Sheet

Winter

Appears in
Bengali Cooking: Seasons & Festivals

By Chitrita Banerji

Published 1997

  • About
Brief, invigorating, with vibrant colour standing out in a dry and rough landscape, winter in Bengal is like the perfect love affair. It is our season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, two short months of bliss. The flowers of winter are not like the demure white blossoms of the monsoon and the autumn. Crimson roses, yellow and bronze chrysanthemums, blazing marigolds and multicoloured dahlias clamour for attention.
In the country you can feast your eyes on fields of mustard awash in yellow blossom, on patches of maroony-red lalshak, on the subtle greens of cabbages in the earth and the climbing vine of the lau spreading over thatch roofs and bamboo frames. In the city markets the rich, purple aubergines are offset by snowy-white cauliflowers peeking from within their leaves; carrots, tomatoes, beets, cucumbers, spring onions and bunches of delicate coriander leaves invite you to stop cooking and make salads. And the infinite variety of leafy greens—spinach, mustard, laushak, betoshak, lalshak, methishak, muloshak—makes you wonder if the impoverished Hindu Bengali widow is to be pitied or envied for her vegetarian diet.