Enjoying the privilege to be a bit narcissistic on this blog for once....
Precariously will rave on about my "paneer puraans" which my peers had to endure owing to one of my frequent deliriums, which, this time involved me turning vegetarian from the past few weeks...
here i m, visiting my maternal ancestral home, and reacting to my strange, untimely and seemingly "foolish" and reasonless berefthood of non-vegetarian cuisine, dearest mashi(and other people of her hierarchy) have tried their best to convert all the prized Bengali preparations, that is sooooooo integral to the Bengali way of "mehmaan-nawaazi", other than which it is unimaginable how to possibly etch out a way to entertain ANY guest, to their paneer analogical equivalents...exampli gratia: ilishe-bhaapa converted to paneer bhaapa (that typical Bengali preparation involving cooking the hilsa fish by steaming it in a gravy of mustard and curd), tamarind chicken to paneer imli, and mutton roghanjosh converted to paneer something (can’t possibly call it paneer roghanjosh, that will be like calling a spade a club!!!)
Precariously will rave on about my "paneer puraans" which my peers had to endure owing to one of my frequent deliriums, which, this time involved me turning vegetarian from the past few weeks...
here i m, visiting my maternal ancestral home, and reacting to my strange, untimely and seemingly "foolish" and reasonless berefthood of non-vegetarian cuisine, dearest mashi(and other people of her hierarchy) have tried their best to convert all the prized Bengali preparations, that is sooooooo integral to the Bengali way of "mehmaan-nawaazi", other than which it is unimaginable how to possibly etch out a way to entertain ANY guest, to their paneer analogical equivalents...exampli gratia: ilishe-bhaapa converted to paneer bhaapa (that typical Bengali preparation involving cooking the hilsa fish by steaming it in a gravy of mustard and curd), tamarind chicken to paneer imli, and mutton roghanjosh converted to paneer something (can’t possibly call it paneer roghanjosh, that will be like calling a spade a club!!!)
And all this only because tofu and mushrooms are things far flung into the future…
Paneer ah paneer!! Our only silver lining amidst the dark(ly yellow) clouds of inedible, slimy (sometimes green) food webs which entangled us in the hostel mess routine… (here too they used to kill the non-veg wale animals in the mess itself which nauseated me enough not to touch their cooked forms there too LL ) ….it was then that it made its way from our stomachs into our hearts…so much so that it deserved…sorry…my blog deserved an all-paneer entry!!!
So here I am…
The above string of incidents actually inspired me to peep into the past…the advent of paneer into the Indian society…and dun the reader dare undermine the efforts I put into this research as this topic is NOT there on Wikipedia…
The roots of paneer in the Indian society can be traced back to the times when the rajahs and maharajahs of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and the civilized parts of Madhya Pradesh, ie all the royalties of the then India, which were starkly and dominantly Hindu, the only religion of the world, which forbids non-vegetarian connoisseurs, began taking flights around the world (not literally flights, travels or TRAVAILS more likely) and found it almost impossible to control their taste buds and simultaneously stick to their “religious detrainments” paneer proved to be a plausible replacement, strangely similar to my sad little story!!!:P:P
Ps: gatta and soya bean chunks were then actually far away into the future!!
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