Cooking clever and quick: Lessons from the wonders of 'bhaté bhat'

When our cylinder ran out, ambitions needed to be scaled down. But this was a Bengali family, and anything below four courses would invite groans and grumpy faces. The cook would quietly announce bhaté bhat, a meal of boiled foods, all cooked together in the same pot with the rice

- Abhijit Banerjee

The world is facing an energy crisis, partly driven by Putin’s war, but only partly, since the path to minimise the climate crisis demands that we all use less energy. And one place where we can help is by changing the way we eat. Less meat and eating local are often highlighted, but cooking is another big one, with a carbon footprint of 500 million tonnes a year, only slightly below the 800 contributed by transporting food.

Energy-efficient cooking came up often in my childhood, for an entirely different reason. Foreign exchange was scarce in those days and OPEC had just boosted oil prices. Imported cooking gas was being rationed: when our assigned one cylinder of gas ran out, the cook would put on a glum face, my mother would talk darkly about wasting gas and someone would run to the Indane store to apply for the next one, which could take several days.

On days when the gas was gone, cooking had a very different shape. Each family had its small kerosene stove and a small bottle of kerosene stored up, to last until the gasman showed up. Ambitions needed to be scaled down.

But this was a Bengali family, and anything below four courses would invite groans and grumpy faces. The cook would quietly announce ‘bhaté bhat’, a meal of boiled foods, all cooked together in the same pot with the rice.