I, who hardly ever stepped into the kitchen in Dhaka,
now cook regularly here in the America. Life changes, and so do we! Many chores
that a person never does or did in his or her home country become a part of
everyday life in a foreign country. And, cooking is just one example.
When I first stood in front of the electric stove in
my one-bedroom apartment, I knew for sure that I wouldn't be able to cook the
fried mixed vegetables that I was planning on cooking, even though I called my
mom earlier for the recipe. I stood in the kitchen with hands on my waist. I
was scared, for I thought I would end up burning my hands. I was worried, for I
thought that all the vegetables and spices would go wastes - there was no way I
thought I could cook something suitable for eating. In the first days of my
life in the U.S., cooking simple things like
bhaji and daal required long-distance
phone calls to my mother. An aunt living in Florida was a saviour, who helped
me adjust to this new way of life, sent me shutki
bhuna, homegrown lemons, and homemade sweets to help me feel better. A
cousin sent a surprise package on my first Eid-ul-Azha abroad; the package was
stuffed with beef kebab and sweets like laddu
and boondia.
My diet has changed over the last couple of months.
Being a Muslim, I avoid eating non-halal meat. And since good quality halal
meat is not sold in the city where I live, I generally eat frozen fish and
vegetables. However, there was a time when lunch or dinner meant nothing but
chicken for me. As a child, I refused to eat my breakfast if there was no
chicken curry to eat with roti (the handmade flat bread). Today, when I swallow
tuna kebab and basmati rice, I can't help but wonder the power that nature has
given humans to adapt to new and different conditions. When I go to the
American grocery stores for a packet of masoor dal, I reminisce about Friday
lunch back home with murighanta
(heads of big fish cooked with lentils, mostly moong and mashkalai daal),
red-hot beef curry, and fried ruhi, pabda
fish re-cooked with chopped onions, tomato and cilantro in a thick gravy.
Here in the America, I have learnt to make tuna kebab.
Tuna, which is sometimes called the chicken of the sea, does taste a lot like
meat. Tuna kebab saves my time. I prepare a dozen of them at a time and
refrigerate for later use.
Our first attempt to prepare biryani turned out to be a disaster; the rice was not fully cooked.
By the time my husband and I finished cooking at 1:00 a.m. in the morning, we
were hungry and exhausted. However, that didn't spoil the excitement of eating biryani after almost 5 months. As I
swallowed biryani at 2:00 am in the
morning, I remembered the days when I used to wolf down Fakhruddin's kachhi biriyani during lunch break at
work. Both the taste and the aroma still linger in my mind.
When I first went to an Indian grocery store in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, I lost my direction. There were too many things that I
wanted to buy. I wanted to buy chanachur,
sweets like shondesh and kalo jam, Baghabari’s ghee, dried red
pepper from Shatkania, Chittagong, frozen paratha, and what not!
In short, nothing can make up for the Bangladeshi
food, its flavour and fragrance. No matter how far Bangladeshis live away from their
home, they are in constant search of the spicy, aromatic food that they grew up
eating from their childhood.
By Wara KarimDate of publication: April 21, 2009
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