There is no doubt you guys like food and eating in general. That is the reason why you might be reading this article. We never step a foot back when it comes to trying out new stuff.
But have you guys ever thought of where the names of the foods came from or maybe how the idea of making some of our favourite foods first originated? So this article is about the stories behind some of your favourite food items.
This will be a short and simple article just to let you guys know more about your foods. Whatever I am going to mention here will not be self-made stories all these information are available on the internet and some of them I have known from a bit of research, here I am going to compile all of them for a convenient reading experience.
First, let's talk about Rashogolla. We all know what rashogolla is and probably eaten it a thousand times. But did you know how it became so famous? There was a lot of confusion among many historians about where the rashogolla was actually originated from. Many said Odisha was the home and many said Bengal.
The historians from Odisha claims that rashogolla was first served in Puri Jagannath Temple as bhog. According to the local legend, Laxmi gets upset because her husband Lord Jagannath goes on a 9-day sojourn (the Ratha yatra) without her consent. So, she locks Jai Vijay Dwar, one of the temple gates and prevents his convoy from re-entering the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. To appease her, Jagannath offers her rashogolla. But recently in 2017 in court, it was officially announced that Bengal was the place where it originated first. The spongy white rashogolla is believed to have been introduced in present-day West Bengal in 1868 by a Kolkata-based confectioner named Nobin Chandra Das.
Now coming to Kati Rolls. It is also a very very popular food item in Kolkata. Probably one of the most popular fast food item in Kolkata. We also covered top 5 places to eat Kati rolls in Kolkata you check it out here. In its original form, it is a skewer-roasted kebab wrapped in a paratha bread, although over the years many variants have evolved all of which now go under the generic name of Kati roll.
Now it also has a couple of stories, why it is called Kati rolls? There are many stories about how exactly the roll got started. Some suggest that hurried office commuters wanted something quick and portable to eat, some mention British babus who were too fastidious to touch the kabab. The most likely origin is probably more mundane, but in any case, someone decided to roll things up at some point. In Kolkata, shops serving rolls are mostly known as ‘Roll-er-dokaan’ and people use ‘roll’ to refer to a Kati rolls.
Lastly, another very popular food item we all love is momo. Most of us know it as a fast food item and many consider it as a Chinese food, but actually, it has a different origin. Momo is the colloquial form of the Tibetan word "mog mog".
The dish is believed to be of Tibetan origin and since then has spread to neighbouring countries along with the influx of the Tibetan diaspora. Since this dish was initially popular among the Newar community of the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, one prevalent belief is that travelling Newar merchants brought the recipe and the name momo from Tibet where the Newar Merchants used to go to trade. Originally, the filling of the dish was typically meat, such as yak, due to the scarcity of vegetables in Tibet. However, after arriving in India, the momo was made vegetarian in the modern era to feed the large population of vegetarian Hindus. After gaining its popularity it is now widely available all over India and we all love to eat momo.
This was something new, please share your feedback, if you want us to make more articles about the history of more such food items let us know. Share with your friends and follow us on Instagram and Facebook.