Dim torka: How this humble dal with egg became comfort food in eastern India
It is lentils, cooked with the familiar spices you would use for a dal fry or tadka wali dal, except this one gets a generous helping of scrambled egg on top. Ask a Bengali, an Odia or an Assamese and you will likely hear the…
It is lentils, cooked with the familiar spices you would use for a dal fry or tadka wali dal, except this one gets a generous helping of scrambled egg on top. Ask a Bengali, an Odia or an Assamese and you will likely hear.
In West Bengal, you will find it everywhere from humble pice hotels, line hotels along the highways to more established dhabas. For years, dim torka was something you went out to eat, picked up from a roadside hole in the wall eatery rather than.
What Happened
But somewhere along the way, though, it crossed that line and found its way into eastern Indian kitchens too. In my own house, on evenings when my mother declared a no-cooking night, my father would return with a thonga of rotis in.
Many probashi Bengalis and Odias haven’t even heard of it.
In Delhi, finding a good plate of dim torka is surprisingly difficult.
There was just one problem: he had never heard of it.
Key Details
And no, it wasn’t something we settled for, we were more than eager to have it. And that is precisely why it has fed everyone from labourers to travellers.
The episode was about Kolkata food, and dim torka was one of the dishes Kapoor was supposed to taste and reinterpret.
Madhushree saw just how strange this culinary geography was while researching for an episode of Knight Bite with chef Kunal Kapoor.
From Bengal, she says, it could then have travelled further east as people moved, travelled and opened eateries.
Why It Matters
Walk into a roadside dhaba in the North and ask for a paratha and it will appear in minutes. Do the same at an eastern roadside eatery and ask for dim torka, it will land on your table in those oval shaped.
Madhushree believes dim torka may have existed as early as the 1930s, but became particularly popular in the 1970s and 1980s.
It could also have travelled through the cooks themselves.
What Reports Say
Coverage of the story so far points to:
Continued reporting by India Today as more details emerge
