Mise en place – the inceptions of food appreciation

Growing up in a typical Bengali household, food preparation was the domain of the women. Ma (Bengali for mum) would be the captain in the kitchen followed by the maid, whose jobs amongst other things would be assisting in the preparation and cooking of meals.  Even more so with women joining the workforce, these ladies played an indispensable role in the Bengali households and the daily management of it and more often than not became an extended part of the family.  My parents had such a lady perhaps the same age as ma at that time and we lovingly addressed her as ‘pishi’ (Bengali for paternal aunt). To this day she still runs the weekly kitchen and looks after the house and over the years become a real pishi to me. Papa, a brilliant cook in his own right, would sometimes cook as well. Sometimes the Sunday lunch and sometimes during holidays, I looked forward to when he would cook the meals as the tastes and smells were very different from the ones I was accustomed to on a daily basis.

However, I cannot say that either of them were the reasons or the cause of my obsession with food. I believe the seed of my food obsession and appreciation was sown, not by a person per se, but more so an occasion that would happen in my father’s factory twice every year that I first remember seeing as a kid not older than eight years old. I have only witnessed one of these feasts from start to finish as most of the other times, it would happen on a school day and luckily this one time, it coincided with the school holidays. Papa, another foodie that he is, and a good boss that his workers said he was, would twice a year, put on a feast for them in the factory. He would cook the meal himself in a way to show thanks and appreciation for their hard work and efforts for the company. These ‘feasts’  or ‘feasty’ as the workers would call them, were eagerly looked forward to as it gave them a time to relax, enjoy and let their hair down for a few hours and envied by the workers from the surrounding factories. Our factory was a very unusual one in regards to the design and layout of it. You would not conjure images of food when you hear an engineering factory but sometimes now I think that the person who designed it must have been a foodie as well. Where else would you find an engineering factory with a backyard with at least three varieties of mango trees, a few guava trees, endless banana plants, a ‘jamrul’ tree (wax apples) and a small pond teeming with ‘pona mach’ (fresh water fishes)? Papa also maintained a few chickens on the factory property, whose eggs the workers were allowed to eat for their meals and if enough, take some home for their families and during these feasts become an ingredient towards the dishes my father cooked.

The small pond that was in the property also contributed to the ingredients for these feasts as papa would get the workers to put down a net early in the morning to catch a few of these fishes so as to be ready by lunchtime for him to cook with them. The morning of the feast would be spent by papa in the market shopping for the remainder of the ingredients at the bazaar alongside the daily household shopping. You see, unlike the pre-packaged and fast food nation that we live in where supermarkets influence grocery shopping patterns, Bengalis, like the rest of India and the Chinese, French and Italian, shop for their ingredients for the kitchen on a daily basis every morning. If you couldn’t poke, prod, see and smell the ingredient before buying it, it wasn’t good enough. Shopping lists were not done based on what was cheap, but rather what was in season. You eat what is good, when is good and therefore cheap. Just like in real estate it’s about Location, Location, Location, to Bengalis when it comes to food, it’s about Ingredient, Ingredient, Ingredient.

Once all ingredients had been collected, he would head off to the factory to start prepping for the feast. By the time he was back, the fishes would have been pulled out from the pond by a few of the workers with nets, scaled, gutted, cleaned and cut into portions ready for papa to cook. The workers themselves knowing that it was ‘feast’ day and papa would be cooking, would often help him with the prep. Sometimes, they too contributed to the feast with vegetables or fruits that they had received from their family farms in their villages. Once in the factory, he would then go and pull out the plumpest chickens to cook with for the meal. Him and another worker would then dispatch it quickly and then go on with the process of plucking the feathers and dressing it for it to be cooked later. As a curious eight year old, I would sit next to the worker whom we addressed as ‘kaku’ (uncle) ready to ask questions racing through my head to satisfy my inquisitive mind. You couldn’t get a chicken fresher than that and more so taste the way you want to as you knew exactly what it ate, how it lived and grew up until the day it was killed to be eaten.

The ‘feast’ itself wasn’t an opulent affair in its character unlike what the name would suggest. It was simple but nonetheless delicious and more importantly, cooked home style and a feast for everyone. The meal would consist of a meat dish, a fish dish, a vegetable or lentil dish, rice and/or rotis and a simple salad of red onions, cucumbers and tomatoes served with lime and whole green chillies. Dessert would likely be ‘roshogolla’ from the sweet shop or any other sweet that was good and recommended by the shop keeper that day. Onion, garlic and ginger peeled and sliced ready to be ground on the ‘sheel-bata’ (mortar and pestle) to make their respective pastes to make the gravy bases. Black peppercorns, dried chillies, cinnamon sticks, cardamoms and other dried spices depending on how papa wanted his curries to be, being roasted in the ‘korai’ (wok) to be ground up later to make the ‘garam masala’. Tomatoes and coriander leaves being chopped, potatoes being peeled and cut into portions, vegetables being prepped, the fish steaks being marinated in turmeric and salt, the factory floor was a hive of activity all in preparation of the feast. Instead of hot iron, machine oil, and other industrial smells, you were cajoled with smells of cinnamon and cardamom being gently sautéed in mustard oil with other fragrant spices. 

As the dishes started being cooked, their own delicious aromas wafted through the air tantalising the senses and increasing appetites. The smell of garlic and ginger being sautéed in mustard oil in one ‘korai’ while the other one had sliced red onions being gently fried till they are golden and caramelised awaiting their next stage in the preparation. Yet more than the preparation itself, what I remember is the convivial atmosphere within the factory at that time. The absence of any power distance hierarchies established from their daily jobs. Instead the presence of a communal environment where everyone seemed to be having a jolly good time, laughing, joking and just enjoying each other’s company all while cooking a meal is what I remember the most. Papa having no problems in taking orders from the gatekeeper on how long to toast the spices to make sure the spices would be still be fragrant but not bitter, the foreman being told by the peon on the correct ratio of turmeric to salt to apply on the fish steaks to make sure that it is not overtly salty and dry out the fish while gently flavouring the fish.  Food acting as the equaliser between employer and employee, boss and worker is what impressed with me the most. The notion that irrespective of your status, beliefs and predispositions, over food, you were all but the same – people, hungry no doubt, but just people.

As the afternoon turned into evening and the dishes all cooked one by one, the anticipation and excitement of digging in to the meal at the end reached its crescendo and yet the constant still was the whole nature of interaction between everyone. I do not recall much of how the meal tasted, but have no doubt it must have been mouthwateringly delicious  as there were no leftovers in spite of the workers speculating  that there would be enough for lunch next day. I remember sitting next to a ‘kaku’, enjoying the meal after witnessing the theatrical and vibrant production of it, blissfully unaware that what I just experienced would eventually define and build my beliefs towards food and its impact on people and society in general. I can’t remember much after the meal only to wake up the next day in my bed excited to recount the entire story to ma on how the day went and how it was a huge success. Papa later said I had dosed off while they all did the dishes and missed out dessert which they had later. I didn’t feel that bad on missing out on dessert which is unusual given my sweet tooth, because I was still excited about the lead up to the whole meal.

Later on growing up, I would spend a lot more days in the factory over weekends and holidays, but that particular day in the factory and being able to share it with the kaku’s and papa and whoever else was there and being a part of that meal from start to finish left a long lasting impression. It was an early lesson on the humbleness and modesties of life and a very powerful lesson on the impact of food on people and its effect on relationships, whether it be, creating, maintaining or destroying it in some cases.