Paanch Phoron...

Anchal asked me for the ingredients of paanch phoron. To make quintessential Bengali food you MUST have this in  your kitchen armoury.


The wikipedia article about paanch phoron is quite succinct and and to the point:

Panch phoron has the following ingredients in equal measure:

• Fenugreek (মেথি methi)
• Nigella seed (কালো জিরা kalo jira)
• Cumin seed (জিরা jira)
• Radhuni (রাধুনি radhuni)
• Fennel seed (সঁওফ sőf or মৌরি mouri)

I usually buy the ingredients separately and and roast them on a tava before cooling and mixing them. I find that I get better flavour this way rather than buying the spices pre-mixed.

Radhuni is rather exotic and difficult to get outside Bengal. At a pinch I replace it with plain mustard seeds (very neutral as a flavour when fried). The end taste is almost similar but I'd rather wait and use radhuni instead of substituting it. Adding ajwain (it is from the same family as radhuni) does not really go well. The flavour goes completely ka-bing.

People looking for kalo jira, outside Bengal/Orissa, I'm sure, have faced problems like I did. You get offered everything from shah jeera to sabza, till you realize that it is called kalonji in many places. In fact it there is a disambiguation page for black cumin on wikipedia!

(To digress a bit, sabza is actually a bunch of basil seeds... I'm sure most people don't realize this when they have it in falooda :) ) 

What really intrigues me are the similarities with the balance of flavours 

in panch phoron when you compare it to Chinese five spice, both:

• Share fennel (mouri/saunf) as a common 'sweet'ening element
• Have a spice that gives another undertone of sweetness (star anise in Chinese five spice and fennel in panch phoron)
• Share an element of 'heat' as an undertone (radhuni in panch phoron and sichuan peppers in Chinese five spice)
• Work on the principal of balancing flavours (yin and yang as the Chinese would put it 

I will cook a few things with panch phoron and post later. Makes no sense in writing so much and not using the darn spice :)