Panta Bhat

Bengal's cooked rice left overnight under water to sour, eaten cold with green chilli, onion, salt and mustard oil

Origin: The Ganges Delta & Bengal

From the journey of Rice.

Panta bhat is what a hot country does with yesterday's rice and no refrigerator. Cooked rice is covered with water and left overnight; wild lactic fermentation takes hold, the grains swell and soften, and by morning both the rice and the water it sits in have turned faintly sour and distinctly cooling. It is eaten cold, with the fingers, with green chilli, raw onion, salt, and a thread of mustard oil, and often with a fried dried fish or a spoonful of mashed potato alongside. It was for a very long time the food of people who had no choice, eaten by agricultural labourers before a day in the sun because it kept overnight in the heat and because the fermented water, the panta itself, is drunk as well as eaten. Assam calls it poita bhat, Odisha pakhala, and the same practice runs across the eastern half of the subcontinent wherever rice is the staple and the climate is against storing it any other way. What has happened to it since is a genuine social reversal and one worth stating plainly. Panta bhat is now the ceremonial breakfast of Pohela Boishakh, the Bengali New Year in mid-April, eaten with ilish fry by the urban middle classes of Dhaka and Kolkata at organised public gatherings. A poor person's necessity has become an affluent person's tradition, complete with a hilsa so expensive at that season that the pairing has drawn regular criticism in the Bangladeshi press. There is also a physiological case for it that has attracted research interest: the overnight fermentation lowers the glycaemic load, raises the available iron and B vitamins, and populates the rice with lactic bacteria. Whether that justifies the claims made for it is another matter, but the chemistry is not folklore.

Ingredients

Rice

400 g coarse parboiled rice, such as Bengali sidhha or any short-grain red rice
1.2 litres water, for cooking
800 ml cool water, for steeping

To serve

1 onion, finely sliced
4 green chillies
2 tbsp mustard oil
1 tsp salt, or to taste
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 handful coriander leaf
4 dried fish or fried aubergine slices, optional

Method

Cook the rice in plenty of water until soft, a little past the point you would want it for a normal meal, then drain it.
Spread it in a wide earthenware or glass bowl and let it cool completely. Warm rice under water will go slimy rather than sour.
Pour the cool water over so the rice is covered by two or three centimetres.
Cover the bowl loosely with a cloth and leave it at room temperature overnight, eight to twelve hours. Do not refrigerate it, since the fermentation is the whole object.
By morning the grains will have swelled and softened and the water will smell faintly sour and yeasty, a little like a mild rice beer. That is correct.
If it smells sharply alcoholic or unpleasant rather than gently sour, it has gone too far; start again with a shorter steep.
Serve it in its own water, which is drunk as much as eaten, or drain some off if you prefer it drier.
Add the sliced onion, whole green chillies to be bitten between mouthfuls, salt, and a good thread of mustard oil, and mix it with your fingers at the table.
Scatter over the coriander and serve with lime, and with fried dried fish or aubergine if you have it.

Notes

Use coarse parboiled or red rice rather than basmati: fine long-grain varieties disintegrate over a long steep and give a sludgy result, whilst parboiled Bengali rice holds its shape. The rice must be completely cool before the water goes on. Eight to twelve hours at a warm room temperature is the window; in a cold kitchen it may want longer, and in real heat rather less. Traditionally it is made in unglazed earthenware, which breathes and is said to give a cleaner sourness. Mustard oil is not a substitution here, and the raw chilli and onion are as much a part of the dish as the rice.

The Gastrographer

Name: Panta Bhat
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: The Ganges Delta & Bengal
Ingredients: 400 g coarse parboiled rice, such as Bengali sidhha or any short-grain red rice; 1.2 litres water, for cooking; 800 ml cool water, for steeping; 1 onion, finely sliced; 4 green chillies; 2 tbsp mustard oil; 1 tsp salt, or to taste; 1 lime, cut into wedges; 1 handful coriander leaf; 4 dried fish or fried aubergine slices, optional

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control