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.

Up and Down School

My son Panshul has been busy christening things!

We shifted house and I was visiting playschools in the new neighbourhood. Of course, Panna loved all of them and the slides, sand pit, swings, splash pools and the cars and trains in those schools.So he started naming each school that we visited after the best thing that he discovered there - so one school was "Small Car School".

One was “Watchman-Maama School” (because the watchman there played with him while i was taking the school tour).

Another school was "Big and Small Slide School" (named after the many different sized slides that were there)

And the other one was "Up and Down School" (because there was slight ramp-like slope in the premises on which Panna enjoyed running up and down).

And some others were Hippo School or Ladybird School or Lion School or Bee School (based on the bright, big pictures painted on the schools’ walls)

After all this, he gave me a new name too – Po (we have been watching Kung-Fu Panda and its sequels in a loop and Panna named me after the Dragon Warrior!)

I have been busy over the past week writing about brands and branding and here is my son, doing some rebranding!!

So, does anyone want a new name?? Consult Panna!! J

Ordeal With A Simple Sabzi

Just received a claim token from Technorati. Here it is - VR7PNSQ5W82P

I am not a great cook. Occasionally, on really rare days, the dish that I try to cook turns out good and I get compliments for it from my husband. But most days, the dishes that I prepare taste just ok. It is edible alright, but is completely devoid of even an ounce of any ‘wow’ factor. Instead, it is always found lacking or overdone with one or many flavors  It is only on extremely rare occasions that my dishes turn out perfect.

Why am I such a clumsy cook? Because, I do not like to cook. I love to eat good food and watch TV shows on food, but involving me in the act of cooking is something that I do not enjoy much. The everyday cooking that I do at home is done more out of necessity than out of any inclination or likeness to the activity. For me cooking is as boring as any other household chore like seeping and swabbing and washing. It needs to be done, so I do it.

My aunts and mom have constantly told me that I should cook from my heart, but I have failed miserably at it. I just go by the processes of cooking – washing, cutting, sautéing, mixing, steaming etc – very mundanely. Cooking involves exact measures, exact temperatures, exact time limits and many other exacts. However, no matter how hard I try, I almost always get these numbers wrong. Even simple dishes like the everyday sabzi bear the brunt of my poor cooking skills.

As I mentioned earlier, I love to watch cookery shows, including the hugely popular series, MasterChef Australia. One of the most important things that I have learnt from watching these shows is that you have to get all the processes involved in a food preparation just perfect if you want to your food to taste perfect. And this includes getting all the ingredients in the food to combine well and complement one another. They have to reach that physical and chemical state where their natural flavors are released into the dish in order to make it a delectable fare. And only when you smell that beautiful aroma wafting through the air, you know that your dish is perfectly executed.

This rule applies to all the dishes including the simple sabzi. Yet, for some unforeseen reason I get that all so important seasoning (tadka) ridiculously wrong on most days. Being a south Indian, I use udid dal, mustard seeds, green chilies, onions and curry leaves in the seasoning. When the oil heats up and you add the udid dal followed by the other ingredients just before adding the green chilies and onions, there emanates a wonderful woody aroma of the curry leaves and udid dal cooking. That for me is one of the best smells in a kitchen. And this aroma indicates that the seasoning has been just right and it is time to add the onions and green chilies followed by the vegetables. If either of the components of the seasoning does not cook properly, then you do not get that perfect aroma. For me, thanks to my poor cooking skills, I am, almost on all days, eluded from that wonderful olfactory experience. And this is one of my greatest cooking regrets. 

However, there are some rare occasions when the physics and chemistry involved in cooking does the trick for me and everything just falls in place, not by effort, by sheer luck and the food turns out good, even very good sometimes.

Today was one such day and I was cooking the simple cabbage sabzi. I placed the kadai on the stove, put some oil in it, and added the udid dal, mustard seeds and the curry leaves. Soon, the ever eluding wonderfully beautiful aroma wafted from the kadai and reached my nose. This time, I guess, everything had simply fallen in place for me. The oil had heated up just right, the lentils and leaves fried just correct to release their beautiful flavours and aroma.

For me, the chef imperfect that I am, this was a laudable achievement. I’m thrilled and the sabzi tastes good!! Need a spoonful, anyone?