Dining in BangladeshLita Fearon — Orangeville, ON
The staple food in Bangladesh is rice – they harvest two crops a year and are working to produce a third crop. No brown rice seems to be available. In a home we visited of a child who had received a bedkit we watched as the grandmother — she did not know her age but thought she was around eighty — drain a large iron pot of white rice for the family meal. Fish is also plentiful. At the home we visited we saw a flat bamboo basket filled with tiny drying sardine-like fish. We were told they would be cooked once dry. We saw men fishing everywhere. On the rivers they used large man-powered nets lowered and lifted by bamboo poles. In the rice fields they fished using small open boats a little wider than a canoe. At a large market in Dhaka we saw two- to three-pound fish for sale. What I sampled was very tasty – mild and white meat.
Although we saw beef, chicken, and mutton sold at the town markets, most of the people cannot afford to have it in their daily diet. One night our host invited us to his home for dinner and all three meats were served as part of the meal. Chickens run loose everywhere scratching for something to eat so the chickens had very little meat on the bones and it was tough. We even sampled KFC in Dhaka but the Colonel's secret recipe seemed to have a different flavour to it. Since chickens are plentiful eggs were everywhere although when we saw them come to market — stacks and stacks of egg cartons on a flatbed — we wondered how they ever made it without being broken. Another staple was a flat bread resembling a thin pita without the pocket. It is used by the people to help scoop up their food and sauces — in Bangladesh the people eat with their fingers, mixing up the food as they go. Street vendors were everywhere kneading, rolling and cooking the dough on an oiled flat grill. Bananas and papaya are plentiful and we saw a large selection of very attractive displays of fruits and vegetables at the market, though they were lacking on the menus.
Ketchup is very common mixed in with the chicken corn soup and at the hotel the shrimp cocktail which resembled butterscotch pudding was served with a few shrimp covered in a sauce of mayo and ketchup. Most of the dishes are spicy – curry and chillies but not overpowering and as I like spicy food I was right in my element. Milk was not readily available except in powdered form and not offered as a drink. Bangladesh was quite the experience and as the newby on the team – I thoroughly enjoyed each minute of it! |
