Nisha's Fried Kingfish and Red Fish Curry [en]

Here’s a dish Nisha made almost a week ago, but I’ve fallen behind in publishing recipes I took notes about. Here we go!

Start with the fried king mackerel (kingfish) as it has to marinate:

• wash the fish
• put the fish on a plate, sprinkle with lemon, salt, turmeric, chilli powder and a good spoonful of garlic and ginger paste: mix it all up and leave to sit (half an hour? an hour? more? something like that)

• mix rawa and rice flour, and dip the marinated fish in that mixture before frying at a low temperature on a tawa (it really takes quite a while, a good 5 minutes per side, so depending how much fish you have and what size your pan is…)

Now for the red fish curry (you do this in parallel, actually, you want both dishes to be ready as they’re eaten together)

• grate the coconut (not sure how to do it without the special coconut graters they have around here — by the way, Nisha says that for chicken and lamb curry, which is a different recipe, you can use dried coconut, but fresh coconut is mandatory for fish curry)
• soak lots of red chillies (about ten) with two spoonfuls of coriander seeds in some water
• add garlic and make a paste in the mixer
• add half the coconut (or more, depending on how much paste you’re making) and blend — add some water to help liquidize, you need make a very smooth paste
• heat oil, put crushed garlic and curry leaves in, then add paste, salt, 1 small spoon of tamarind paste (or dried tamarind) and cook about 5 minutes (the paste needs to boil)
• add in a few pieces of fish (like the less nice bits of king fish after keeping the nicer parts for frying)
• boil another 5 minutes or so.

To eat, pick up a piece of fried fish with some chapati, and dip it in the fish curry. Yum again!