Koi Maacher Jhaal

There is an old Bengali saying that the power of endurance of a woman is like a Koi fish’s (Climbing Perch).

May manush’er praan, Koi maacher jaan!

Meaning both the Koi and a woman have great abilities to withstand pain. Try clubbing a live Koi for your meal and you will see how it takes you four or five, even more times to beat it to death! Koi is a pond fish, often found in slushy inlets, quietly hiding from a predator or fisherman. It has a dark appearance, the skin is rather thick. Koi fish is sweet, fleshy and has hook-like bones. I have once suffered the pain a Koi bone can cause to the throat, while eating a delicious curry made with mustard and green chilies, often called a Jhaal in Bangla. 
The Koi we eat should not be confused with the Japanese ornamental brocaded ones by the same name.

So today’s lunch was this Koi Maacher Jhaal, a simple mustardy curry spiked with fresh green chilies.

Ingredients for Koi Maacher Jhaal are:

500 grams Koi fish, washed and cleaned
2 medium size ripe tomatoes, quartered
6-7 green chilies, slit lengthwise
Handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped
3 heaped teaspoons of freshly ground yellow mustard
Three-fourth teaspoons red chili powder
2 + 1 teaspoons turmeric powder
Half cup mustard oil
Salt

Heat mustard oil in a wok/thick pan until smoking. Rub two teaspoons turmeric and a spoonful of salt to the fish and shallow fry them, about two minutes on each side. Remove with a slotted spoon and keep.

In the remaining oil, add the tomatoes and green chilies and sauté for a minute or two. In a bowl, mix together the mustard, turmeric, and red chili powder. Add three cups of water and add the mixture to the tomato-green chili in the pan. Season with salt.

Let this cook on medium-high flame for about 7-8 minutes, till the tomatoes and the spices are cooked through. Now gently release the Koi fish, holding them by their tails!

It takes about 4-5 minutes after you release the fish into the mustard curry to complete cooking. Don’t forget to turn the fish in the sauce. Finish with a generous garnish of chopped coriander. The Koi Maacher Jhaal is recommended with steaming hot rice. Enjoy!

Oh and just so you know, I did not have to club a Koi to death, it was available at the Bangladeshi store we get our share of desi fish from.

Pocketful of Froggies and Fish Fry to Pacify

She was barely four, but quite aware of her surroundings and senses – including flavors and food her Mum would create. She was choosy about food and almost never ate anything which had a “health” tag attached to it necessary for children her age. Her parents would cry hoarse to the kiddie doctor they took her to. Who would in turn tell the harried parents that their child was normal.

She wrote her Cs and Ds all mirror images of the actual letters of the alphabet in her strangely beautiful handwriting. She strung a wooden guitar quite tunelessly, she even stole sausages from the fridge while the Mum was asleep one day. She never played with dolls and kitchen sets little girls her age did. She loved to dig into hills of sand at construction sites, one time even coming back home with a piece of dried cat poop in her hand and giving it to her Mum as a present for home decoration. She once hit the family’s domestic help so hard with a steel rod, he bled from the forehead. Just because he had refused to give her atta dough to play with.

All the signs were there. The parents were bringing up a Problem Child. And they could not even put her up for adoption!

But outside of her home, the Brat was the most well-behaved little girl, who even knew her nursery rhymes and number songs. So no one really believed the parents when they told tales of the brat they had at home.

Encouraged by the sporadic good behavior of the little girl outside of home, the parents started having eat outs and dinner parties at home.

That monsoon evening a few friends of the parents were invited. The Mother was busy with cooking her signature dishes, the Father was the babysitter. Later, they cleared the clutter together, tidied the home, fluffed up the pillows, made the house smell good and dressed their daughter up in a frilly frock the Mother had stitched.

Friends came, conversations started over drinks and food. Brat got some applauds for the new poems she had learnt at  nursery school after which she was left on her own to sit on her wooden horse or play around. Sneaking out to the garden was easy for the Brat.

She returned to the living room and stood in front of the guests, waiting to be noticed. Her cheek was pinched by some “Aunty”, but no one really noticed her taking handful of little frogs from the pockets of her frock and hurling them at the guests sitting on the big couch.

Frog after frog came out of her pockets, some escaping her little hands but most made it to where they were aimed at. Shrieks and shrills echoed the living room and then a firm hand picked the Brat up and put her down on the big, rocking chair.

Silence enveloped the room and then suddenly all the adults got busy looking for hopping, jumping frogs. The Brat looked gleefully at the Mother who was glaring back at her. The largish rocking chair’s slight back and forth motion ensured that the Brat did not get off it for the next 30 minutes or so. The Mother wiped her hands and asked her if she was hungry. The Brat nodded and the Mother handed her a piece of crispy-fried Fish Fry with tomato ketchup smeared on it.

The Brat licked the sauce with satisfied delight and then her tiny teeth bit into the flaky fish. She liked it, finished it in no time and reached her little hand for another! Which the Mother handed over only too eagerly. At least her four-year-old was eating something. Which meant the Mother was going to make Bhetki Maacher Fry for the Brat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Ingredients for the Mother’s Fish Fry are:

500 grams fish fillet (use any white fish, my Mum uses Bhetki {Red Snapper} in India)
Juice of two lemons or limes
2 tablespoons juice of red onion (grate an onion and extract the juice)
1 teaspoon black pepper powder
1 egg, beaten
3-4 tablespoons cornstarch
3-4 tablespoons bread crumbs
Canola oil for deep frying
Salt

Cut the fillets in smaller three inch pieces and marinate them in the lemon and onion juices, salt and pepper for about 30-40 minutes. Make sure the fish you use is fresh, else it might just start breaking when you deep fry it.

In a wok, heat oil till almost smoking.

Drain the juices from the fish and coat with cornstarch, dip in the egg batter and roll in the bread crumbs. Deep fry. The rule for “battered” deep frying is: dry-wet-dry, I learnt this from a chef and watched most follow this simple rule.

Fry the fish till the crust becomes golden brown. Adjust the heat if the oil gets too hot.

Drain the fish on paper towels and serve immediately with onion rings, tomato ketchup and kasundi (a Bengali mustard relish).

Ubiquitous Mushuri’r Daal

The last few days of firang food at home and outside left me wanting for something to fill that void. You know that sort of a displaced desire an immigrant has from time to time, to cling onto something from her past!
I’d say a desi chokri like me has every right to go back to where it all began. A simple meal of Mushuri’r Daal (masoor daal/ red lentil) with steaming Bhaat (rice) and some maach bhaja (fried fish). The end.

Here is how my Dida makes this daal:

1 cup red lentil, cleaned and washed
1 medium size onion coarsely diced/sliced
2-3 green chilies broken from the center
1 medium size ripe tomato coarsely sliced
4-5 fat cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
Salt

For the tempering:
2-3 teaspoons desi ghee
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 dry red chilies

Boil all the ingredients with enough water till they are cooked but not mushy. Heat desi ghee and add the cumin seeds and dry red chilies. let them sizzle in the hot ghee for a minute. Add them to the cooked daal (lentils).
Serve garnished with chopped coriander (optional), an excellent accompaniment with steaming rice.
The fried fish (Rohu) I had the mushuri’r daal and bhaat with was just an out of the world double whammy!

Rui Maacher Kalia

I am certain all traditional Bengali wedding feasts have served the Rui Maacher Kalia, before the buffet days came and spoilt it all with their chowmeins, vegetarian machurians, and chicken jhalfreizis. Not to mention the Fish Begum Bahar!
I am yet to understand why traditional Bengali wedding feasts had to be replaced by these modern-day buffets where everything pretty much tasted the same. Plus you had to queue up in front of the food with cheap China or melamine plates, instead of being “served” like a queen!

As a kid, the only thing that got me excited about weddings were their feasts. I would plan for days what I’d wear and more importantly which were the things I’d eat or say no to. To the Bubais and the Baantys who would come loaded with “items” to be served for the biyer bhoj (wedding feast). They would come serving rows of guests sitting cross-legged on dhurries from a certain Raja Tent House, eating off shaal paata’r thala (sal leaf plates).

Sitting cross-legged at wedding feasts, sometimes with complete strangers had its own challenges. I was often troubled by the feeling of my knees rubbing with other people, and if I was flanked by my cousins, it would soon become a war of the knees, knocking each other’s knee caps – tomfoolery becoming very violent until one of us got screamed at by some elder. But what tormented me most was that leaking khuri, or a missing wedge of lemon which Shontu da forgot to drop on my plate while his brother Montu was neatly giving pinches of salt to everyone.

I would be a finicky eater too, carefully declining the less interesting shaak or begun bhaja and waiting for the real delicacies. I mostly swayed between luchi-cholaar dal and mansgho-pulao. Nothing in between.

The in between was always the king of all fish- Rohu in its kalia form. I was definitely not going to eat Rui Maacher Kalia which always preceded the mutton curry. Why would I, when I got to eat it at least once a week at home! And this is how my Mum would make it the days the maach wala (fish monger) got paka rui (a full grown fish of about 2.5+ kilos).

Ingredients for the Rui Maacher Kalia are:

4 pieces of Rohu (gaada pieces)
2 medium size potatoes cut into halves
1 medium size red onion finely chopped
1 medium size ripe tomato, coarsely chopped
Handful of finely chopped cilantro
2 teaspoons garlic paste
2 teaspoons ginger paste
Pinch of garam masala powder
2 + 1 teaspoons turmeric powder
2 teaspoons red chili powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 small cinnamon stick
2 green cardamoms
1 black cardamom
2 bay leaves
2 cloves
Mustard oil
Sugar
Salt

Rub salt and a couple of teaspoons of turmeric powder on the pieces of fish. Heat mustard oil in a wok and deep fry the fish.
In the same oil, fry the potato halves till they get golden on the edges. Keep aside while you ready ingredients for the gravy.Heat the leftover oil from frying the fish (reduce if more than two tablespoon), add whole spices – bay leaf, cinnamon, cloves, cardamoms and sauté for a minute. I always add a pinch of sugar and let it caramelize before I add the chopped onions. This way the gravy gets a rich, dark color, the trademark of a kalia (a rich preparation of fish, meat or vegetables using generous quantities of oil or ghee and a sauce made of ginger-garlic paste and onions, flavored with gorom moshla).
Fry the onions till they get a nice golden color, but not burn.
Now add the ginger-garlic paste and fry till they get cooked.
Now add the powdered spices – red chili, cumin, coriander and turmeric. 
Add the chopped tomatoes. Keep pressing the tomatoes with the back of the ladle to get the juices out. All this cooking needs to be done on low-medium heat. Season with salt and sugar.
Add little water along with the pieces of fried potatoes and simmer.Once the potatoes are cooked, add the pieces of fried fish. Cook on high for five minutes. Season with some garam masala powder (I make a homemade powder of cloves, cinnamon and cardamom).
Fried fish is already cooked, and overcooking would be disastrous as the pieces get mashed and start disintegrating.

Remove the wok from heat and garnish with chopped coriander.
Have a homemade Bengali bhoj with Basmati rice and this Rui Maacher Kalia. Believe me, there is nothing in between about it!

Labeo Rohita In Mustard Sauce, And Stir-Fried Greens On The Side

Of all the things I anticipated eating by being a Bengali is fish. How unpredictable!

If I recollect correctly, it was in grade eight that I learnt the biological name of rui maach is Labeo Rohita. I had a bad hand at science drawings then, so my grandmother or my little sister used to make all those diagrams for me - Rana Tigrina (frog), Rattus (rat), Ornithorhynchus Anatinus (platypus), or Periplaneta Americana (cockroach).

The only thing I have come gastronomically close to in the above mentioned living beings are frog legs, which upon picking up a packet at a Chinatown store, I quickly backtracked and went straight to the fruits and vegetables section. All my affinity for French and Cantonese cooking did not make me eat frogs for dinner.

But Rui (Rohu) or Labeo Rohita has remained with me since my childhood, in all its forms – jhaal, jhol, bhaja, chop, muri ghonto, just to name a few preparations.

I will concentrate on the jhaal today, which essentially has a mustard base and when literally translated means “hot”. Probably because of the two ingredients, mustard and green chilies which add an unmistakable zing to this dish. It also has a thicker consistency as compared to its cousin, the jhol which is rather runny.

For Rui Maacher Jhaal you will need:

4 pieces of Rohu fish
1 medium size tomato cut into thick slices
2 tablespoon fresh mustard (yellow) paste
Few green chilies, slit lengthwise
Few sprigs of coriander, chopped fine
2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 teaspoon nigella seeds
Mustard oil
Salt

Apply salt and turmeric powder to the pieces of fish and deep fry them in piping hot mustard oil. Keep aside.
I made my mustard paste at home by first dry grinding yellow mustard seeds in my blender and then adding a tablespoon of water to make a paste. The traditional way of doing it is on the stone grinder.
Take one tablespoon of the remaining mustard oil (leftover from the fried fish), heat it in a wide-mouthed pan. Add nigella seeds and sauté for a few seconds.
Add the sliced tomatoes and green chilies and cook for a few minutes.
Make a not-so-thin sauce with the mustard paste, a cup of water, one teaspoon turmeric powder, red chili powder and salt.

Add that to the tomatoes and green chilies. Cook this sauce or jhaal for 5-7 minutes on high flame till all the raw taste of the mustard goes away. Gently add the pieces of fried fish and cook it on high flame for 5-7 minutes. Garnish with chopped coriander.
Serve with plain white rice and some side, like this spinach stir fry (Shaak Bhaja) I made today.

2 cups very finely chopped spinach
2 teaspoon yellow moong dal
3-4 green chilies broken from the middle
1 dry red chili
2 tablespoon mustard oil
Sugar
Salt

Heat oil in a pan, add the moong dal and chilies.
Sauté for a couple of minutes and add the spinach.
Season with salt and sugar. Stir fry till the spinach wilts and all the moisture evaporates. A shaak bhaja like this is usually the first course of a Bengali meal. Its mixed with rice and eaten without complaining about being fed greens!