The Swosti Premium with its annual food festival, launched each Poila Baisakh (on Bengali New Year’s Day) has provided another opportunity to relish Bengali food at its restaurant - Panorama.Thanks to chef Satyabrata Jena, who has fetched typical ingredients like panch-phoron (a traditional mix of five seeds), garam masala, ajwain, hilsa, giant prawns, and fresh ghee to present a buffet that rent the air with aromas that once emanated from Didima’s kitchen.To prepare the palate, nothing works as good as the fragrant Sada Bhat, teamed with old-fashioned vegetable preparations. Such as the Shukto of drumsticks, potatoes, brinjal, and bitter gourd, cooked with a dash of mustard seeds-ajwain-ginger paste, tempered with milk, bay leaves, and chhener dalna to a delicate unity.It’s at this point that one realises how little lauded Bengali vegetarian delicacies are. We move on to golden, puri-like Radha ballabi made of a wheat-gram flour combination, which is delicious with the saag bhaja and kumro phooler bara, florets of pumpkin and diced coconut, with a hint of sweetness.The non-vegetarian spread is equally alluring. With a helping of Sirajer Murgi Biriyani sprinkled with raisins and nuts, we face a choice of delicate Sorse Bata ilish (the fine-boned Kolkata hilsa steamed in mustard to a melt-in-the-mouth deliciousness) or even the Chingri Malai curry (giant prawns cooked in coconut milk with a dash of cinnamon, cardamom, and mace). In case fish is not your favourite dish, you can opt for the Murgir Champ (modified to Bengali tastes from the classic Mughal recipe with mounds of onions) or the Kochi Pather Jhol (Bengali Style Mutton Stew that is a thin gravy stew made with tender goat meat and onions).Replete with good food, we find there’s more to come. To help digestion, there’s an array of sweet chutneys - of raw mango, of tomato and, much rarer, of dates and cashewnuts. The sweet-sour zest of the latter lingers on.What’s a Bengali meal without mishti? To round off the feast, a rice payesh with jaggery is on for dessert, as is the thick, famed mishti doi. Looking for the unusual, the golden, syrupy rounds of rasagolla prove a heady treat. But the piece-de-resistance is the tiny rasmalais floating in a creamy, pista-enhanced base. Manna for the tongue. The festival is on till April 21. The buffet is priced at Rs 549 plus taxes per person.
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