How to Make Artist Mohammed Z. Rahman’s Refreshing Mas Satney

Opening on 9 September 2025, Whitechapel Gallery will host Hearthside, a new installation by British-Bengali artist Mohammed Z. Rahman, presented over six days in collaboration with Oitij-jo. The project meditates on hospitality, food knowledge, ecosystems, and the power of the dinner table to foster solidarities. Across painting, sculpture and installation, Rahman draws on the deep ties between cooking and art-making, conjuring what they describe as a “magically alive gastronomical universe.” Their practice, self-taught and shaped as much by the kitchen as by the studio, traces its roots to a working-class Bengali family home in London, where Rahman began cooking as a teenager.

Among the new works being presented at Whitechapel is Mas Satney (2025), a painting that gives form to the oral and embodied labour behind the Bengali dish of the same name. The work captures the passing down of recipes, gestures and knowledge – between generations, across borders – through a scene of figures chopping mustard greens, washing rice, deboning fish, frying, and gathering around a table alive with ingredients. Windows open onto landscapes of rural Bangladesh, recalling Rahman’s childhood visits. A tablecloth of hand-stitched kheta fabric is set with jars of “Colum’s” mustard and “SRT” mustard oil – playful nods to culinary memory, mistranslation and the inevitable hybridisations of diaspora.

“I wanted to make art about food because food necessarily speaks across the personal, political, magical, historical and ecological,” Rahman tells Something Curated. “From expressing love for the land, care for strangers and the wonder of its craft, little else can wield such deep emotion. Drawing on notions of hospitality, I made Hearthside as a vital offering in a time of steepening social divides.” Ahead of the exhibition’s opening, Rahman shares with SC a recipe for their own version of mas matney – a dish rooted in Sylheti tradition, transformed by migration, and alive with the imperfect transmissions that make food such a potent vehicle for memory, and care.

Mas Satney Recipe by Mohammed Z. Rahman

Mas satney is a refreshing preparation of fried fish and mustard greens in the ballpark of a salad or salsa. The dish has origins in Bengal yet, as a diasporic Sylheti born in London, I prefer to understand food in terms of folk lineage rather than national cuisine; it is in the people not the state, and like language, can be learnt and has always moved and mutated. I picked up the recipe from my ma who migrated to England from rural Bangladesh in the 80s. By cooking with her from a young age, I also forged my approach of learning by eye; the same way I taught myself to paint.

In my latest body of work, Hearthside, I’ve included a painting on board, Mas Satney (2025) which unpacks my understanding of the ingredients, labour and landscapes behind the namesake dish in a carnivalesque kitchen scene.

Ingredients:
1 large or 2 medium mackerel or ½ whole rohu scaled
Forearm’s worth of mustard greens (can substitute with wild garlic/garlic mustard)
1 tsp salt for dry rub, plus 2 pinches for greens
1 tsp turmeric
1 ½ tsp ground coriander
3 tbsp mustard oil
1 large brown onion
4 cloves garlic
2-3 fresh green chillis and/or 2-3 dried red chillies toasted
Generous handful of fresh coriander

Optional:
1 heaped tsp of English mustard
Bangla lime wedge

To make mas satney, first chop the fish into inch-thick slices. We normally use rohu or mackerel which are vastly different but work well in their own ways. Mackerel is oily and fries well, rohu is sweeter and more delicate.

Then, rub with salt, ground coriander and turmeric. Heat up some mustard oil and fry your fish until it’s framed with crispy, dark edges. There’s a saying we have, “if it doesn’t make you cough, it won’t taste good,” so definitely turn the extractor fan on or you will be punished.

While the fish is frying, wash and slice a forearm’s worth of mustard greens finely into threads (it helps if you roll them tight). Scatter two pinches of salt over the shredded greens and leave to wilt. While they wilt, they’ll release their emerald, life-giving juices which can be taken like a ginger shot.

Mustard greens are tough to track down in London, so godspeed. I’ve almost always had them grown by family members, pulled from driveways or rescued from community gardens where they’re uprooted as weeds. If you’re into foraging, wild garlic or garlic mustard make sound substitutions.

When the fish is done frying, cover a colander in kitchen roll and transfer the fish from the pan. Slice a big brown onion and fry briefly in the fish pan until it turns translucent but retains its bite.

While the onion fries, skewer about four unpeeled cloves of garlic onto a wet wooden skewer or fork you don’t like. Open all the windows and blast the extractor as you char the garlic on the naked hob flame for a minute or two until all the skin burns off. If you’re not using a gas hob, an air-fryer on max as needed should do it.

Take the onions off the hob. Once the charred garlic is cool, rub off any ash and slice finely. Then mince a good handful of washed fresh coriander (never waste the stems) with two or three green chillies and/or dried toasted chillies.

Once the fish is cool, debone and flake the meat. Don’t be coy, use your hands. This is your window to snap up a strip of crispy skin while no one’s looking.

Assemble all of the ingredients into a bowl and mix thoroughly with washed hands. Your mitts will get chillified so make sure you also wash them thoroughly or risk their sting in the toilet.

Diasporic food’s beauty lies in its inventiveness. Make it your own, add your favourite condiments, whatever makes it zing. My ma famously adds a spoon of Colman’s English Mustard to her mas satney. It makes me think of an anthropology of food paper by my former lecturer, Parvathi Raman, where she tells of her mother, after moving to London, using vitamin C powder when she couldn’t find tamarind for south Indian fare. Embrace the fact that we are always on the cusp of coining our own traditions.

Now your mas satney is assembled, enjoy at room temperature or chilled with a side of warm plain rice and a wedge of lime.



Mohammed Z. Rahman: Hearthside is on view at Whitechapel Gallery from 9–14 Sep 2025. At 3.30pm on Thu 11 Sep, the Gallery will host an in-conversation event with the artist and Maher Anjum within the exhibition space – book here.



Feature image: Mohammed Z. Rahman, Mas Satney, 2025. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy the artist and Phillida Reid