Macher Jhol Recipe – The Classic Bengali Fish Stew

We were in Ellis Island, New York earlier this week. It used to be the immigration gateway to the United States of America. Between 1892 and 1954, 12 million people passed through this upper bay island on the Hudson following their calling to a new life, probably a better life in the land, which never had a dearth of opportunities for the ready, willing and capable.

Macher Jhol Recipe

The place is a museum of memories, experiences, stories, pictures and belongings of people from that era and does take you down the pages of history. As they say, this was the “Island of Hope and Island of Tears.” And goes on to prove the tenacity, perseverance and entrepreneurial spirit of the boat people. For scores of families who immigrated then, sometimes with just bare minimum possessions there was no other choice than to work hard and rebuild and reestablish themselves in a foreign land and so they did. Their way of life, language, food, attire and every other little thing evolved and was Americanized over time.

Ellis Island always makes me emotional and the stories fascinate me as somewhere around three decades into the turn of the 20^th century, precisely in 1947 when India got liberated from the British colonization, my family too had to make a similar choice and this time it was a forced choice. My family originally hails from Bangladesh and unfortunately lived through the horrors of the dreaded “partition’ between India and Bangladesh. The partition of India saw the largest exodus of about 10 million people from Pakistan and Bangladesh to India. Till this day, the very word “partition’ is synonymous with pain and misery for the souls who had lived through the misery of it.

Growing up, I have heard many stories from my dad, who was a little boy when he made the dreaded journey across the border and from my grandparents of the lives they left behind, the friends, the houses, the boats, the riches never to be seen again. My great grandfather exchanged the house in Bangladesh with a Muslim gentleman for a reasonably sized house in Kidderpore in Kolkata, India. Our family was lucky as the move was relatively uneventful. But there were families who lost dear ones to the violent riots too.

Refugees as they were branded, were looked down upon and discriminated against. But somewhere when you have lost it all, you become fearless and indomitable. For my grandparents, it was a few decades of intense hardship and toil, but they endured and persevered. The hunger to reroot and reestablish was just as intense as the families who had made through Ellis island around that time. And as I stood at the Ellis island dormitory, looking through the artifacts, I only wished that somewhere someone had done something to preserve the memorabilia and stories passed down by our grandparents as there is nothing more fascinating than history and tracking the gradual evolution that societies undergo.

For my daughter, a life in America is all that she has ever known and will probably ever know. She appreciates her lineage and ethnicity but somewhere, I know that when she would be on her own, a dinner of pasta and grilled chicken would be a more normal thing for her to go back to than macher jhol and bhat (the quintessential Classic Bengali fish stew and rice). That is the staple I grew up on and sadly today, it is no longer the staple even in my house. And two generations down the line or may even two decades down the line, things would be even more delineating than what it is today.

It is important that we do something to preserve some of the treasures we were handed down so far, be it the antique possessions, dog-eared books, documents and pictures and most importantly the stories. The richest are those who have been the keepers of their family tales and possessions. Eventually, nothing fails to fascinate you as much as ancestry stories and tracing it back as far as possible and as much as you may ignore the recent upsurge in interest in genealogy, with inter-continental migration from India and overall South East Asia at its peak, a few generations down the line it would be in great demand in our community too.

If you have survived my emotional onslaught above, the recipe today is one which connects me to my roots. You guessed it, the quintessential macher jhol (The Classic Bengali Fish Stew). And this recipe too has evolved over time. With freshest fresh water fish being in disposal in abundance, the original recipe is sans onion, garlic or any fancy spices. However, over time life became better and affluent and in came different ingredients and there are possibly a hundred variations to this recipe. Every family has their little twists and tales around the classic Bengali fish stew. This is mine. We get fresh grass carp fish here which mimics the taste of Rohu {the fish of choice back home} pretty well! So that’s what I have used here.

Along with Macher Jhol Recipe, You may like the recipes below:

• The Bengali Egg Curry ^[2]
• Chhanar Korma ^[3]
• Mom’s Chicken Curry ^[3]

Print ^[4]