India, May 29 -- Growing up, I often wrinkled my nose and quietly plotted my escape from the dining table at the whiff of the cumin-spiced Dhokar Dalna. As the simple, light curry, rich with the unmistakable aromas of a Bengali kitchen, simmered in our old steel kadhai with its diamond-shaped fritters bobbing about like little golden boats - I remember peering into the dish with a mix of suspicion and quiet resentment. I was an anomaly in a Bengali household - the one child who detested the revered maccher jhol, that omnipresent fish curry whose heady aroma would stubbornly waft through our home at least twice a week. And here was this: a curry that looked like fish curry, smelled like fish curry, but held no fish at all.

'Dhoka means de...