Opium and Bengali comfort food

October 29, 2020 4:54 PM

India saw recreational use of opium during the Mughal era, as well as the ruthless British determination to push the addictive drug into China by military force, with devastating effects on the Chinese (as well as Indians). But inventive Bengali women turned poppy seeds - a byproduct of the opium industry - into the delicious and iconic comfort food base পোস্ত (posto). Here's a beatifully videographed recipe from the good folks at Bong Eats showing how to make the classic Bengali dish of alu posto (potatoes in poppyseed sauce) at home.
posted by splitpeasoup (14 comments total)

Well, now you are getting us started on the Opium Wars, but the Boxer Rebellion is even crazier. No wonder the East looks at the West as some kind of deadly and infectious cultural virus.

But I do want to try my hand at this recipe.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:27 PM on October 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

Can I just ask, is the poppy ever included in your versions of biryani? (In)famously, in our local briyani (as spelled here), the indian muslim (mamak community) versions especially have been known to include them (eg sometimes it can cause you to run foul of our stricter neighbours down south). The ingredient didn't get passed on to the other ethnic communities versions tho. Our Indian community is mostly Southern origin, of Tamilian background, but it's not impossible in the colonial mix this got popularised as more Indians settled here and amongst themselves.

Maybe that's how I can find the seeds to make posto!
posted by cendawanita at 7:30 PM on October 29, 2020 [4 favorites]

> Maybe that's how I can find the seeds to make posto!

I don't know where you live, but in the USA where I live, poppy seeds are commonly available in grocery stores as they are used in Western cooking for baking. Although they are black poppy seeds rather than the white/beige ones customarily used in posto, it's fine to use them.

They are also used in some south Indian dishes, but I'm less familiar with this.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:10 PM on October 29, 2020

Oh, I'm in malaysia, and we definitely have them as meant for indian cooking (per my link in my last comment). But my family's briyani never needed them, so I've never had a reason to keep any. I am curious abt the briyani/biryani variations now that I'm reading more about posto. Cool, new lockdown project!
posted by cendawanita at 8:34 PM on October 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

I know very little about biryani/briyani myself, but the internet reveals that some Hyderabadi biryanis do use poppy seeds.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:32 PM on October 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

I have a Russian ex-pat friend that took me to the local-ish Russian and Ukrainian deli and grocery store where they have all kinds of wild snacks and stuff, including a truly massive selection of black tea and stuff like kvass (bread beer?) and all manner of dried sausages, smoked or salted fish and more kinds of tinned sardines and fish than I could count.

And one of the things they offer in the bakery is a traditional Russian poppy seed roll.

Imagine a strudel but instead apples it's just crammed to bursting with a savory-sweet poppy seed filling. The foot long roll must have had like 3-4 cups of poppy seeds in it. When I tore into the roll it was just a bare centimeter of delicious, croissant-like pastry surrounding a nearly solid log of poppy seed filling.

Well, he insisted I eat a big hunk of this foot long poppy seed roll on the way home in the car and barely 10 minutes later I was so high I commented - very slowly - "Wow, I'm so glad I'm not the one driving right now."

I dozed off in the car before we got home and could barely make it home to properly go to sleep.

He laughed and said he sometimes eats a whole roll for dinner with tea and a glass of vodka, and commented he usually had the best sleep and dreams afterwards.
posted by loquacious at 10:00 PM on October 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

Possibly better poppy seed roll / makowiec than from storebought ground poppy seeds, because I never had that effect. But grinding your own (after soaking in milk, natch) is such a bother. I did it for kutia once and kept finding poppy seeds everywhere for the entire year afterwards.

(Kutia is another "look how rich we are to have all these good things" Christmas dish from the general area of eastern Poland / Belarus / Ukraine / western Russia. On a base of boiled wheat berries, you add a busload of ground poppy seeds, honey, dried fruit, nuts etc. Not noted for getting you high, but definitely the kind of dessert it's hard to have more than a spoonful of.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 5:11 AM on October 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

now I want to try the dish in the post and maybe go back to trying to make a poppy seed kolache for my mother in law. She's Slovak so the spelling might be slightly different? Last time I tried the poppy seeds were super expensive but I think I was only looking at getting a tiny jar from the store instead of a bulk bag from somewhere.
posted by brilliantine at 8:14 AM on October 30, 2020

> Well, he insisted I eat a big hunk of this foot long poppy seed roll on the way home in the car and barely 10 minutes later I was so high

If the filling was black you were probably on a contact high or feeling suggestible. I've had makowiec uncountable times as a child and it's never done more than give me a sugar rush.
posted by ardgedee at 8:25 AM on October 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I've never had this experience from something made with poppy seeds before or since, so I don't know what was up with that, all I know is I was so high that I was warm and fuzzy and I felt like I popped a vicodin or oxy.

Granted I don't mess around with opiates at all outside of dire medical need, but I definitely know what a sugar buzz feels like and this wasn't it. I also have never eaten that many poppy seeds at once in anything.

I do know what "Wow, I'm suddenly and unexpectedly high!" feels like, though, and boy howdy I sure was high.
posted by loquacious at 8:31 AM on October 30, 2020

Well, I don't know what caused it, but it wasn't the poppyseeds. The only effect those have is false positives for opiates on urine tests.
posted by ardgedee at 9:39 AM on October 30, 2020

There's indication that at least some poppy seeds in our food chain can contain up to 100mg/kg of morphine. The idea that there are no active alkaloids in seeds is outdated. It's unlikely that a person would get high from eating a store bought poppy-based product, but maybe don't dismiss other people's entirely possible experiences out of hand.
posted by howfar at 12:24 PM on October 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Not to derail further, but if a source of poppy seeds is unwashed then they very likely contain a significant amount of opiates. That's how poppy seed tea is made. I can assure you that poppy seed tea made with the right seeds will indeed get you very high, and so could a pastry made with them.

Unless you're buying bulk poppy seeds, and/or the seeds have visible poppy plant matter mixed up with them, commercially-available* poppy seeds are washed and are unlikely to contain significant amounts of opiates.

*as opposed to shady eBay sellers and the like.
posted by Enkidude at 3:23 PM on October 30, 2020

Yep, I know people that harvest their own wild or garden poppy seeds for medicinal tea as either pain relief or sleep aids, and I've had some of this tea a couple of times. You can definitely get high as fuck off of the right poppy seeds, and it feels exactly the same as what I experienced eating this large fist-sized chunk of pastry.

Ardegee it would be super cool if you didn't feel the need police my direct experience with this, and to be honest it felt like I was being mansplained at with enthusiasm taking precedent over experience and it felt rather lame.

I recognize that with our shared history on this site that you probably have a low opinion of me or think I'm bonkers or just some random stoner or something, but I'm super sensitive to opiates and I effectively have zero tolerance to them. The last time I had a prescription for an opiate based pain killer was several years ago for a severely abraded cornea. Before that it was another several years for a collapsed lung and extended ICU visit. If I'm willingly taking an opiate it's only with a prescription for very severe pain.

I seriously avoid them out of medical need because I don't like how they make me feel foggy, dizzy and nauseous. I know my body very well. I was definitely stoned off of that poppy seed roll. I had nothing else in my system that day but a few cups of coffee, which makes the sudden lethargy and passenger seat nap I experienced that day even more pronounced and remarkable.

Also my Russian friend shared after the fact that he went out of his way to buy those particular poppy seed rolls from that particular store because they reliably had that effect. He didn't warn me before then, I didn't eat the pastry thinking "ooo, poppy seeds, lets get high!" at all any more than I would eating a common poppy seed muffin and I wasn't expecting the effects or experiencing a placebo effect or suggestion.

He didn't tell me that these rolls were reliably psychoactive for him until I realized I was probably high from it and mentioned it, which is the point at which he laughed and admitted he wanted to see how I'd react specifically because he knew I liked cannabis.

I was high as a kite off that roll, perhaps even more than the rare few times I've had a needed prescription.
posted by loquacious at 9:32 AM on November 2, 2020