Sweet obsessions

What would you associate with fever-time food? Bread and milk, soup, soft-boiled rice. Would sweets ever be on that list? I guess not. But speak to Indu Bokaria, and she will tell you that her doctor in Kolkata, the city where she grew up, advised patients to eat the austere and innocuous sandesh , the Bengali sweet made of chhana or paneer . Marriage brought Bokaria to Chennai over 40 years ago. Idlis, said the doctor, when she fell sick, but she refused to comply. Her new family had no idea how to make sandesh . It wasn’t available anywhere in Chennai, a situation that has changed little since. Even now it is found only in three or four shops, though other ‘Bengali sweets’ such as rasgulla , chamcham and malai sandwich line many a shelf. Then a friend showed Bokaria how to make sandesh . That set off a lifelong passion that saw her creating, rather building elaborate sandesh , icing et al, that established her as a ‘sandesh artist’ in Pratibha Jain’s mind.

Jain, co-author of two cookbooks, Cooking at Home With Pedatha and Sukham Ayu , was approached by Bokaria’s family to put together a book of her recipes as a gift for her 60th birthday. “There were several notebooks with entries in them, and I could not quite identify how to position her book,” says Jain.

Jain combed the pages of Bokaria’s diaries, and found many sandesh recipes. That Jain had been to one of Bokaria’s cooking demonstrations 20 years earlier sealed the decision to position her as a sandesh artist. The book, Recipes from a Diary , is not restricted to sandesh , though. It includes recipes for salads, snacks, vegetable curries, rice and chutneys.

During a Skype session with Bokaria — Jain translated the bits that I could not follow — we deconstruct a few of her elaborate creations. The shahi sandesh , a creation in white, pink, green and saffron, owes its existence to a competition for inventive recipes. It calls for a complex assemblage of deep-fried canapés, sooji halwa , sandesh , fried edible resin, some artistry with milk masala for decoration, and icing. There are several fruit sandeshes involving figs, litchi, grapes, kiwi and mango. I try the baked sandesh — and am happy with the result. There’s very little work to be done. The ingredients come in tins and packs, especially if you count readymade paneer, and all you need do is combine them, and bake the mixture till the top browns.

The sandesh allows ample room for creativity. The blandness of both chhana and paneer is a canvas for much drama. Add sweetener — sugar, nolen gur (date palm jaggery, a winter speciality), flavouring (rose essence, saffron) and then build on it by stuffing fruit with it or encasing it in sandesh . Add to it a sprinkle of nuts and desiccated coconut.

Traditional sandesh still has its patrons. Sandeepa Mukherjee Dutta, who writes the blog Bong Mom’s Cookbook and has a book of the same name, swears by Mouchak, Nakur and Balaram Mullick — confectioners that are household names in Kolkata. They fashion the sweetmeat into shapes of the conch, fish and lotus. In winter, jol-bhora sandesh is something to look forward to. They come with beads of liquid date palm jaggery or honey. At the other end of the spectrum, there is also ganache chocolate chip sandesh , liqueur sandesh, even dimsum sandesh , I find out. And sandesh stands in for cakes too.

Bokaria makes several departures from the norms of sandesh making. She has a recipe for ice-cream sandesh made with custard apple. There is another which combines the rasgulla and the sandesh . The author does not even insist onthe use of cow’s milk, which is how it’s made traditionally. I ask her why. One reason is that it’s hard to find. Second, it yields very little chhana (this can be easily made at home), and there’s little difference in taste, she says. Which makes the book a good bet for learning the basics while making your own rules.

COMMENT NOW