For cookbook author Saira Hamilton, a childhood visit to see her grandmother was never as simple as jumping in a car. Born to first-generation immigrants in the UK, she began each summer with a flight from Wales to Dhaka. The remainder of her complex journey to Dampara, a village nestled in the verdant paddy field-dotted Kishoreganj district in central Bangladesh, was a watery blur – involving travel by train, bus, rickshaw and flat-bottomed boat.
Amid this latticework of waterways, docks, stations and dusty roads, one immutable highlight stands out for Hamilton: the jhal muri vendor, his arrival preceded by the sound of clanging steel trays and shakers, and the delicious food she’d go on to devour.
One of the nation’s most iconic snacks, jhal muri is a spiced puffed rice salad (jhal means hot in Bangla; and muri, also called moori or murmura, is puffed rice) that combinestwo of Bangladesh’s greatest loves: rice and spice. (The third, of course, is fish.)
“I think it’s fair to say jhal muri is a street-food classic found all over Bangladesh. It’s very vibrant in taste and truly speaks to the predominant palate,” said Hamilton. In her cookbook, My Bangladesh Kitchen, the humble snack stands proudly as the first recipe – a quintessential Bangladeshi culinary experience.
Its core ingredient is muri, which is traditionally made by “frying” rice in hot salt or sand, and is firmly rooted in the tapestry of food cultures in Bangladesh, featuring prominently in both daily life and auspicious occasions such as the iftar meal during Ramadan for Muslims or the Puja period during Durgapuja for Hindus.