Malvani Fish Curry

Malvani Fish Curry

My roots belong to Malvan, which is part of Kokan in Maharashtra. It’s a costal area with beautiful beaches, coconut, cashew nuts, mango tree and red soil. Fish is primary food in most of the household. We love almost all kind of fishes but most prominently used are surmai/seer fish, bangada/Indian mackerel, Pomfret, karli/ Silver Barfish and Halwa/black Pomfret. This is very traditional fish curry recipe, you can use any fish you like in this. Kokum is nothing but a dry cranberry fruit skin soaked in salt and dry in sun light. This is a key ingredient in this recipe; don’t try to replace this with tamarind or lemon juice. Try this curry; I am sure you will never forget the taste.

Recipe type: Lunch, Dinner

Cuisine: Indian, Maharashtrian kokani

Serves: 4-5

Ingredients:

3-4 medium fish or any choice of fish cut into medium pieces

½ cup freshly grated coconut

1 small onion

1 small tomato

10-12 dry red chilies (Byadagi chili)

1 tbsp coriander seeds

3-4 garlic cloves

½ tsp turmeric

5-6 kokum

2 tbsp oil

salt as per taste

Coriander for garnishing

Instruction:

1. Soaked dry red chilies in hot water for 20 minutes to get rich red color.

2. Cut and clean fish, add 1-2tbsp salt to the fish and keep it aside for 20 minutes.

3. In a blender put together coconut, half chopped onion, tomato chopped, soaked red chilies, coriander seeds, ½ tsp turmeric and garlic cloves, blend it very well with water till you get very fine paste.(Its very important to get really well fine paste otherwise curry will not get perfect smooth texture)

4. Heats up oil in a pan add remaining chopped onion and sauté till it get light brown in color.

5. Add grind coconut masala in a pan; add ¼ cup water and kokum, bring it to boil. Add salt as per taste. (Do not make curry too runny or too thick it should be medium poring consistency)

6. Wash out cut fish pieces gently with water to remove salt.

Tip- it is very important to wash out salt otherwise your curry will become salty.

1. Slowly add fish pieces one by one and cook for 5 minutes.

2. Turn all the fish pieces and again cook for 5-7 minutes.

3. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves and served with hot rice.