Sinful Curry

Had one of those rare weekends when everything went as planned. A quiet Saturday with friends of the family, a flawless Sunday with a long afternoon nap, clean to-do list, and best of all, with Monday being a holiday, absolutely no dreadful Sunday-Evening-Jitters. Yes, I bask in the  luxury of weekends and all. But the torture I go through at dusk every Sunday,  at the thought of having to get back to work the next day, makes me sometimes wish they never happened. Silly me, I agree. I choose the monotony of a work week forever, over a roller coaster of work, fun,  and back to work again.

Anyway, well rested and in high spirits on Monday evening I drove to the market, having decided to treat my DH with some well deserved home cooked meal. He did a fine job at making the weekend perfect for me. Among many other things, he’d gotten the  house  immaculately spic without me having to raise a finger (sigh! if only we had more valentines day weekends). So, when my fish monger showed off his wears of some the finest silver white Pomfrets that I hadn’t seen for a long time, I was glad my luck was still sticking around. And, like I always do when I see a good buy, I went amuck. So, if you are not a big fan of Pomfrets, I’d suggest you come back to this site in probably a year’s time, because the next gazillion posts are going to be Pomfret this, Pomfret that and Pomfret this and that too .

By the time I was  done with the bulk Pomfret shopping, there wasn’t much time left to cook. So, I changed plans and decided to make this quick and easy fish curry in coconut milk, one of R’s favorite.  The recipe is similar to the Kerala Red Fish Curry , except that you thicken the gravy with rich coconut milk right at the very end. At my sister S’, insistence, if you haven’t already noticed, I managed to stick in a piece of kudampulli in the pictures too. She has me convinced that the pictures of fish curries in my previous posts looked incomplete without one of these jutting out like a sore thumb (*rolling eyes*). So, there S, I hope it meets your standards now !

Ingredients

1 lb fish cut into slices
2 tsp red chili powder(base it on tolerable  spice levels)
1 tsp paprika(mainly for the red color) 
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
3 –4 shallots finely sliced (if you don’t have these you can use one med sized onion) 
1 tsp grated ginger
1tsp finely chopped garlic 
2 kudampulli (camboge fruit rinds)
(If you don’t have this you can use tamarind instead, but the taste won’t be authentic)
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds powder
2 sprigs of curry leaves
1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
2 –3 tbsp coconut oil/any vegetable refined oil
2- 3 oz of canned coconut milk ( canned coconut milk is much thicker and creamier than fresh coconut milk. If you are using fresh you might need about a cup in this recipe) salt to taste

Directions

Heat oil in a pan and add black mustard seeds, when they pop add in the curry leaves and powdered fenugreek.

Mix together chili powder, paprika and turmeric powderin a little warm water to make a smooth paste, add to the pan and sauté for a few minutes.

Tags: Coconut Milk, Fish, Pomfret

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Indian, Kerala Cuisine, Seafood, South Indian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.