As goes with the Bengali tradition, first rinse the rice and leave it to dry in a colander. The daal is washed and roasted until it gives a beautiful flavour which is quite unlike the raw daal.
Heat water in a kettle not boiling for the cooking. Adding hot water always aids the cooking process than adding cold water.
Put oil in a heavy bottomed cooking pot and after it gets hot put in the whole garam masala with the bay leaves. When they start sputtering and gives out a flavour add the cumin and the ginger and cook by stirring until you get the nutty flavour of cooked ginger.
Add the rice to the oil and fry for 2/3 minutes.
Add the roasted moog daal and the turmeric powder after adding some water (hot). The level of water should not be more than 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) above the level of rice and daal.
After checking for the lentils to get cooked add the whole green chillies, salt and sugar to taste and just before removing from the fire add some powdered garam masala.
The Khichuri is accompanied by fried halves of potatoes, chicken, red meat, Hilsha or some other fried fish, sometimes eggs, and any other fritter that you can think of. Only thing is that they should be crisp and exciting.
Here goes the download links of “Himu” novels by Humayun Ahmed. All the files are hosted on a different server, so don’t blame me for piracy as I’ve merely provided the links for you guys. Enjoy!
Grab the latest novel of the series “Himur Neel Josna” (হিমুর নীল জোছনা), published in February 2010 on the occasion of Ekushey Book Fair. It’s a good one!
All the files are between 2 to 10 megabytes, and requires a PDF reader to open which I’m sure all of you already have. Buy hard copy of the books to support the author if you like them!
Broken link? Please let me know and I’ll mirror it.
BLUA Documentation Team has published a beginners guide on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) in Bengali, which is available for download from http://linux.org.bd/go.php?link=ubuntuguide (PDF file, 2.7 MB).
If you’re new to Ubuntu Linux and want to learn more about it, then this guide should be helpful to you. The topics covered are installation, package management, network and Internet connection setup, customization, proprietary hardware driver and multimedia support, troubleshooting, and much more.
Please pass on this message to your friends and colleagues who might be interested in using Ubuntu.
In case if you wanted to know more about Bangladesh…
Bangla (also known as Bengali), the national language of Bangladesh, is the fifth most frequently-spoken language in the world. Bangladesh became a country in 1971 when it declared its independence from Pakistan. Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan, or East Bengal. West Bengal is a state in India.
The word Bangladesh was coined around 1971 when the country was formed: it means land (desh) of the Bangla (Bengali people).
Bangladesh is bordered by two countries: India and Burma (Myanmar).
Bangladesh has its own 12-month calendar with six seasons.
Bangladesh is known for its production of the jute plant, whose fiber is made into carpets, rope and other products. Jute is known as the golden fibre in Bangladesh.
Every region of Bangladesh has its own dessert (mishti): if you are eating chum-chum, you’re in Tangail, if it’s Roshmallai you’re in Comilla.
In Dhaka, all of the autorickshaws and most of the taxis run on clean-burning natural gas (CNG) rather than diesel or petrol.
The Bengali people of Bangladeshi fought for the right to speak their own language in 1952, this event is now commemorated worldwide as International Mother Language Day.
The monsoon season in Bangladesh is generally from June to August. If you visit then, bring an umbrella.
Bangladesh lies on the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees northern latitude). Other countries on this line include Mexico, the Bahamas, Eygpt, Saudi Arabia, India and China.
Bangladesh’s parliament building, an architectural landmark, was designed by an American architect, Louis Khan.
I’ve been using the Unicode based Bengali fonts of Ekushey for a long time, specially SolaimanLipi which I use almost everywhere. To make these fine fonts easily available on Ubuntu, I’ve made a package of all of them called ttf-ekushey. Users of Ubuntu derivatives such as Linux Mint can use this package too.
Font list:
SolaimanLipi
Rupali
Ekushey Lohit
Ekushey Sharifa
Ekushey Punarbhaba
Ekushey Sumit
Ekushey Durga
Ekushey Saraswati
Ekushey Puja
Ekushey Azad
Ekushey Godhuli
Ekushey Mohua
(Twelve for now, but whenever they releases a new font I’ll update my package too.) Continue reading…
