If you're an Indian food fan, you've no doubt eaten baingan bharta. This Punjabi dish of roasted, mashed, spiced eggplant is on virtually every Indian restaurant menu.
But there's another style of bharta. In Bangladesh, it's comfort food, easy to prepare and versatile. You take any vegetable in your kitchen or garden, cook it and then mash it with traditional bharta seasonings.
Even mango will work, says Martin Shah, chef/owner of India's Tandoori in Brentwood (above). Shah, who is from Bangladesh, is adding bharta dishes to his catering menu. To introduce them, he staged a bharta dinner at the restaurant.
The way to eat these dishes is with rice, he said, and so small servings were grouped around rice on each plate.
Eggplant bharta (above) was among them. The eggplant was roasted over an open flame, then seasoned bharta style with mustard oil, which adds a fiery pungency; garlic, onion, cilantro and red and green chiles.
Shah had worked all day making bharta dishes. One less familiar vegetable that he used was shim, also known as hyacinth bean (above). This green bean is being planted locally, he said.
Others were taro, peas and green banana, each seasoned slightly differently, some more spicy than others, some with more mustard oil than others.
The bharta dishes weren't all vegetables though. First up was tilapia, cooked bharta style (above).
Later came fermented shutki chapa (above), a fish that is either sun-dried or fermented in the ground. Prepared bharta style, it was intense.
Shah's food was spicy and some of it very strong in flavor. To offset this, he served a cool drink made with lychees, jackfruit, oranges, mango, green chiles and red chile flakes. Even though spicy, it was refreshing.
He served non-bharta Bangladeshi dishes too, including sweet and spicy shrimp cooked with ground coconut, coconut milk and coconut water.
Another was lamb shanks rezala, a classic curry made with yogurt and without chiles.
Also, chicken with mint.
The most unusual was the roe of the popular Bengali fish hilsa (ilish). (Bangladesh was once known as East Bengal, and most of its inhabitants are Bengalis.) This was prepared with onion, garlic, ginger and other common seasonings rather than bharta spices. (Note: you may also see bharta spelled bhorta.)
Desserts included a Bangladeshi version of carrot halwa, made with ghee, milk, raisins, nuts and cardamom.
Another was opo firni, a soft mixture of boiled opo squash combined with milk, sugar and cardamom.
And what better way to end an unusual and highly seasoned dinner than with a calming glass of hot chai?
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