00:00A lot of people say Bengali sweets are too sweet.
00:02What is too sweet? I don't think anything you like too sweet.
00:04My sweetness threshold is massive.
00:06Hello, I'm Asma Khan.
00:08I'm going to take you to all my favourite places in Kolkata, my hometown.
00:16There is a ritual and a rhythm in how you eat in Bengal.
00:20This is where the chefs eat.
00:27We are in qualities.
00:29This is an iconic restaurant of Kolkata.
00:32It is a restaurant that you cannot miss.
00:35It is literally the heartbeat, the soul of the city.
00:39This is my childhood.
00:40It reminds you of all the happy times.
00:42That age of innocence and that time of joy when you were young,
00:46when you were with parents coming to a place like this,
00:48those were the best days of your lives.
00:50You don't realise that till it's gone.
00:52So thank God there are places like this that are still there,
00:54that you can come back to.
00:55And for all my friends, many of us have left the city.
00:59This is a homecoming.
01:00This is a place where you come with an empty stomach and an open heart.
01:04I get the chana batura to start with.
01:07So this is like the perfect batura.
01:10The only way to eat this is to make a hole in it.
01:14Oh my God.
01:14A lot of skill has gone into this.
01:20The chana is just so earthy.
01:22I love the aloo, which is a potato in this.
01:26And the lime is really important.
01:27The lime brings in this kind of zing into it.
01:31Takes me back to being a child.
01:34It is all these kind of layers of flavours that come in,
01:39which is what makes this dish so special.
01:42I'm eating with my hands because that is the way that all of us eat in India.
01:46Cutlery was something that was bought in by outsiders.
01:50There is something very healing when you eat with your hands
01:53and you enjoy your food more.
01:54I'm going to start off with the chicken bharata
02:00because this is a very Calcutta thing
02:03and qualities particularly does it very, very well.
02:07The chicken is shredded.
02:09There are no bones to it.
02:10And I love this with plain naan.
02:16Rogan Josh with bone.
02:18This is a Kashmiri dish.
02:19It's cooked on the bone.
02:20The chicken has really, really beautiful, beautiful smoky chilli aroma to it.
02:28And this, of course, is butter chicken.
02:31Originated in Delhi.
02:33This place, because of its kind of Punjabi links and Delhi links,
02:36they do a really proper version of butter chicken.
02:39So this is Lal Mirj Paratha.
02:41Lal Mirj is red chillies.
02:42There's a real kick to this paratha.
02:44It's made on the tandoor.
02:46And all these kind of, you know, little burnt bits add a unique smokiness to it.
02:52That is garlic naan.
02:54This is a butter naan.
02:56Each one has its kind of own distinctive flavor.
02:59You need to kind of work out which is your favorite.
03:01And I have not worked out my favorite.
03:02So I'm very bad.
03:03I ordered all three.
03:04No one's judging you.
03:05So you can do the same.
03:06I find it very difficult when I listen to people in the West calling our food curry.
03:13Curry is not a word that I recognize because every dish has its own name, has its own flavor.
03:20It's like a symphony.
03:21Everything is like an instrument, each one playing together.
03:24That is the richness of our cuisine.
03:26And just to call it curry and rice is really missing the point.
03:29So this is the Tutti Frutti.
03:38Incredibly, it actually tastes better than it looks.
03:41It's this pink, beautiful glass full of kind of ice cream and syrup and fruits.
03:46Deep down in the bottom, there's jelly.
03:48And you just cut through it.
03:50And as it melts, it gets better and better.
03:53Nothing disappoints.
03:55And that makes, you know, visiting quality magical.
03:59Everybody knows me for my restaurant in England.
04:03But the roots of that restaurant cross the ocean.
04:06They're being nourished here, in this city, in this land.
04:09That's where all the inspiration, the joy and the desire to cook comes from.
04:14Now, I'm really excited to take you to my next favorite restaurant.
04:25We are in Sonargao, which is in Taj, Bengal.
04:28But the food I love eating in Sonargao is their Bengali food.
04:32My favorite is coming here, having the thali.
04:35It allows me to go through this journey of flavors and spices.
04:39A thali is basically, it's a platter.
04:42It's a Hindi word for a very flat plate.
04:45It's not just one item.
04:47It's an array of little, little things that you mix and match and you eat together.
04:50But I plan and aim to come here hungry so that I can have the whole thali.
04:55So, this is Bengal presented to us in this beautiful way.
05:00There is a ritual and a rhythm in how you eat in Bengal.
05:03Because you start off with things that are bitter.
05:05It releases the salivas, your body, everything gets ready for the richer part.
05:10So, you eat in this particular way.
05:13This is a very Bengali way of eating.
05:15This, before I eat, is a very famous aloo posto.
05:19That's poppy seed and potatoes.
05:20Sounds very simple.
05:22It's a very complex dish.
05:25So, this of course is bhekti.
05:27It's just hard to describe.
05:30I yearn, yearn for this fish when I'm in England.
05:34This is very special.
05:36This is paturi.
05:38This is steamed fish.
05:39It's super moist because it's been wrapped in banana leaf.
05:42This is dab chingri.
05:44This is cooked in the coconut water inside the shell.
05:48It's an art to get something so soft and so delicate.
05:52When the cameras are off, I'm going to sit and eat everything and it's all going to be clean.
05:56And I know that in the West, often people give papadum and chutney at the beginning.
05:59You eat this at the end of your meal.
06:01The spices in there, things like fennel and onion seed, all of this is medicinal.
06:08This will help you digest everything you've eaten.
06:10This is your palate cleanser because after you've had all of this, you still have this
06:15left to eat, which is the sweet dishes.
06:17This is completely classic Bengali dessert.
06:20The jaggery has been used to sweeten the outside, but hidden in there, as a little surprise,
06:26is this molten golden nulegur.
06:29This tastes of earth.
06:32It tastes of wood, of forest.
06:33It tastes of all the beauty that you live around in this green land, which is Bengal.
06:39Now, to the mishti roi.
06:41For me, this is yogurt.
06:42Sweet, dense, intense.
06:46And now, the rasgulla.
06:48Again, it has this beautiful kind of inner filling, which has its own different flavor in it.
06:53A lot of people say, Bengali sweets are too sweet.
06:55What is too sweet?
06:56I don't think anything you like too sweet.
06:57My sweetness threshold is massive.
07:01My favorite part of the thali is the fact that I can revisit something and add something else to it.
07:07It allows you to be like a composer.
07:10You're sitting there, you're making music, you're picking and choosing what you want.
07:13And also, the choice, you know.
07:15Something you particularly like, just finish the whole thing in one go.
07:17Calcutta has changed, but the street life, the street food, is still as vibrant and as beautiful as I remember it.
07:27It's modernizing, but thank God they've left the food behind.
07:32I guess you've got to leave to understand what it feels like to come home.
07:37I was lost, and food was my way home.
07:41And I still get emotional about this, but when I cooked food from Kolkata, I felt my mother was next to me.
07:52It is that powerful.
07:54It's when you cook with that kind of feeling and emotion, the food tastes incredible.
07:59It's just incredible.
08:07Beren Aminia, this is just behind New Market, which is this beautiful, iconic, covered market in Kolkata.
08:16Interestingly, it opened on the 15th of August, 1947.
08:20That was the day India became independent, free from the British.
08:25This is when this restaurant was opened.
08:27I think it says a lot that this is as old as India.
08:34This is the paratha, which is hard to replicate.
08:38When you see the softness inside and the crispiness outside, they have perfected this over decades.
08:45This is a chicken chop and mutton chop.
08:48The separation of the oil indicates that it has been slowly cooked, which is called, we call bhuna.
08:55There's poppy seeds in here.
08:57There's a lot of crispy onions in there.
08:59There's masalas.
09:00So now the mutton chop is a style of cooking.
09:03It's always on the bone.
09:05And again, the paratha is very important.
09:07The way it has been made, it has this crispy texture.
09:10You need the paratha to have this kind of a texture because it's going to be soaked with all this very, very beautifully made gravy and it needs to hold that gravy.
09:20So here's the legendary Kolkata biryani.
09:24Hidden in there is the mutton and more excitingly, the potato.
09:31I want to honk back at them.
09:32Anyway, this is what makes Kolkata biryani so unique.
09:36The additional potato.
09:37It's absorbed all the spices, all the flavors of the meat and sitting in there like a sponge, it has sucked it all in.
09:46Meat that is cooked in this very slow way, buried with rice.
09:50It's so unique and it's delicate, it's light, it's fragrant and it is very, very subtle.
09:57But do not confuse subtlety with simplicity.
10:00This is not a simple dish.
10:02It's probably the best biryani that you get in this part of the world.
10:05Food is the language of love.
10:08Food is also a language of where you come from.
10:12In this biryani, in each grain, there is a story.
10:16It tells us about our history.
10:19It tells us who you are.
10:21And that is why it is so important.
10:24This is the dessert.
10:26This is a terracotta base in which this finni is set.
10:30So the base of this is milk and rice.
10:35But please do not call this a rice pudding.
10:38You can literally see it's so smooth.
10:40All the rice is broken down.
10:42And in that smoothness, there are spices that go through.
10:47And the terracotta.
10:48It is definitely an ingredient in this.
10:51This is a kulfi.
10:56Kulfi is much more complex than just an ice cream.
11:00Kulfi is a lot thicker, more textured.
11:04It actually feels like a privilege to eat something like this.
11:08Because as someone who cooks, I understand the labor that has gone into this.
11:12It's a labor of love.
11:13I am what I am today because of Kolkata.
11:18Because of the food of Kolkata.
11:20The biryani, the chaap.
11:22All this wonderful food of the city and its people.
11:25we have a great day.
11:25We have a great day.
11:26We have a great day.
11:27We have a great day.
11:28We have a great day.
11:29We have a great day to live on the website.
11:31It's a rich culture.
11:33It's a wonderful day.
11:34This wonderful food of the city.
11:34We have completely experts that have 제가 fuchsia Dartmouth on the spot.
11:36This is my family area.
11:36This is my family area.
11:38I am doing a good day.
11:40This 너무 busy while promoting people.
11:42People can always go in school.
11:42It's a very nice environment.
11:44This is my family area.
11:45Here she is in school.
11:46We have a beautiful beautiful country.
11:50Our family area area.
11:50This comes from Komesting supply chain aside.
11:52It's a beautiful way.
Comments