I recall a famous Bengali movie that came out a few years back called?Maach Mishti & More—the name was such that one won't forget it for years.?I often wonder where would Bengal go if not for?mishti, and how would Bengalis survive life's trifles and troubles without this sweet lifelong affair. Bengal’s economy is highly, if not totally, dependent on Bengalis' love for?mishti.

Although it is an evergreen phenomenon in the life of a Bong, come December and the charm of the?mishti?heightens manifold. This happens with the support of?nolen gur?or date palm jaggery. But winter or no winter, the charm of Bengal’s sweet affair is far from fading.

So, here is a 'tiny' list of West Bengal’s sweetest delicacies in various shapes and forms. I came across these during my last visit to Kolkata, having seen some fifteen odd varieties of sweets in my own home in a stint of a little more than a couple of days.

Nolen Gur'er Soufflé?

A thick layer of creamy jaggery soufflé over a thick layer of soft sondesh, this will have you licking your lips. Let me first introduce the star ingredient:?nolen?(new)?gur. It is a word that makes every Bong skip a heartbeat and go weak in their knees. It is date palm jaggery, an extremely seasonal product that Bengalis buy during winter and store in a refrigerator forever. It is made from the first flush of juice from the date palm trees. Only the first flush makes a premium quality?nolen gur, rest goes to make other inferior variants of jaggery.

West Bengal’s villages are the actual creators of this jaggery, with Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad and Malda districts being the key contributors. Every evening during winters, earthen containers are tied to date palm trees to catch the oozing sap. The date palm juice is then retrieved from the trees before sunrise and is then heated to convert it into jaggery.

Then they sell it in different varieties to different kinds of customers, after which it reaches every corner of West Bengal. No wonder the jaggery is perceived as premium and is quite highly priced.?The famous Amitabh Bachchan movie?Saudagar?(1973) revolved around the same theme, and was based on the Bengali short story?Ras?by Narendranath Mitra.

Going back to this heavenly dessert, it seems to be the original creation of one of the most popular sweet chains of Bengal, Balaram Mullick and Radharaman Mullick.?The bottom layer is made of a soft variant of sondesh made of?nolen gur, known as?makha sondesh. Above?makha sondesh?lies a thick layer of soufflé,?again made of?nolen gur. It is rich in taste and gorgeous to look at. This sweet may have different variants, like come summer and the jaggery soufflé gets replaced by mango soufflé.

Baked Sondesh?Roll?

This one has a slightly baked?rosogolla?(rasgulla) wrapped in a thick layer of baked?sondesh! That means it is a huge slice of thick?sondesh?rolled carefully after placing a?rosogolla?inside it. As one takes a bite of this, I found an interesting blend of flavours—the softly sweetened?sondesh?first, followed by a more sweeter, baked?rosogolla. Overall I found this sweet quite delicious.

Now,?sondesh?is a famous dessert said to have originated somewhere around the 16th century in the larger Bengal region.?It is mostly made of?kheer?or?chhena?(cottage cheese). Interestingly,?using curdled milk was a taboo in India in the earlier times, marking it inauspicious. But?chhena?became an important raw material for making sweets courtesy the first set of western influence in the form of Portuguese who reached Kolkata through its port and settled at Chittagong initially, which was then part of undivided India but now falls in Bangladesh and later spread to parts of Hooghly district.?

Sondesh?means news or message. Bengalis practiced this tradition of sending sweets or food as a gift to families and friends and hence the sweet got its name. In fact sweets remain the one important gift to be carried while visiting someone even now. In West Bengal, even now, any form or variant of sweet can be found in every household, almost every day.

Makha Sondesh

Sondesh?is commonly prepared by using?chhena?by tossing it with sugar over a low flame. Later this hot, sweetened?chhena?is shaped into small balls which are called ‘Kanchagolla’. This is the most simple version of?sondesh. This sweet is then put in a small use and throw bowl for serving to customers.

I learnt that many years ago when the extreme heat of Kolkata summers,?chhena?rotting?was a big wastage. To counter this daily wastage of a tasteless but useful by-product of milk, it was mixed with the molasses or sugar and a fine paste was made out of it.?One inquisitive person started mixing sugar,?khoya?(milk fudge) and cardamom powder with it and it finally resulted in beautiful and awesome tasting paste known as?makha sondesh. That was the first form of the?sondesh, known to Bengalis.

The same?sondesh?can be prepared in different complex ways and that gives rise to other variants where it is filled with syrup, blended with coconut or?kheer, and moulded into a variety of shapes.

Sondesh?is a symbol of fusion of the two cultures, Bengali and Portuguese, because Portuguese loved their cheese! First?sondesh?with?chhena?was made in Hooghly district in West Bengal. A small town called Bandel in Hooghly district was another important settlement of Portuguese in West Bengal. It is said that the local cooks (mostly Indian and Burmese) learnt the art of curdling milk to create?chhena?from their Portuguese masters and spread the word among their own people. That’s how the knowledge about it spread and hence our current-day?sondesh?and?rosogolla?were born.

Joynagar'er Moa

Joynagar'er Moa?is made with?nolen gur?(jaggery made from?date palm?tree extract), kanakchur khoi?(a form of popped rice made from a special variety of aromatic rice), ghee,?cardamom, raisins, cashew nuts, etc.?No wonder this one is a seasonal sweet, available only during winters because both the key ingredients, date palm jaggery and?kanakchur khoi?are available only during winters.

This sweet is a specialty sweet of a place called Joynagar in South 24 Parganas in West Bengal. All these years the sweet came to Kolkata from Joynagar itself. But recently many sweet makers in Kolkata have also started making it, sometimes by using artificial ingredients only for the sake of its popularity.?

This delicacy obtained the GI tag in 2014 and was exported for the first time this year after 117 years of its birth! GI tag signifies a product has a specific geographical origin and enjoys a reputation because of it. This gives the certificate of authenticity only to some 25 shops in Joynagar only. Nevertheless, I found this sweet? from Balaram Mullick and Radharaman Mullick genuinely delectable and flavourful.

Shankha Sondesh (Conch-Shaped Sandesh)

There can be different types of sondesh, be it in shape or raw material. This one’s a date palm jaggery one, found during winters. The same sweet can be made with sugar during rest of the year. Even the shape of the conch may vary depending on the mould being used. This is a slightly hardened form of?makha sondesh,?a common variant made of jaggery. It can also be called winter special?sondesh.

The soft and moist?chhena?is cooked with the perfect ratio of sugar/jaggery, cardamom powder and put in different moulds to make?sondesh. The same?sondesh?can have rose water or vanilla as an ingredient for flavour, or become a mango?sondesh?during winters. It’s about tweaking it slightly based on the seasonal ingredients. The?sondesh?and its many variants, can make you swoon with delight. In fact, noted food historian Colleen Taylor Sen rightly calls?sondesh?the ‘Emblem of Bengaliness’.

I have a very fond childhood memory associated with?sondesh. As a child I would visit my maternal home in central Kolkata almost every year, where brothers of my maternal grandfather lived with their families. That one was an old and huge house, with multiple rooms and a big courtyard, each room inhabited by one family. So I had not one but many grandfathers to pamper me. I called one of them, ‘hansh dadu’ meaning ‘duck grandfather’ as he would take me for a walk in the evening and get me a duck-shaped?sondesh?from a small shop close to the children’s park, every day. The?sondesh?was not important to me, the duck was!

Chocolate Sondesh
This one is an interesting fusion of?sondesh?and chocolate. The proportion of chocolate may vary for different formats of this kind of sweet. Liquid chocolate can be used as an icing on a?sondesh?or it can be out an out a chocolate?sondesh?with cocoa powder well mixed with?chhena,?sugar, salt, chocolate chips etc. There is one more format where the?sondesh?may be filled with liquid chocolate inside or on the top. These are more modern formats of sweets, very popular in Kolkata.

We see how far the?sondesh?has travelled. Kolkata’s Balaram Mullick & Radharaman Mullick Sweets is leading from the front when it comes to variants of chocolate?sondesh, with options like Choco lava, Choco fudge, Choco bon-bon, Choco excess, Cadmish (Cadbury’s chocolate and?raisins) and more.

Jolbhora Sondesh
The name means, ‘sondesh filled with water’. It is not literally filled with water, instead it may be filled with coconut water, liquid jaggery, chocolate syrup, mango syrup etc. This one is the same?sondesh?made little hard outside with a filling inside! One has to eat this with care.

I found an interesting story behind the origin of?jolbhora sondesh. Sometime in 1818, Surya Kumar Modak, belonging to the Bengali confectionery-making community from Chandannagar in Hooghly district, received a request to make a special?sondesh?to surprise a customer’s son-in-law. Modak created a?sondesh?in the shape of a palm fruit kernel, with a filling of rose-flavoured water. As the?son-in-law took the first innocent bite, the liquid spurted out in all directions spoiling his new clothes, much to the amusement of the family members who wanted to play a prank on him.?

Surya Modak’s sweet shop still exists in Chandannagar with a wider variety of?jolbhora?options now like?aam jolbhora?(filled with mango) and?coca?jolbhora?(filled with chocolate). And this one is a must buy sweet available in Kolkata’s innumerable sweet shops, to be found one in every lane and by-lane of the city.

That’s just a few of the universe of sweets that West Bengal boasts. One may easily add to it?rosogolla,?gurer?(jaggery)?rosogolla,?mishti doi?(sweet curd, with an emphasis on 'mishti'?again),?chanar jilipi,?chomchom,?kheerkadam,?mihidana,?labanga latika,?rajbhog,?sitabhog?and many more interesting names and variants, unique to many shops.

Murshidabad, Burdwan, Bishnupur districts from India and Dhaka, Nator districts from Bangladesh were the pioneer of sweets in undivided Bengal.?But today the whole of West Bengal has achieved mastery over the art of making sweets.

The thing to note here is how innovation is driving this business in Bengal. If we have winter special?malaiyo?in Varanasi, West Bengal’s?nolen gurer?soufflé is not far behind. The creativity used around one simple idea of a sweet dish is highly appreciable. West Bengal’s?mishti?is class apart but the sad part is that we can find this quality, taste and variety only in West Bengal.

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