Serve heritage recipes with a snip

Ceres Foods introduces liquid masalas, aiming to capture the flavours of traditional recipes, for home cooks in a hurry

For me, the only way to make a sorshe bata mach, the popular Bengali dish of fish in mustard paste, is by soaking and grinding a carefully balanced proportion of black and white sesame seeds. I didn’t mind going through this undeniably laborious task to extract the right flavours in this dish, which reminds me of home.

So naturally, I was reluctant to try a ready-made liquid masala. After all, how can snipping open a packet give the same creamy paste I get from grinding together green chilis, onion and ginger? Nevertheless, when Ceres Foods, with an aim to bring restaurant-style cooking into home kitchens, launched their mustard fish liquid masala, with a promise that even a newbie can get the same results as an experienced cook, I was intrigued.

Following the instructions, I took enough paste to make mustard fish for one person. (the entire packet is intended for 500 -750 gms of fish or any vegetarian substitute). In 15 minutes my curry was ready, and the results were fairly authentic, offering a freshness in flavour and pleasingly pungent punch of mustard.