The minimal Bengali meal: alu-bhate-bhat (boiled rice with mashed potatoes)

This is what one makes when lacking time/energy to cook a proper meal.

Ingredients:

1. rice: according to your appetite. The amount depends on the kind of rice and how old it is. Remember that freshly husked rice does not increase in volume as much as old rice when boiled. Also, parboiled rice is not as filling as unboiled rice (after cooking).
2. potatoes: 1-2 medium
3. salt: according to taste
4. oil: 1-2 tsp (any of mustard oil/sunflower oil/ghee/butter, I have not tried any other oil - but whatever edible oil/fat you like can be used)
5. chili - 1-2 green or dried red (optional)
6. onion - 1 small (optional)

Procedure:

1. Wash the rice and the potatoes in water.
2.  Slice the potatoes into 2-4 pieces. This determines how fast they are cooked. If using a pressure cooker, you may not need to slice them at all.
3. Boil the rice and the potatoes together. Determining the amount of water is tricky. My rough standard is: for pressure cooker, the water level should remain 1" higher than the rice level (without the potatoes). If cooking in a pot, it depends on how much opening there is for vapour to go out and at what temperature you are cooking it. It may be safer to put excess water and drain it out at the end of cooking (but you lose a lot of nutritional elements with that). You may keep some of the excess water and have a semi-liquid version [called "phyan bhaat" (rice with starch)].
4. Take the potatoes out of the rice. If the potatoes are fresh from the farms, they tend to have thin skin which is edible. Otherwise peel them using your fingers.
5. Mash the potatoes with salt (1/2 tsp or according to taste), oil, green chili and chopped raw onions. If you are using dried red chili, roast them first and then mash them. You can vary the taste by mixing the oil, chili, onion first and mashing them together before mixing the potatoes. Roll the whole thing into a ball.
6. For each mouthful, top the rice with a little bit of the mashed potatoes and eat. 
7. Additional taste enhancers: You may want to sprinkle some extra salt on the rice for better taste. You can bite off bits of raw onion and/or green chili with each mouthful. You can squeeze a teaspoonful of lemon juice on the rice. You can add extra lump of butter or  some ghee to the rice.

Boiled chicken with mashed potatoes

This was another accidental creation. I was in the middle of boiling some potatoes when a power-cut made me abandon them for the time. Later in an attempt to use those half-cooked potatoes I bought some chicken and made up the following:

Ingredients:

Chicken: 1/2 kg (with bones) cut into large (~3"x3"x1") pieces.
Coriander leaves with stem: 50 g
Cumin seeds: 3/4 tsp
Salt: 3/4 tbsp or according to taste
Potatoes: 3 medium sized
Butter/ghee: 2 tbsp


Procedure:

1. Clean the coriander leaves and separate the leaves from the stem.
2. Peel and chop the potatoes into thin pieces (the thinner they are, the faster they get cooked)
3. Add 1 tbsp butter/ghee and 3/4 tbsp salt to the chicken and mix well.
4. Add 5 cups of water and cook in low heat with lid on for 1/2 an hour (until the chicken is cooked). I used the "soup" mode of my induction cooker. Add the coriander stems and 1/2 tsp cumin seeds halfway through the cooking.
5. Remove the chicken pieces and add the potatoes and keep boiling at low heat until soft. The stock should have almost dried up by now
6. Heat up 1 tbsp butter and add the rest of the cumin seeds. 
7. Add the boiled potatoes along with the stock and mash them up with a ladle. 
8. When it dries up, crush the coriander leaves and mix them with the potatoes (you may want to use a small fraction of the leaves to avoid too strong a smell). You can also add some chopped green chili.

PS: I expect you won't have half-cooked potatoes, so I guess you can cook them entirely in the stock.