Delicately Delicious Anjal (Seer Fish) Rava Fry

Last Saturday, I  prepared this authentic South-Canara specialty – Anjaal (Seer Fish) Rava Fry and Kaane (Lady Fish) Curry for dinner. It is a special favourite in our household and one of the most beautiful and delicious dishes of Coastal Karnataka. My mouth is watering even as I write this!

What makes the dish so tasty? Firstly, its core ingredient – the Seer Fish. It is a richly flakey, fleshy fish that tastes absolutely divine when cooked to perfection with the right amount of spices. Secondly, it’s the process of preparing this delicacy – marinating it with chilli powder, turmeric, salt and tamarind paste, coating it with rava (semolina) and frying it till the fish is tender and juicy.

Frying the fish (whichever it is) is an elaborate ritual in South Canara. Every household has a unique way of doing it – with their own special spices and in their own favored and loved methods – deep fried, tava (pan) fried with rava coating, without the coating etc.

In our home, whenever there was a fish fry to be prepared, it was always kept for the last, after the curry had been cooked, after the rice had been boiled and just before serving the lunch or dinner. Our kitchen was tiny and it had no exhaust fan. Mom heated the tava, rolled the marinated fish in semolina and put it on the tava accompanied by an instant sizzle from the semolina popping in the heat. Depending on the size of the fish, she put 3-4 of it on the tava at one time, did a generous sprinkling of the coconut oil over the fish and waited for it to cook well. When the fish turned golden brown, she’d turn it over, sprinkle some more coconut oil and let it cook well on the other side.

Soon, you could smell that distinctly smoky, spicy aroma of the roasting, dusted in semolina, fish skin many houses away. Mom being asthmatic would always get affected by the heat in the spices and would soon go into fits of coughing. To make matters worse, she would even close the kitchen door and windows, lest our Brahmin landlord get the smell and know that we were cooking fish! (Our landlord, the Ballals were a really kind family and had no issues with us cooking non-veg food; yet Mom for some reason thought they would be offended or we would be doomed if they smelt our fish curries and chicken sukkas!)

But as a die-hard fish lover, that smell – of fresh fish frying on the tava – is superbly beautiful for me. But there are people who detest it and some like my Mom try to prevent it from reaching the noses of those people. And they do it in various ways.

If Mom shut all the doors and windows in the house, hoping that the fishy smell would not leave the house, my husband’s cousin’s family, living in the strictly vegetarian Gujarati society would lock the house and leave as the fishy aroma started emanating from the dishes! How they managed to cook the fish to perfection still remains a mystery to me!

Similar is the tale of an uncle. Living in one of the highly conservative and totally vegetarian societies of Bangalore, they would not just shut all the doors and windows when they fried fish, but also lighted fragrant incense sticks on every window, hoping that the smell from the incense sticks would overpower the smell from the kitchen stove!

You see such is the love for fish fry among the people from Coastal Karnataka and they can go to any length to have it.

OK, now back to Anjaal Fry. Here is how to do it –

Anjaal Fry

Photo courtesy: vegnveg.com

         

Ingredients:

Anjaal (Seer Fish) Pieces – 4-5

Red Chilli Powder – 4 teaspoons

Turmeric powder – ½ teaspoon

Tamarind paste – 1 tablespoon

Salt – to taste

Oil – for frying (preferably coconut oil)

Rava (semolina) – 4-5 tablespoon, for coating the fish

      

Method:

Wash the Anjaal pieces, drain every bit of excess water from it and keep aside.

In a bowl, mix well the red chilli powder, turmeric powder, tamarind paste and salt to make a thick marinating mixture.

Apply this mixture over the fish pieces, coating it on both sides. Let the fish rest for about 15-20 minutes till the fish absorbs the spice-mixture very well.

Heat the tava and smear it with oil. Spread the rava on a plate.

Take one piece of fish at a time, put it on the rava, press gently till the rava sticks well to the fish, turn over the fish and repeat the process.

Now, put the rava coated fish piece on the tava. Place all the pieces of fish on the tava and sprinkle some more coconut oil.

Let the fish cook in medium heat. Once the skin crust turns golden brown, turn the fish over.

When both the sides turn sufficiently golden brown with a cispy crust, your Anjaal Rava Fry is ready.