Aloo Posto

Celebrated as one of West Bengal’s most-cherished vegetarian dishes, Aloo Posto is a creamy mix of potatoes with a smooth paste made of poppy seeds. The pungent aroma of garlic adds the perfect zest to the dish, making it a superb companion to the state’s staple of rice.

The concept of making a gravy thicker by infusing the opium seed paste was in fact a culinary ritual adapted by the Mughals. A thick, often velvety-rich consistency of the opium seed paste is achieved after hours of meticulous hand-grinding on the humble mortar and pestle. This is then often mixed with a cashew nut paste as well, which lends the sweet flavour to the blend.

Aloo Posto’s origins date back to a pleasant accident after the historic Battle of Plassey. It was fought between the British East India Company and Siraj-ud-Daulah, the then-Nawab of Bengal in 1757. Under the shrewd leadership of Robert Clive, when the Company won the war, it fortuitously fell upon an illegal consignment of opium that was being smuggled through Chinese trade routes. This opened the doors to the underground Chinese opium market that lured British officials immediately. They then began cultivating opium heavily within Indian states and encouraged farmers to bolster production, since poppy was a growing and lucrative asset. The production reached such large scales, that supply chains of other vegetables and grains were getting compromised.

Legend has it that such dire food shortage led a farmer’s wife using this Mughal tactic of adding poppy seed paste to thicken a humble potato gravy into something more palatable. The addition of mustard oil, a staple cooking oil variant used in Bengal, and garlic to the dish added the required fiery punch that made it an apt vegetarian dish to go with the blander rice.

The dish oddly has variants that are equally popular among food lovers. Mostly prevalent in parts of Bengal and Bangladesh are dishes like Jhinge Posto (a version that uses ridge gourd along with potatoes), Peyaaj Posto (which consists of onions) or the crunchier Posto'r Bora (deep fried balls made out of the paste). Often, the dish is considered the perfect lunch accompaniment for many Bengali households, especially on the weekends. This concept is comically linked to the idea that one could comfortably tuck themselves in for a perfect afternoon siesta enabled by the heady concoction of opium seeds.