton pickle dish, loonche, with jowar rotis and endless amounts of tamda rassa and pandhra rasa, two delicious mutton gravies – one red, the other white – that Kolhapur is famous for. The meal was made all the more enjoyable by the background music the restaurant was playing: Siddheshwari Devi.

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