Puja recipe of traditional households of Calcutta
Puja bhog or offerings to the goddess in traditional houses of Bengal are mouth watering. Here are some selected recipes from the traditional houses of Kolkata.
Click on the names to know about their rituals

Mullicks of Bhowanipur are Vaishnavas (worshippers of Vishnu who are mostly vegetarians) so only after Dashami's immersion non-veg preparations are made. They give preparations of flour instead of rice to the goddess. The bhog comprises of Luchi (deep fried puffed bread), chanar dalna ( cottage cheese curry), alukophir dalna (cauliflower potato curry), and different varieties of chechki (spiced fried vegetables), bonde and nadus (sweet balls).

Ingredients:
-Best quality cottage ghee
-Garam masala ( a combination of cinnamon,

- Green chili, - Pieces of cumin, -Ginger paste, -Roasted cumin powder
-Salt, -Sugar, -Turmeric

Steps:
Heat ghee adding garam masala, bay leaf, green chili and pieces of cumin to it. Add potatoes and stir fry for some time. Adding ginger paste, turmeric and salt cook well. Add chili. Now add the square shaped chhana and a small amount of water. Keep it to boil till the potatoes get softened. Before removing from heat add sugar according to taste.

Steps:
Take equal amount of pui sak and mutton liver. Fry onion paste in oil. Add green chili, garlic paste, ginger paste, cumin paste and turmeric. Stirring constantly add potato and pumpkin. Then add liver and pui sak. Adding salt and sugar reduce the flame and cook till the gravy thickens. Remove from fire. 

Debs of Shobhabazar do not have the tradition of offering cooked rice to the goddess. They offer quintals of uncooked rice and huge trays of sweets as bhog. Items offered are kochuri (stuffed bread), singara (samosa), boro nimki (like savoury biscuit), radha ballabhi (pulse stuffed bread), padma nimki (biscuit), sweet goja (sugar coated pastry), dumo goja (diamond shaped pastry), jive goja (elongated shaped sugar coated pastry), jilipi (sweet chick-pea flour savoury), darbesh (yellow sweet meat balls), motichur (white sweet meat balls), pantua (sweet brown caramel balls), nora pantua, and a varieties of sweet balls and sugar coated pastries like peraki, pakkan, khaja, kotkoti nadu, balusai (a kind of sandesh), chandsoi magadh, mutri, somesha, khurma, khir tokti, labanga latika, muger nadu (sweet balls of split green gram), shon papri etc. All these items are prepared in the household itself.

Steps:
Kneed flour with ghee properly to from a dough. Make small balls. Flatten in the size of small chapaties or rounded flattened cakes.
To prepare the filling first scoop out the coconut and then cook grated coconut with kheer and sugar. Add green cardamom and powdered pepper in the cooked coconut. Put the filling on the chapaties and cover with another one. Paste the corner with hands tucking inside the fold. Deep fry in ghee and then immerse in sugar syrup.

Steps:
Mix besan and sabeda (custard apple) well. Make a paste adding water to it. Fry the paste in ghee with a slotted spoon. When it gets fried immerse in thick sugar syrup. Grind all the spices. After removing the fried paste from the syrup add the grinded spices to the paste. Put some ghee in both hands and make small balls of the paste.