Royally hilsa

A king must protect his subjects. So, in the 1900s, when villagers pleaded with Raja Ashutosh Nath Roy of Cossimbazar (in North Bengal) to save them from a man-eating leopard that was stalking the area, the Raja readied himself for a hunt. It was the peak of the monsoons and his wife begged him to stay indoors, away from the torrential rains. To keep her from worrying about his safety while he was away, the Raja asked her to prepare for him a special meal, something that he had never tasted before. When he returned that night, successful in his mission, the Rani presented him with a dish as sumptuous as it was unique: Hilsa (also known as ilish ; a fish in the herring family that is near-synonymous with parts of East India — especially Bengal — and Bangladesh) cooked in coconut milk, yoghurt, honey and lemon juice, and bearing the mellifluous, romantic sounding name madhu malai ilish .

This dish was among a host of ilish preparations served at the preview of the Royal Hilsa Menu, an ongoing festival at the Eden Pavilion, ITC Sonar, Kolkata. The seven recipes were each from a royal family, or rajbari , in Bengal. Many of these went beyond the widely known combinations of hilsa with mustard paste ( shorshe bata in Bengali) or kalo jeere-kancha lonka (nigella seeds and green chillies). The purist might collapse at the idea of preparing hilsa with, say, ghee, nuts and raisins, but some of the dishes on the Royal Hilsa Menu come with a fair bit of history. And some clever strategy.

Poets and writers — even film-makers — have elevated the hilsa to a mythic status in Bengal. But before they got to eulogising this symbol of popular Bengali culture, the smart housewife had used it to both please and appease her husband. Salma Deb of north Kolkata’s Sovabazar Rajbari vouches for the usefulness of the hilsa as a domestic weapon. “I have seen even my mother-in-law do the same,” she said, as she served sugandhi ilish bhape , in a silken yoghurt-mustard gravy with hints of garam masala. Deb explains that the women of the house would resort to cooking a hilsa dish whenever they wanted to persuade their husbands to agree to special requests. The bones in the fish helped to prolong the meals, by which time the women would have argued and sealed the case to their advantage.

Ilish machher dum pulao

The hilsa, we learned, is also useful for propitiating temperamental — even potentially dangerous — goddesses. The fish is the focal point of the Manasa (snake goddess) Puja at the Posta Rajbari household in central Kolkata. Held during the monsoon months, which is peak hilsa season, the timing is perfect. The fish is cooked in several ways as offerings for the deity. The recipe we sampled, however, does not have religious significance. The hilsa was used to make a social statement by Rani Kasturi Manju Dashi, whose son had returned to early 20th-century Calcutta after a long tour of Europe. To announce his arrival among the peers, the matriarch ordered the making of a dish that was refined and cosmopolitan, yet Bengali at heart. Thus emerged the zafrani ilish , cooked in a rich gravy of cashew and strewn with plump raisins. A dash of saffron milk — a kind of royal signature — is said to have made the dish a talking point among the Rani’s guests.

Moynagarh Rajbari’s ilish machher dum pulao — exuding the fragrance of garam masala, ghee and basmati rice — has all the trappings of a good Nawabi pulao. Instead of melt-in-the-mouth meat, there is the delectable flesh of the hilsa. It’s an unexpected and successful culinary fusion of two cultures. And exactly what one can look forward to from the royal kitchens of Moynagarh. Surrounded by waterbodies and moats, Moynagarh in East Medinipur district boasts an ancient history of valour and tolerance. From the 1560s, when Raja Ananda Bahubalindra won the right for his land to be an independent kingdom, to the present day, the area has seen the peaceful coexistence of people of different faiths — Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Even today, the strong Vaishnav culture cohabits with Islam and the festivals of the two faiths are celebrated with fervour. The Moyna Rajbari’s love for such diversity, according to Siddhartha Bahubalindra, spans many spheres. The hilsa pulao came about after Raja Paramananda Bahubalindra’s visit to the court of Mughal emperor Jehangir. The fish, however, was not the first choice for this exotic dish. The pulao was initially made with vegetables, because the Vaishnavite family doesn’t eat meat.

The subject of many culinary experiments over the centuries, the hilsa has both united and divided its lovers in Bengal. While some are adding it as mash to golgappa, some like it the Southeast Asian way, cooked with turmeric leaves and galangal. Whatever the outcome, the hilsa remains the winner.

Arundhati Ray is a food writer based in Kolkata

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