Paat Shaak Recipes from Partition
Paat shaak, or tender jute leaves, are an ingredient beloved to one half of Bengal, and an integral part of a recipe that crossed over from East Bengal, now Bangladesh, during the partition.
There are few things that bring me more joy than upending a bowl of runny paat shaak’er jhol on a mound of steaming hot rice, then eating it with my hands. In Kolkata’s sweltering summers, when your taste buds wilt and your appetite dwindles, runny curries, cooked with minimum spices and a touch of sourness, are lunchtime restoratives. Paat shaak, tender jute leaves, are much loved in the kitchens of Bengalis who migrated from opar Bangla, modern-day Bangladesh, a land cradled by rivers where jute, both to be consumed and to be sent to the jute mills of Kolkata on barges, grew in abundance. Like many dishes in these households, the paat shaak’er jhol is a link to lost history, to a land left behind for survival.
Jute plants mature in late summer, growing 10-12 ft tall. Only tender leaves are plucked from the young plant, and the midrib is removed before the leaves are cooked. After harvest, to extract the fibre, jute plants are left to decay in ponds, in a process called retting. Each summer, when we arrived at my grandparents’ house in the village of Begumbari in Bihar, the stench, weighed down by the humidity of the Gangetic plains, would hang like a corpse over everything. I’d pinch my nose on the way home from the railway station, but at lunch, when my grandmother, thamma, fed me a mouthful of paat shaak with rice, I was always amazed that the leaves of such a foul-smelling plant could be so delicious.
Paat shaak is essential to summer lunch in a typical Bangla household like ours. In ghoti kitchens— kitchens of families whose ancestors were from West Bengal — it was rarer, because jute was predominantly cultivated in East Bengal, in modern-day Bangladesh. During the British Raj, Kolkata hummed with jute mills. Raw material came in from what is now Bangladesh. After partition, supply was cut-off and today the mills stand derelict, like ghosts of Bengal’s golden age. In the interiors of opar Bangla, ravaged by annual floods and barely connected to cities like Dhaka and Kolkata, ingredients were local and recipes were shaped by necessity. My grandfather, who was born in Borishal (a place considered so far away from everywhere, there is a saying in Bengali: aaite shaal, jaaite shaal, taar naam Borishal), remembers that his mother cooked paat shaak with freshwater prawns that he and his siblings would catch. When not in season, the paat shaak could be replaced with white shapla flowers that grew in abundance at the local ponds.
There are two types of paat shaak: sweet, or mithhe paat, and bitter, or teeta paat. The teeta paat is shredded and fried with garlic, like various other greens in the Bengali kitchen, and served, like other greens, with a dash of kashundi on the side. But not paat shaak’er jhol. Unlike in the stir-fry, sweet jute leaves, or mithhe paat, are used in this dish. In the paat shaak’er jhol they retain a characteristic stickiness. The leaves are left whole, and stewed with garlic and sliced green mangoes. Sometimes pointed gourd, or potol, the object of mealtime disappointment for many Bengali children, are halved and thrown in. Because of the gummy texture, paat shaak’er jhol is often an acquired taste. Bereft of heat and the motherload of subcontinental spices, yet fragrant with the floral notes of green mangoes, it is particularly calming on hot afternoons.
My grandmother cooks jute leaves with dal. The leaves are left to sweat in oil tempered with nigella seeds and garlic, then cooked with red lentils, to a thick, soup-like consistency. Tender jute leaves also make for excellent fritters, or bora, as we call them. Whole leaves are gently dipped in a batter of besan mixed with spices like turmeric and caraway seeds, and deep-fried. They always remind me of maps: patches of dark green surrounded by crispy fried besan! Most of a plate of fritter would vanish, even before lunch was served. We’d quietly sneak into the kitchen, pick up a hot, crisp one that had just been fried, and run back out!
Paat shaak is one of those dishes you will never find on a restaurant menu; but every summer, an entire generation of Bengalis whose parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents left behind lives in Bangladesh, waits for this humble shaak to make an appearance in urban markets. There is no authentic recipe for preparations like this, and every household cooks it the way they have eaten and loved it for centuries. Dishes like these, that our grandparents carried with them in the folds of their memories, from opar Bangla are an important part of our heritage. It is not just lives that were lost during Partition; entire regional cultures, culinary traditions of communities and families, were lost in the bloodbath too. Many of our grandparents escaped with nothing but the clothes on their back. Many of them cannot read or write but they remain master storytellers. There might be no box or diary of family recipes for our generation to access, but there is so much oral history.
Paat shaak’er jhol is made with sweet, or mithhe, jute leaves. Tender jute leaves arrive in the market in summer, alongside sour green mangoes. But if you do not have green mangoes, feel free to substitute with tamarind. Recipes vary depending on who you ask, but this is how my father makes it.
RECIPE: EAST BENGAL’S PAAT SHAAK’ER JHOL
Ingredients
1 bunch tender jute leaves (about 200 g after stalks and midrib have been removed, and the leaves cleaned)
½ a green mango (around 50 g), cubed
green chillies, to taste
4-5 garlic cloves, crushed
4-5 potol (pointed gourd or parwal), cut into quarters lengthwise (optional)
10-12 prawns, fried (optional)
Salt, to taste
Method
Temper the oil with crushed garlic cloves
Add the potol and fry until cooked halfway
Add the paat shaak, the green mango pieces, and the green chillies. Add salt to taste. Allow to cook for a few minutes. Now, add enough water for a broth, and cover until fork-tender.
When the leaves are wilted and cooked through, remove from heat. The broth should be somewhat gluey when it is done.
If using fried prawns, add them to the jhol just before removing from the heat.
Serve with steamed rice.
Mohana Das grew up exploring the vibrant streets of Calcutta, and listening to her grandparents' stories of life in Bangladesh. You can follow her work here.
ALSO ON THE GOYA JOURNAL
