Posto2Pasta (2026)

10/11/2025

It was Christmas Eve. Our first one together after the wedding. London had wrapped itself in silence - streets empty, fairy lights blinking like they were whispering secrets to each other. Babai (my father) was with us that winter. His first Christmas in London. For someone who grew up with Park Street’s madness and Bow Barracks’ music, this calm was… well, suspicious. “Ei London-e sobai ghore thake naki?” he had asked, genuinely bewildered. So we wandered down Southbank - the Thames gliding by, the air smelling faintly of roasted nuts and rain - and stumbled upon Strada. A warm yellow glow, a whiff of garlic and tomato, and laughter spilling from a corner table. We stepped in.

And there it was - this glorious bowl of seafood pasta.
Golden ribbons of tagliatelle soaked in tomato and sea. Mussels, prawns, squid - like little treasures in a tide of flavour. Every twirl of the fork was a reminder that joy doesn’t need a crowd. Just warmth, good food, and people who make a city feel like home. That night, as Babai smiled over his tiramisu, I realised - sometimes life doesn’t give you Park Street crazy. It gives you Strada on Southbank. And that, my friends, is Christmas - served al dente. 🎄🍝

01/06/2025

Some posts come with recipes. Others, with memories.

It was a happy June afternoon last year when we walked into 𝔖𝔱𝔢𝔞𝔨 & ℭ𝔬., just off Leicester Square—this time with Bonu in tow, completing our little table for three. My husband had once visited this place few years back, when he was living alone in this city. Back then, he wouldn’t want to step out to soak in the city, visit a diner, or have a leisurely stroll. “Wait till you’re here,” he’d say. “We’ll discover the city together.” But I insisted from a thousand miles away, nudged him out for a stroll. He walked, he dined, and this place made its quiet little mark.

Now we return often - him for the steak, me for the surprise finds.

Like this “Chicken Schnitzel”.

Breaded, shallow-fried till crisped at the edges and golden at the heart, seasoned just enough to hold its own but humble enough to pair with a tart cranberry jam and a handful of rocket leaves shaved with parmesan. There’s a lemon wedge too, for the extra zing!

Schnitzel, originally Austrian, is usually veal. This one’s chicken, but no less impressive. Thin cutlet, pounded flat, dipped in flour-egg-breadcrumbs, then pan-fried till the kitchen smells like home and Europe at once. It reminded me of Bengali cutlets - but sleeker, subtler, without the spice but all the crunch. Golden, quiet, and unassuming - like all great loves, this Chicken Scnitzen made its mark without making a noise.

30/05/2025

Some evenings in London are comfortingly mundane - two plates, two sets of hands that cooked the meal, and an OTT series running in the background. That’s us. Far from where we began, tucked into the quiet corners of a borrowed city, feeding each other a little love, a little spice, a little salt.

We both cook. Quite well, in fact. We improvise, invent, and recreate memories through recipes. But what’s missing is not taste - it’s the seasoned intuition and pure 𝓈𝓃𝑒𝒽𝑜 which only an elder brings. The warmth in the dal, the kindness in that extra bhaja, the care in a dish you didn’t even ask for.

We visit home once a year, and each time we do, we’re wrapped in an avalanche of affection - poured generously from grandma, aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, nephews and nieces! It’s overwhelming, humbling, and healing all at once. Here’s some snippets from our last visit — every dish on this plate was made lovingly from scratch by my jethima. No occasion, no fanfare. Just love. She remembered everything— Bonu’s favourites, Saikat’s cravings, my quiet wishes. And she made them all.

Dal, begun bhaja, fulkopi-alu diye bhetki’r jhol, aar mach sorshe bata, chingri malaikari, murgir mangsho, pathar mangsho, aam’er chutney, nolen gurer mishti, gurer roshogolla, and colddrinks.

If this isn’t home, I don’t know what is.

home-cooked Bengali meal; Bengali food nostalgia; Kolkata food memories; London Bengali life; Indian expats UK; Bengali family love; traditional Bengali recipes; emotional food stories; jethima’s cooking; Bengali comfort food; travel for food; food and family; nostalgia food blog; Posto2Pasta

❣️

16/05/2025

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐤

Not quite an ice cream. Not quite a popsicle. Just a chilled little cheat code to childhood joy. No milk, no cream, no finesse. Just frozen sweetness and a rush of delight. It melted faster than we could eat it, left sticky trails down our fingers, and stained our tongues a radioactive orange. And yet, it was the very taste of recess, roadside vendors, school holidays, and happy dreams.

I remember so vividly, maa would hand me four ten-rupee notes to get four of these for us - two for us sisters, one for her, and one for Jamuna di. We would rush to the Kwality-Walls kaku who’d park his cart by the neighbourhood school gate, to collect our orange sticks.

And years later, here in London, standing before a pastel ice cream van, I still reach for it.

The orange stick.

Because sometimes, the taste of childhood travels with you - across oceans, across decades - unchanged.

nostalgic Indian ice cream; orange stick childhood memory; desi summer treats; Kwality Walls orange bar; Indian popsicle nostalgia; childhood ice cream stories; frozen treats India; Bengali childhood food; retro ice cream India; orange bar memories; taste of childhood; summer snacks India; Indian street desserts; old school ice creams; travel London Bengali; Bengali vlog UK; ice cream van London; food nostalgia post; UK food memories; Bengali Instagram Reels

12/05/2025

A steaming bowl of musur daal - velvety, sun-warmed, tempered with mustard seeds that crackle like punctuation marks, and laced with curry leaves that perfume the air with their mellow sharpness. It’s a daal I’ve had on regular days with irregular moods, alongside bhat, bori bhaja and the occasional narkel er bora - simple, but never dull.

As a child, I never once paused to question where those glossy, aromatic leaves came from. They were just there — woven into the fabric of our everyday meals, as instinctive as the rhythm of maa’s ladle against the rim of the kadai.

Growing up, I began to take a keener interest in people - read about their customs, learn about their cuisines, find out how they were similar and how they weren’t. The stories behind what we eat, and why, began to fascinate me. That’s when I started noticing the quiet journey of ingredients—like curry leaves or coconut, how they’re often boxed into regional stereotypes. Supposedly southern, allegedly foreign to the Bengali palate. But nothing about food has ever really obeyed political borders, has it? And isn’t that the most wonderful thing about food? That it travels. It adapts. It softens edges and blurs boundaries. Something like how the ‘curry pata’ and ‘narkel’ found their way into our Bengali kitchens—quietly, without claiming space, and yet leaving behind an indelible trail of flavour.

It reminds me that culinary authenticity is not about possession, but participation. That recipes are not static artefacts pinned to maps - they are living, breathing memories carried in spice boxes, borrowed across cultures, adapted with love! 💕

29/04/2025

If you think a Bengali meal is all about fish, rosogolla and mishti doi, then this post is for you! A typical Bengali meal, even on an unremarkable Tuesday, isn’t a rushed one-pot affair. It’s a slow unfolding, a story told in chapters. You start light — perhaps a hint of তেতো (bitter), like uchhe bhaja (crispy fried bitter gourd) or a spoonful of neem begun, believed to cleanse the palate and awaken the senses. Then comes the leafy greens, a humble shaak, something seasonal, quickly wilted in mustard oil. Next comes the comforting heart of the meal - daal, tempered with some lonka (dried or green chillies), panchphoron (or sada/ kalo jeere, or radhuni), often accompanied by one or more types of crisp, golden bhajas (fritters or fries of seasonal veggies).

The narrative thickens with a seasonal vegetable curry, a chochchori, a ghonto, a chhechhki or a chhnyachhra. And only after this slow, respectful build-up arrives the crowning glory — the fish or the meat. Be it a shimmering piece of ilish drenched in mustard gravy, or a slow-cooked mangshor jhol (braised mutton curry), or an uneventful tummy-friendly patla machher/murgir jhol, lovingly ladled over steaming white rice. Finally, the plate bows out with a tok or chutney — tart and sticky, a kiss of sweetness before the curtain falls.

Of course, not every Bengali home lays out the entire orchestra every day — but even at its most pared-down, the Bengali meal always respects the journey of flavours: from bitter to mild, from earthy to rich, from savoury to sweet. Yet for all this depth, all this beautiful complexity, Bengalis have long been saddled with a caricatured image — as a people obsessed solely with non-vegetarian food. And in today’s times, when food itself is dragged onto the battlegrounds of identity, we often find ourselves on the receiving end of misplaced judgment — targeted by the loud, shallow voices of the self-proclaimed ‘Sanatan’ brigade, who mistake dietary choice for devotion, and noise for wisdom. If only they looked closer, they’d see that our cuisine, like our culture, honours balance, celebrates seasonality, and refuses to be trapped in simplistic binaries.

Posto2Pasta

10/11/2025

01/06/2025

30/05/2025

16/05/2025

12/05/2025

29/04/2025

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