Panch Phoron Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts
By Rituparna Roy
Panch phoron is made up of five whole seeds, including cumin, fenugreek, nigella sativa, fennel and radhuni. Radhuni or wild celery is sometimes replaced with mustard seeds. Photo by Rituparna Roy
About 25 years ago, when my grandmother lost her husband, she stripped her diet of meat and fish, red lentils, garlic and onions. My mother, then in her early 40s, now had to spend longer hours in the kitchen. Her mother-in-law demanded niramish (vegetarian in Bengali) meals to be prepared separately, in separate utensils — a practice prevalent until the turn of the century among Bengali-Hindu widows from the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.
She wanted frugal meals cooked from seasonal vegetables, lightly stewed or stir fried. The only indulgence she allowed herself was a bare tempering of panch phoron.
Panch phoron—where panch means five, and phoron refers to tempering of whole spices in fat—is a spice box staple in the eastern states of West Bengal, Odisha, Assam and Bihar. The aromatic blend consists of five whole seeds — jeera (cumin), methi (fenugreek), kalonji (nigella sativa), saunf (fennel) and radhuni (loosely translated to wild celery). They are typically stored and used together to flavour a plethora of dishes in the cuisines of the region. The blend is used in lentils, vegetables, pickles and fish curries, to name a few.
“Interestingly, it is the Hindus of Bengal, not the Muslims, who tend to make prolific use of panch phoron,” Bengali-American food historian and author Chitrita Banerji notes in her book The Hour of the Goddess: Memories of Women, Food, and Ritual in Bengal. “This is possibly because of the emphasis on vegetarian cooking among the Bengali Hindus, especially widows, who were forbidden any fish, flesh, or egg. Bengali Hindu cooks seem to think that almost any item of food can benefit from the addition of panch phoron.”
In a country where dishes change character every hundred miles, it is common for families to have their own blend of panch phoron. Some choose to use less fenugreek due to its bitter flavour. Others omit radhuni as it is not readily available outside Bengal, or substitute it with black mustard seeds. Purists like my mother refuse to use a blend made with the latter. “It has to be radhuni, hands-down,” she asserts.
Panch phoron occupies pride of place in the Bengali spice box. Photo by Rituparna Roy
***
Tempering or allowing whole spices to bloom in oil or ghee constitutes an integral step in Indian cooking. Every region has a name for it — tadka in the north, vagar or phodni in the west, phoron in the east and thalippu in parts of the south. The word phoron is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘sphoton’, meaning outburst or explosion. Whole dry spices such as cumin, mustard, fenugreek, dried red chillies, bay leaf, hing or asafoetida, cardamom, clove and cinnamon, to name a few, form the crux of tempering in every household. They are the pride of compartmentalised spice boxes, the lifeline of the Indian kitchen.
The process sets the mood for most recipes in regional Indian cooking. In a few cases, it follows in the end, and requires vigilance. Heat the fat, wait for it to reach a certain temperature, drop the whole spices and wait for them to splutter. “Tempering kickstarts the cooking process as spice molecules dissolve better in fat. The moment the core ingredients, for instance vegetables, are added, the flavour profile tends to change due to their natural water content,” says Krish Ashok, a food science enthusiast and author of Masala Lab: The Science of Indian Cooking. He adds that it is this flavoured oil that ties a dish together.
It is hard to trace the origin of this unique technique, mastered by home cooks for generations, almost by intuition. One school of thought suggests that a stew-like dish from the temple kitchens of Odisha called dalma, prepared with lentils and indigenous vegetables, relied on a tempering of cumin, asafoetida and ginger in ghee at the end. Dalma has been part of the mahabhog, a sacred offering prepared since the 12th century at the Jagannath Temple in Puri, around 40 miles from the state capital of Bhubaneshwar.
Food historian Pritha Sen once told me that panch phoron’s close association with eastern India could be because of the influence of the Pala dynasty, which reigned over Bihar and Bengal between the 8th and 12th centuries. As they were devout Buddhists, their traditions carried a strong indication of the number five — five senses, five colours and so on. In the Vajrayana philosophy of Buddhism, the world is made of five elements—earth, water, fire, air and space—and they are symbolised by five Dhyani Buddhas, who are believed to be a group of five heavenly Buddhas to have existed since the beginning of time. According to Sen, this philosophy may have translated to the creation of several things, including the five flavours—sweet, salt, bitter, sour and pungent—which form the soul of panch phoron.
In Ayurveda, the number five bears supreme significance. Panchabhoota or the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and space form the basis of the universe. Panchakarma, meaning five actions, is the five-fold healing therapy that cleanses the body, mind and soul. And, in the kitchen, the five ingredients of milk, curd, honey, sugar, and ghee constitute the sacred offering of panchamrit or the nectar of the Gods.
It is evident that vegetarian cooking in Bengal borrows heavily from Ayurveda, of eating seasonally and using minimal spices to maximise the nutrients of vegetables. The rule of serving panch rokom-er fol or five fruits, panch bhajas or five types of fried vegetables on certain occasions, and recipes like panchmishali-r torkari or medley of five vegetables, further establish the auspicious nature of the number.
The spices that make panch phoron are routinely used one without the other in the cuisines of the subcontinent. Of these, the role of cumin or jeera is supreme. It is critical to tadkas, where it renders an earthy-warm flavour to the dish. British historian Reay Tannahill in her illustrious book Food in History notes that cumin was introduced to India from the eastern Mediterranean by the Arabs. It was a favoured spice of the Romans. She also mentions the use of ‘cuminum’ (Cuminum cyminum) to make exotic sauces in Apicius, a collection of Roman recipes believed to have been compiled around the 1st century AD.
Fennel or saunf aids in digestion and is widely consumed post meals as a mouth freshener. The seeds have a licorice-like taste, and are subtly sweet. In my family, fennel is coarsely ground along with other spices to make mango pickles every summer.
It’s hard to imagine naan, the leavened flatbread hugely popular in South Asian restaurants across the world, without nigella or kalonji dotting its surface. These seeds are jet black in colour, pungent in flavour, and often referred to as onion seed.
The single most striking characteristic of fenugreek seeds or methi is its bitterness. But when cooked, it adds a rather nutty flavour to food. It is not only used in tempering, but also as a core ingredient in methi dana ki sabzi, a popular dish cooked in parts of northern India, with sprouted fenugreek seeds and other spices.
Radhuni (in Bengali) or Trachyspermum roxburghianum is native to south and southeast Asia, and closely resembles ajwain or bishop’s weed, and even celery to some extent. Therefore, it is often confused with celery seed. But the flavours differ. It is substituted with black mustard seeds in many homes as well as by those living outside West Bengal. “It is speculated that mustard became common partly because Bengali households often employed cooks from Odisha. For the latter, mustard was the natural ingredient in panch phoron, and not radhuni,” Banerji tells me over email. The community makes prolific use of mustard — the seeds are ground into a paste for fish preparations, and the oil is used for cooking.
***
Panch phoron adds depth of flavour to dishes like sweet tomato chutney. Photo by Rituparna Roy
In the cuisine of West Bengal, panch phoron enjoys a status like no other. It is used to temper chorchori — a mishmash of vegetables often cooked with the heads of local freshwater carp or shrimps; maacher tawk — a sweet and sour fish curry prepared with tamarind; and lentils. In the case of achar or pickles made with summer mangoes, and sweet chutneys, panch phoron may be used in crushed form as a final flourish. It takes the quintessential tomato aamshotto khejur-er chutney (a sweet chutney prepared with dates and mango leather) up a few notches.
The most remarkable, or ingenious, dish to come out of the Bengali vegetarian kitchen using the spice mix is shukto. This mildly bitter preparation is made using vegetables such as bitter gourd, potatoes, eggplants, green papaya, raw banana, radish, flat beans and ridge gourd in a mustard and poppy seed sauce, and finished with milk. In kumro-r chechki, a no-onion no-garlic sweet pumpkin dish often made with kala chana or black chickpeas, it is panch phoron that makes pretty much everything sing. Just as in labra, a mixed vegetable dish, which is a must in every ritualistic offering.
Panch phoron’s popularity stems from complex, multi-dimensional flavours. Its magic relies on unison. And yet, Bengali vegetarian cooking is known for its minimalist approach. Traditional home cooks stay away from adding further spices as they believe it may dilute the flavour of the main ingredients. “I think the preference for panch phoron is tied to the lighter, more delicate palate of Bengal. The beauty and variety of regional cooking is almost always connected to the available ingredients,” said Banerji.
Recipes in Barendra Randhan, a 1920s cookbook from Barendra or Varendra Bhumi, a region that was once in north Bengal, now in modern-day Bangladesh, highlights the striking culinary differences among communities even in the same state. Compiled by Kiranlekha Ray, an upper class Bengali Hindu, it focuses on recipes using produce and spices tied to the land. “Kiranlekha Ray tells us that this much popular spice [panch phoron] was absent in varendra cooking. Instead, fenugreek and cumin prevailed in most of the cookery of this region,” notes Utsa Ray in her book Culinary Culture in Colonial India: A Cosmopolitan Platter and The Middle-Class.
In the neighbouring states of Bihar, Odisha and Assam, panch phoron is used more or less in similar kinds of dishes with a few exceptions. Saipriya, a culinary researcher from Odisha, however tells me that temple food, which is considered to have influence over everyday cooking in the state, is devoid of panch phoron for unknown reasons.
In a region where meat has been consumed since ancient times, panch phoron continues to remain absent from chicken or goat meat recipes. Although, nine hundred miles away in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, the individual spices are used to make achari murgh or pickled chicken (achar means pickle in Hindi). Food researcher and producer Ruchi Shrivastava says spices like fennel and nigella are pantry staples in the region. And since fenugreek, cumin and black mustard are in any case spicebox essentials across the country, locals use all five of them individually to prepare a handful of recipes, including pickles, chicken and meat. The spices are stored separately, and not referred to as panch phoron.
In diaspora kitchens, panch phoron is the familiar taste of home. Indian-born British chef Asma Khan has vivid memories of her mother’s kitchen in Calcutta, of sights, sounds and smells of food being cooked with panch phoron. In an email interview, she told me that she buys radhuni from Kolkata, and makes her own mix in her London home. “I like radhuni because it has the more traditional flavour that I remember from my childhood. When I run out of it, I use black mustard,” she said. At her restaurant Darjeeling Express, it is used in Bengali aloo dum, a spiced potato dish, and in sweet tomato chutney.
Rinku Bhattacharya, a food writer and cookbook author from Valhalla, New York, said: “It is such a common ingredient in my mother’s cooking that I have probably grown up thinking of the smell as home.” Born in Kolkata, she moved to the US in the ’90s, and sources the individual spices from Indian grocery stores. Bhattacharya’s love for the cuisine even led her to write a cookbook titled The Bengali Five Spice Chronicles: Exploring the Cuisine of Eastern India in 2012. Apart from traditional Bengali recipes, she uses panch phoron for roasting vegetables and baking fish in her New York kitchen.
I am in the mood for kumro-r chechki. As I drop the panch phoron in hot oil, and dice my sweet pumpkin, simultaneously adjusting the heat of the pressure cooker in the adjacent burner, I know it is going to be a good meal.
