Cooking with Pritha Sen: Rannaghore Ke? Episode 9

Rannaghore Ke? is a fun adda with old and new friends about food, life and everything else. This is episode 9 with Pritha Sen.

We know Pritha di as someone who writes and talks about food and food history, but she contains multitudes, having worked in several—interconnected—fields over the course of her long and chequered career. A former teacher and journalist, Pritha di moved into the field of grassroots development work, working with artisans and crafts communities in remote areas to achieve sustainable livelihoods for them.

As someone who has done a lot of reading, writing and research on the indigenous eating habits of the people of Bengal, particularly Undivided Bengal, Pritha di often takes that knowledge to her own food pop-ups and curated menus. Pritha di is also a chef consultant with fine-dining restaurants, which means she has curated menus and helped set up restaurants in Goa, Mumbai and Singapore.

Pritha di started sharing her family recipes when food groups were first popping up on the social internet. In the episode she talks both about the joy of sharing her personal food stories and recipes with a wider community for the first time, as well as the harsh judgement she faced against some of the ingredients she was using. So, today, when bloggers and YouTubers—like us—or even restaurant menus, feature dishes like maccher mathar chyachhra, macher teler bora, or khoshar chachchari of various kinds, we stand on the shoulders of the likes of Pritha di who has been, for more than a decade and a half, priming the audience at large to accept our indigenous eating habits, AND flaunt them proudly to the whole world.

Enjoy the recipes Pritha di cooks for us: khoi'er bora, Bikrampuri dal, lau'er khosha'r chhechki, and alu-phulkopi diye komola kaliya!