Kishwar Chowdhury dared to serve a peasant dish to the world’s best chefs. Five years on, her gamble more than paid off
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It was a cold winter night in COVID lockdown when my mum insisted we sit as a family and watch the grand finale of MasterChef to support one of our very own.
Kishwar Chowdhury, a printing business owner from Victoria, had wowed the judges and Bengalis around the world with her home-grown recipes. It was the first time we were seeing our food and culture in such a refined space, and finally seeing the cuisine receive its flowers.
Kishwar Chowdhury was the third runner up on MasterChef season 13 Supplied/Kishwar Chowdhury
That was until she told the judges what she would be presenting them with: smoked rice water and potato mash, or what we Bengalis know as paantha bhaat and aloo bhorta.
My mum couldn’t contain her giggles. “She’s going to feed the biggest chefs in the world peasant food!” I recalled her exclaiming with delight.
Kishwar Chowdhury's Smoked Rice Water with Aloo Bhorta and Sardines, which got her through to the final. Network 10
The delights of ‘peasant food’
Kishwar tells me herself that she is aware of the irony. But it was because of that irony she wanted to bring it to the judges.
“I think it was really stripping away everything about yourself, about cooking, about produce, all of it,” the now 43-year-old tells nine.com.au.
“There’s just nowhere to hide in a dish like this.”
She noted some of the world’s most experimental chefs, like Heston Blumenthal or Scott Pickett, had worked for years to try to capture the element of smoke in liquids.
“People in my culture have been doing that already for hundreds of years,” she remarked.
“It was a super interesting dish that this existed in our culture, and I wanted to really put it out there, that this is what we do naturally in our kitchens and in our culture that’s evolved over thousands of years.
“That’s all sort of applauded when it comes from the west. But this already existed in our eastern kitchens.”.
As soon as the judges gave it their stamp of approval, I caught my mum’s eye. She got up, knowing exactly what I had telepathically requested for dinner that night and created the dish, with ingredients we already had in the pantry.
Together my mum and I boiled potatoes, stuck some dry chillies on the end of a fork and charred them in the fire of our gas stove − just enough so that the smoke alarm didn’t go off.
We mashed up the chillies with salt, caramelised onions, and lashings of my mum’s homemade ghee, massaging the flavours together with our hands before combining with the potatoes.
It was perhaps the first and only time we could recreate a MasterChef dish with the ingredients already in our pantry. Supplied/Ata M Adnan
When I took a bite of it mixed with some fresh white rice, I closed my eyes, savouring each layer of flavour that came together. I’ve not made aloo bhorta any other way since.
A culinary journey begins
Kishwar’s dish immediately went viral, spawning what seemed like thousands of think pieces from Bengalis around the world about how our food should be represented.
“People in our culture and in our cuisine knew how to make delicious food, even with the absence of a lot of produce,” she said.
Her signature dish, despite being considered a peasant dish, “really represented what we have in our region as well, like smoke from… cooking over fire, rice and water, because it is of the land,” since Bengal is considered the land of fish and rice, due to being so abundant in its river ways and waterways, with the majority of the population in those areas are dependent on the agriculture and farming rice.
“When we’re feeding people, or when I take my food to the rest of the world, I realised that we have so many little techniques, we have so many different ways of doing things that the world is very hungry to see.”
Paantha bhaat became so synonymous with Kishwar that five years on from the competition, she named her dream cookbook after it.
Kishwar Chowdhury with her book, Smoke Rice Water Yaameen Muttaqi
Learning from the past
Smoke Rice Water contains not just Bengali recipes, but the history, culture and reasoning behind them.
She notes that so often, South Asian cuisine, including North Indian, Punjabi, and Bengali cuisine, is described in a single brushstroke as “curry”, when in reality the word itself does not exist in our languages.
Her book starts with recipes to accompany “dal bhaat” aka lentil soup and rice, which is considered the Bengali equivalent of bread and butter.
But she also highlights “cha naasta” or tea and snacks, a practice from colonial times, when the British would have tea breaks with tea harvested from the estates they grew on our land, with treats from bakeries they established on property that was then considered the East India Company’s.
Kishwar also highlighted the significance of the Nawabs (Rulers) of Bengal and the Mughal empire’s Persian influence on Bengali food, creating rich and luscious, yet labour-intensive dishes, and even the Portuguese’s contribution of cheese-making techniques, which revolutionised the way Bengalis make sweets, for which we are renowned.
“It was really important that this book [was] made in a way where everyone [who approaches] this cooking, or at least wants to vicariously travel through this book and through its pages [is] able to understand this part of the world” said Kishwar.
Kishwar's recipes span the vastness of Bengali cuisine, from the richest dishes to the most humble. Supplied/Armelle Habib
Not only does this recipe book travel through the past, but it also looks to the future.
Looking to the future
Kishwar’s main purpose in writing this book was not only to introduce people to Bengali food as something separate from what they expect of South Asian cuisine, but also to fill in the gaps for those who grew up eating this food but aren’t sure how to recreate it in their own kitchens.
“There’s a huge gap in knowledge, and I felt like that’s the bridge that’s going to carry this sort of food across from what my parents did and the way they did it, and allow that food to cross over and continue to live on,” said the mum of two.
“It was really important that if no-one has ever cooked Bengali food in the kitchen, ever in their life, and finds it unapproachable, or finds it a part of the world that they would never know about or travel to, they should be able to open up this book and say, ‘I can make that.’”
Kishwar herself was raised entrenched in Bengali culture in all its forms.
She is the daughter of two Bengali migrants; her late mother, Laila, from West Bengal and her father, Kamrul, from Bangladesh, bringing together two often divisive parts of a country once united.
Her parents were known for their commitment to building a Bengali community in Victoria, with her father even being awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2019 for what is coming to 50 years of service.
Kishwar grew up in a family that placed importance on their Bengali culture and heritage. They are pictured here unboxing her cookbook for the first time. Instagram/@kishwar_chowdhury
“Mum and Dad, and that early generation, they really knew the struggle of coming here and not having a sense of community, not having something to cling to,” Kishwar said with pride.
“They built that home. They built the very early foundations of the Bengali community, and they worked a whole lifetime to give back into it.”
‘Bengali first’
Despite being in the second generation of her family, living and growing up in Australia, Kishwar’s family’s ties to Bengali culture meant it never escaped her.
And so when she competed on MasterChef, “People saw me as a Bengali first, and as anything else second”.
“I think I really learned quickly about who I am as a person and what I represent,” she explains.
“When I spoke about the food, I never got caught up in all the ties of it all and the messiness of identity. I just kept representing myself, and in a way, I think that’s what was really Important and the really right thing to do.
Kishwar is a Bengali through and through, and leads by example. Supplied/Ata M Adnan
“I’m an Australian-Bengali, and I keep showing up.”
Since embarking on her culinary journey after her stint on TV, Kishwar has been an ambassador for many multicultural initiatives and charities, such as World Vision and Cricket Australia.
On her travels, she has met many second-generation kids who she finds struggle with balancing the traditions of home with their Western lifestyle.
As she tells them, “it is about accepting your culture and wearing it with a lot of pride in your sleeve, while remaining true to the fact that we are of the diaspora, we are third culture, we are Australians, but this is what this version of being Australian looks like.”
Aloo bhorta/Spiced mashed potato Recipe
This is an edited extract from Smoke, Rice, Water by Kishwar Chowdhury, published by Hardie Grant Books. Available in stores nationally. Photography by Armelle Habib, Ata M Adnan, Rana Pandey (Koi Worldwide) and the Chowdhury family archive. Illustrations by DhakaYeah.
Aloo Bhorta (on the left plate) is eaten with white rice and sometimes daal. Armelle Habib
A staple in every Bengali household, alu bhorta is similar to its European counterpart, but infused with the bold flavours of mustard oil and fresh herbs (the non- vegan variation takes on a more indulgent profile with lashings of ghee). Alu bhorta is often served as a side with rice and daal. I even enjoy it on its own as a quick, comforting snack.
There are two popular variations of alu bhorta, both equally delicious. The first keeps things fresh and vibrant: finely chopped onion and fresh green chilli are mixed into the warm mash, adding a raw crunch and a sharp bite that balances the creamy potatoes. The second leans into deeper, smokier flavours: sliced onion is fried in mustard oil (or ghee) until golden, while dried red chillies are toasted in the same oil until blackened before being crumbled into the mash. This version carries a caramelised sweetness from the onions and a smoky heat from the dried chillies that make it irresistible.
Serves 4
3 russet potatoes, peeled
3 tablespoons mustard oil
½ shallot, finely diced
1 garlic clove, finely diced
1 dried red chilli
Kishwar Chowdhury's cookbook Smoke, Rice, Water shares what Bengali cuisine really is. DhakaYeah
1 handful of fresh coriander (cilantro)
leaves, chopped
salt, to taste
Boil the potatoes in salted water until they are tender and just starting to fall apart. Once they’re ready, drain and let cool slightly. Then, use your hands to gently crush the potatoes, starting from the outside and working your way in. Lightly knead until there are no lumps and the texture is smooth.
While the potato is cooling, heat the mustard oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, sauté the shallot and garlic until slightly charred, being careful not to burn them. When they’re done, remove them from the pan and set aside.
Next, hold the chilli over an open flame with tongs. Char it until it’s fully blackened, then set aside. This will give your dish a smoky depth.
Bhorta can be made with any fruits and vegetables - here it is being made with green mangoes. Armelle Habib
Once everything is prepped, add the chopped coriander to the mashed potato along with the sautéed shallots and garlic, plus the mustard oil from the frying pan. Add the charred chilli to the mix, either breaking it up into smaller pieces or leaving it whole, depending on your preference for spice. Gently knead everything together until well combined.
Taste the mixture and season with salt to your liking. If you’re aiming for a vegetarian variation, you can substitute the mustard oil with the same amount of ghee for a buttery flavour.
