Handi kabab

It was the wife of a colleague of my husband’s who first made me a very well-known Muslim meat dish, the handi kabab. The name comes from the Bengali handi, the peculiar cooking pot, round bottomed and with a pitcher-like narrowing of the neck and a wide rim for easy handling. This dish was something I had heard about from childhood. All kababs are Muslim preparations, but somehow the handi kabab seemed to have an especially strong flavour of the ‘other’ community. Strangely, though I lived