Mymensingh - Cuisine

Cuisine

The staple food is plain rice with a curry of fish or meat. Normally people start with fried or steamed vegetable and dal, a kind of lentil soup. Often people squeeze a lemon slice or take additional salt while eating and add fresh onion rings and green pepper to spice up the food. Traditional snacks and savories include seasonal pitha of various kinds, dal-pury, singara and samosa. Home made desserts include Kheer, Payesh and Shemai. Sweets soaked in syrup of sugar, such as Geelapi, are mostly bought from shops. Paan, a digestive made out of betel nuts, spices, tobacco, and certain other ingredients are eaten by many people, some of which consume it with aromatic Jarda. For dinner or lunch, a simple formula is to prepare "khichdi", the broth of rice and lentils, seasoned with spices, and served with chutney or pickles. Ghee (butter) may be spread just before eating. The meal may end with sweet curd. Muri (puffed rice), chira (flattened rice) and khoi (popped rice/rice krispy) are substitutes for rice. They are eaten with gur (jaggery) which is a kind of unrefined sugar. They may be mixed up with curd or milk before eaten. People use only right hand for eating. No spoon, fork or knife is used.