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

[fr] Poisson grillé et curry rouge de poisson. (J'avais d'abord écrit: "curry de poisson rouge", cherchez l'erreur.)

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)

Lemon, salt, turmeric, chilli powder, garlic and ginger paste on the fish

  • 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…)

Pune - Kingfish Frying

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.

Pune - Red Fish Curry

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