Doi Maach

New beginnings in Bengali homes usually feature fish! It’s tradition.

So after a hiatus of three months I am back to writing a new post. Let me clarify, I was never out of action (from the kitchen), but what I cooked in the last three months was nothing to write about!

For those who are wondering about my inadequacy at updating a Blog which has evolved as a way of life for me, I have news! I gave birth to a beautiful (Yes, I am biased!) girl about a month ago. She is exactly 27 days old today, and already has a way with her eyes. She uses them to blackmail her parents. I have a feeling she will pout, purr and use other girlie ammunitions for extraction in the future. Just like her Mommy does.

So while my daughter takes her baby naps, I sneak into the kitchen and do a much-asked dish – the Doi Maach. Bengali for fish (it’s always Rohu) cooked in yogurt. This is a traditional Bengali dish which has found its way to weddings and occasional feasts. It often stands out for its silken texture and a balanced sweet, savoury and sour taste. And if you are lucky, you might even find plump raisins in the gravy!

Essentially pieces of raw fish are introduced in the yogurt sauce once its cooked. However, many who do not like the idea of “raw” fish prefer to lightly fry the pieces of fish before they are dunked in the sauce. It’s also important that you choose the right pieces of fish – preferably the gada or the pieces from the back of the Rohu. Ask your fish monger and he will know!

Ingredients for Doi Maach are:

5-6 gada pieces of Rohu fish
6-7 tablespoons plain yogurt, whisked with half a cup of room temperature water
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons ginger paste
Half tablespoon garlic paste
10-12 raisins
2 bay leaves
2-3 black cardamoms
2-3 green cardamoms
1-2 sticks cinnamon
4-5 cloves
2 tablespoons ghee
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 heaped teaspoon red chili powder
Sugar
Salt

Heat ghee in a thick pan and add the whole spices – cardamoms, bay, cinnamon, cloves with the onions. Sauté till the onions are transparent. Add the raisins at this stage.

Now add the ginger, garlic, red chili powder and turmeric and cook everything till lightly coloured. All on low-medium heat.

Turn the heat to the lowest gas mark and gradually add the yogurt. Make sure you continuously mix the ingredients as you add the yogurt.

It takes about 15-20 minutes of slow cooking, the pan covered all the time to cook the sauce.
You will know when you see the oil bubbling at the sides of the pan. That’s when you know that the gravy is ready. Season with sugar and salt and gently slide in the pieces of fish. Make sure you are using an open-face pan to give you enough room to move around the fish.

It takes about 8-10 minutes for the fish to cook through in the sauce. Do a last taste test and see if the Doi Maach has the right balance of taste. Remove from heat. Its best served with plain white rice.

Maacher Muro Diye Mugger Daal

We are not a family of werewolves. We are Bengalis. A community which is known to eat fish in all its forms and with all its parts. Including the coveted head.

Maacher Muro with Mugger Daal is a big fish head (usually Rohu or Katla) cooked with yellow mung dal. Its a wedding and special occasion tradition.

My father taught me how to work my way into a fish head. The process is meticulous and requires some patience. The eyes and the brain of the fish are the most sought after. They say those are the best parts of the fish head, good for eyesight and the brain. That explains all the Bongs out there with exponentially celestial cerebral equity. Its the fish head, I tell you!

This recipe is my Mother’s of course, and I have re-created it in my kitchen out of greed. That insatiable desire to dunk my hand into a bowl of dal and fish out (pun definitely not intended) a big piece of the head.

Just as the Muro Diye Mugger Daal is here, brimming with flavors and the taste like that from an outside world, I am reminded of a little story my Father always loves to narrate. How he never got a chance to eat the Maacher Muro in his wedding feast. Reason? He was too shy to break into the big fish head when my Mum’s relatives laid out the feast for the new groom. And some benign lady apparently in some kind of hurry, thought it was wise not to embarrass the notun bor with a fish head and took the big Rohu muro away while my Father looked at it longingly. This happened exactly 36 years ago, but the vividness with which he re-tells this incident is still fresh and funny!

Ingredients for Maacher Muro Diye Mugger Daal are:

For the fish head:

1 big fish head (Rohu or Katla) cut into half, cleaned and washed
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
Quarter cup mustard oil
Salt

Smear the head with the turmeric and salt. Heat the oil until smoking and fry the fish head – about 3-4 minutes on each side. Remove with a slotted spoon and keep.

For the dal:

1 cup yellow mung dal
2 tablespoons ginger paste
4-5 green chilies, slit lengthwise
1 teaspoon heaped red chili powder
1 teaspoon heaped turmeric powder
3-4 bay leaves
2-3 black cardamoms
2-3 green cardamoms
1 stick of cinnamon
5-6 cloves
3-4 tablespoons desi ghee
Sugar
Salt

In a pressure pan, dry roast the dal till golden brown. Do this on low-medium heat and babysit the dal so that it doesn’t burn. Remove and keep aside.

In the same pan, heat the ghee and add the bay, cardamoms, cinnamon, cloves and the green chilies. Sauté for a couple of minutes and add the dry-roasted dal.

Mix the dal well with the whole spices and the ghee. Add the ginger paste, turmeric and red chili powder.

On medium heat, mix together all the ingredients. Add the fried fish head and mix again. Let this cook for about 3-4 minutes till the fish head starts disintegrating into the dal and spices.

Use your spatula to give the fish head a helping hand. Add two – three cups of water and simmer. Season with sugar and salt.

Cook the dal till done, but not mushy. I would say about 15-20 minutes, covered all the time. If you see the water drying up too soon, add some more.

This dal will not be runny and have a thick consistency, more so because of the fish head added to it. The head would have now broken down quite a bit and you will see it mixed well with the dal and spices. Do a taste test and add sugar and salt if needed.

The Maacher Muro Diye Mugger Daal usually starts a lot of meals. Serve it with rice, crispy alu bhaja, and a wedge of Gondho Lebu and you will have a meal fit for a queen or a king! Follow it up with this or this. A meal like this usually ends with a bowl of chilled Payesh.

How Pabda Got Discussed, Got Cooked, and Got a Life

I am amazed and humbled, both at the same time how one little question can bring a veritable treasure trove of family recipes tumbling down from nooks and corners of the world. I am talking about several Pabda (Butter Catfish) recipes that readers and friends of PreeOccupied shared today. All I can do is, assure you that it will take you many Pabda sojourns to be able to make all of these recipes. I am so glad I am able to share them with you today.
Mala Ray Chatterjee of Hyderabad, India, shared a simple jhol with kalo jeere (Nigella seeds), green chilies cooked in a gravy of turmeric, salt and some freshly chopped coriander. I had all the ingredients at home and so I went on to make Mala’s Pabda Maacher Jhol. The only change I did make was to add a little grated ginger to my jhol and added red chili powder too the thin gravy of turmeric and salt where the fish got dunked in.
Subharsee Basu of Bombay was confident that adding a clove of garlic to the mustard paste base would take the taste of the Pabda Maach a notch or two above the ordinary.

Purba Mitra suggested a phoron of Nigella seeds and green chilies in hot oil to start with, followed by the fish to be cooked in a sauce made of yellow mustard seeds and poppy seeds. Adding fresh coriander in the end is a necessity – both flavor-wise and aesthetically.
While Amarnath Chatterjee of Japan who calls his recipe of Pabda, Dum ki Machili typed out a detailed recipe I am copy-pasting here: Try a yogurt, green chili paste thing....sauté some cloves, one black cardamom with some caraway, add ground onion paste, brown, add ginger garlic, fry, add holud, red chili powder then add 1- 2 cups yogurt and 8-10 green chilies turned paste, cook till thickish, slip in the fish, simmer uncovered till done...
Pritha Dutta of Delhi who had once shared her Mother’s stuffed Kankrol recipe had another ace up her sleeve. She bowled us over with her Mother’s un-patented Tomato Pabda. Here is the recipe: Shallow fry the fish. For a kilo of pabda, you will need about two tablespoons of onion paste, one teaspoon each of green chili, ginger and garlic paste, two bay leaves, 3-4 cloves, 3-4 large ripe tomatoes, ghee and Bengali garam masala. Blanch the tomatoes in hot water, remove skin and grind into a paste. Heat ghee, add bay leaves and cloves, onion, green chili, ginger and garlic pastes. Once the masala starts to leave the sides, add tomato paste, salt and sugar to taste, garam masala and some water. Add the fish, cook covered for about 3-4 minutes. Gently turn the fish. Cook for another minute, remove from heat. Garnish with slit green chilies. Serve with steaming fluffy white rice.

Ronita Biswas adds that adding a little drizzle of raw mustard oil (kancha shorsher tel) to the cooked Pabda Maach curry adds a whole lot of zing to the dish. Point noted, Ronita.

Prem Chowdhury of Virginia, USA, recounted how his Dida taught him a Paturi recipe with Pabda. He adds that the recipe just has onions and red chilies and is lip smacking good. One day soon, we will have Prem write out his Grandmother’s gem. And cook it too.

Two ladies by the same name answered the Pabda calling, both painstakingly detailed out their respective recipes.

Sumana Sen-Bagchee of Edmonton, Canada, whose aunt’s bitter gourd recipe was an instant hit with the readers of my Blog has this to say: Pabda can be done very simply too--with kalo jeerey or panch phoron. Lightly fry the fish if they are frozen. Mix in a small owl halud-dhoney and lanka powder with some water. After adding phoron and kancha lanka to the oil pour in the liquid, carefully, thin it if needed, let it come to a boil, add a few pieces of chopped tomatoes, cook a while covered. Salt it, Slip in the fish when the gravy looks nicely cooked, the tomatoes married, add some grated ginger, cover and cook till fish are cooked. Sprinkle a little mustard oil, my mojo for all Bengali food, sprinkle with chopped coriander. My mom-in-laws recipe: Pabda from Pabna.

Sumana Raychaudhuri of Maryland, USA, says her favorite Pabda recipe is a simple curry made with ginger and green chili paste. Here is her recipe: pre-frying the fish is optional.
Soak two inches of fresh ginger (after peeling) and three red chilies (for 5-6 medium size fish) in water for few hours and make a coarse paste with the same water. Soak two large tomatoes in hot water and remove the peel. Now make a smooth paste with ginger-red chili-tomato. Heat oil, add kalo jeera, green chili and the ginger-red chili-tomato paste. Add salt and turmeric. Boil once, add the fish and wait till the fish gets cooked. Garnish with dhonepata.

The conversation around Pabda Maach had just begun…

With so many recipes shared and discussed over a period of less than a few hours, I was left confused and lusting for all of them. I chose one and got inspired by the rest of them. I shall leave you now with the pictures from my kitchen on this unique Pabda journey. I know you will get this silver-colored buttery fish the next time you are in a maacher bajaar, and cook at least one of these little gems shared by all the wonderful people.